Cowley and his remaining companions embarked at Batavia in a Dutch ship
in March, 1686. They arrived in Table bay at the Cape of Good Hope on
the 1st June, where they landed next day, and of which settlement, as it
then existed in 1686, Cowley gives the following account: -
"Cape Town does not contain above an hundred houses, which are all built
low, because exposed to violent gales of wind in the months of December,
January, and February. The castle is very strong, having about eighty
large cannon for its defence. There is also a very spacious garden,
maintained by the Dutch East India Company, planted with all kinds of
fruit-trees, and many excellent herbs, and laid out in numerous pleasant
walks. This garden is near a mile in length and a furlong wide, being
the greatest rarity at the Cape, and far exceeding the public garden at
Batavia. This country had abundance of very good sheep, but cattle and
fowls are rather scarce. We walked out of town to a village inhabited by
the Hodmandods, or Hottentots. Their houses are round, having the
fire-places in the middle, almost like the huts of the wild Irish, and
the people lay upon the ashes, having nothing under them but
sheep-skins. The men seemed all to be Monorchides, and the whole of
these people were so nasty that we could hardly endure the stench of
their bodies and habitations. Their women are singularly conformed,
having a natural skin apron, and are all so ignorant and brutish that
they do not hesitate to prostitute themselves publicly for the smallest
imaginable recompense, of which I was an eye witness. Their apparel is a
sheep-skin flung over their shoulders, with a leather cap on their
heads, as full of grease as it can hold. Their legs are wound about,
from the ankle to the knees, with the guts of beasts well greased.
"These people, called Hodmandods by the Dutch, are born white, but
they make themselves black by smearing their bodies all over with soot
and grease, so that by frequent repetition they become as black as
negroes. Their children, when young, are of a comely form, but their
noses are like those of the negroes. When they marry, the woman cuts off
one joint of her finger; and, if her husband die and she remarry again,
she cuts off another joint, and so on however often she may marry.
"They are a most filthy race, and will feed upon any thing, however
foul. When the Hollanders kill a beast, these people get the guts, and
having squeezed out the excrements, without washing or scraping, they
lay them upon the coals, and eat them before they are well heated
through. If even a slave of the Hollanders wish to have one of their
women, he has only to give her husband a piece of tobacco. Yet will they
beat their wives if unfaithful with one of their own nation, though they
care not how they act with the men of other nations.
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