On this occasion our Baas,
for so a Dutch captain is called, appointed a Master of Misrule, named
the Kesar, the authority of which disorderly officer lay in riot, as
after dinner he would neither salute his friends, nor understand the
laws of reason, those who ought to have been most respectful being both
lawless and witless. We spent three days in this dissolute manner, and
then shaped our course for the Cape of Good Hope, sailing towards the
coast of Bacchus, to whom this idolatrous sacrifice was made, as
appeared afterwards.
The 11th November we came to anchor in Saldanha bay, in lat. 34 deg. S. ten
leagues short of the Cape of Good Hope, where there are three fresh
water rivers.[33] The people came to us with great plenty of oxen and
sheep, which they sold for spike nails and pieces of old iron, giving
the best for not more than the value of a penny. Their cattle are large,
and have a great lump of flesh on the shoulder, like the back of a
camel. Their sheep have prodigiously large tails, entirely composed of
fat, weighing twelve or fourteen pounds, but are covered with hair
instead of wool. The people are not circumcised; are of an olive black
colour, blacker than the Brazilians, with black curled hair like the
negroes of Angola. Their words are mostly inarticulate, and in speaking
they cluck with the tongue like a brood hen, the cluck and the word
being pronounced together in a very strange manner.
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