There is yet one point to be noticed in the early condition of the Boer before we pass to his later history.
The forefathers of the Boer were slaveholders.
When the first white men arrived in South Africa it was inhabited by three distinct native peoples.
From the shores of Table Bay to the Orange River on the north, and from the Atlantic to the Maluti Mountains, over thousands of miles, were scattered two of these races, quite unlike and yet more nearly related to each other than to any other branch of the human family. The most important in number and the most widely spread of these people were the Hottentots, a small wiry folk, with yellow faces, black wool in little hard knobs on the head, protruding jaws, low foreheads, and small eyes. They were split up into endless tribelets, dispersed over all the western and central portions of South Africa. More or less loosely organized under chieftains, the same tribes inhabited permanently the same tracts of country; though they moved from point to point to find pasturage for their cattle in the dry and wet seasons, as the Boer did later. Their condition of civilization was not high compared with that of many other African peoples; they had large flocks and herds, on whose flesh and milk they lived, but they had little agriculture. Their round houses, made of slight wooden frames, with mats fastened over them, could at any moment be taken up and removed; and the little clothing they wore was of skins. But they were a versatile, excitable, lively, little folk, as their few remaining descendants are to-day; rather gentle than fierce, and very emotional; and loving dancing and song. They could fight if compelled, but preferred peace. Later they were found to make good fighters under European leaders, but they could not lead or organize themselves. Their senses were preternaturally keen, their perceptions quick, but they were incapable of bearing a long-continued intellectual or emotional strain. They are the eternal children of the human race. Their language, peculiar for the vast number of klicks it contained, formed by striking the tongue in different ways against the palate and teeth, was yet a fairly well organized form of speech, capable of expressing tolerably complex conceptions. It was certain of these Hottentot tribes, under their native chiefs, whom the first white settlers found inhabiting the shores of Table Bay and the slopes of the mountains; and it was these folk with whom they traded, and whom they ultimately fought and drove away.