THE KOI-KOIN.
Peculiarity of Language Sounds.—The are divided into two great families, the Hollenlols and the Bushmen. Before describing this remarkable group it is necessary to speak of some strange sounds in their language, because they are indispensable in the proper names and other words which we shall have to use: we mean the so-called clucks, of which the Hottentots have four and the Bushmen about eight. They are uttered by pressing the tongue tightly against different parts of the mouth, and suddenly letting it loose as if taking breath. The tongue is pressed far back on the roof of the mouth for the cerebral cluck, more to tlic front for the palatal, on the incisor teeth for the dental, and between the teeth and the check for the lateral. European tongues have clucking sounds, but only as interjections, Nv hile with the Koi-Koiu they are true phonetic elements. As they occur only as initial sounds, among the Hot tentots only before n and the palatal sounds, and among the Bushmen also before the lip sounds, they seem to be secondary elements of speech. The other African tongues have of this kind except where they have been directly borrowed from the Koi-Koin; as, for instance, in the Caflir language. We shall use the dental and lateral clucks; the former, which sounds like our interjections of displeasure, or like is pronounced when drawing the breath, we shall designate by the symbol (!), and the latter we shall indicate thus (ID. But no one, after what has been said, will over estimate the ethnologic signification of these sounds.
Habitat.—The Koi-Koin, as all or most of the tribes belonging here name themselves in various idiomatic forms—the word is an iterative plural form and means mankind—dwell at present in South-western Africa to the east about as far as the Great Fish River, through the Kam and Kalahari Deserts north as far as the loth degree of south latitude; but of course they are entirely driven from the district of Cape Colony.
North of them, on the loth degree, dwell the Hau-Koin—that is, "g,ennine men "—who, as they speak and live like Hottentots, are not to be considered as fugitives of various descent, still less as dispersed Negroes, but must be numbered among the Koi-Koin, although separated from them by an interjacent Bantu tribe. They call themselves Damaras, and the Namaqua call them Mountain Damaras, or, scornfully, " Dung Damaras;" their language seems to have been independently developed, and, as they do not remember ever to have had any other, they probably are an independently developed tribe of the Koi-Koin, related to the Bushmen. Physically, they deviate from the Koi-Koin, inasmuch as
they are black with a reddish tinge, but their stature and features are Hot ten tot.
Thus it can be said that at present the Koi-Koin inhabit the district of the !Gariep, of the Orange River, and the adjoining deserts. But it was different in former times. The names of mountains and rivers in East Africa, and also remnants of population, indicate, as some old maps correctly show, that they occupied East Africa even beyond Port Natal, into which district, at a much later period than the Koi-Koin, and from the north or north-east, the Caffirs, its present masters, migrated, as their legends narrate. Toward the north also the Koi-Koin had spread farther than we see them at present; and that they were powerful wherever they established themselves is shown by the great influence they have had on the language and customs of the Caffir people, and from the fact that the Caffirs look upon them as the first possessors of the country.
Rdcial Division.—The Koi-Koin are separated into two divisions—the Hottentots and the Bushmen. The latter name signifies " forest men"— that is, "apes," ape-like human beings, as is shown by Fritsch. The name " Hottentot " is said to signify " stammerer," and to have been given to the people on account of their clucking sounds. Both divisions, unquestionably related, though not very closely, are dissimilar in lan guage, character, manner of living, and physical nature. According to a Hottentot myth, the first fathers of both lived together—the one a hunter, the other, though blind, yet able to distinguish animals of the chase from domestic animals. He outwitted the hunter, and forced him to go to the mountains, while he himself built his kraal. On the whole, this myth is probably right. At the time of the first discovery the Bush men were already a degenerate tribe of hunters crowded in between settled nations carrying on stock-raising, with whom for centuries they had lived in open enmity. They seem to have been the aboriginal inhab itants of South Africa, and were driven into the less fertile mountains by the Hottentots. Both came front the north, but the Hottentots, migrat ing with their herds, had by a secure sustenance greater power, and were enabled gradually to expel the Bushmen from the better hunting-grounds. Thus the expelled race sunk into want and misery, and in its efforts to maintain itself became involved in quarrels with all its neighbors.