The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity, no perpetual gloom or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private and social virtues; here are no
Hottentots without religion, polity, or articulate language, no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences: he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason, and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced in most countries their particular inconveniences by particular favours.
The Frenchman felt himself as much alone among them as if he had dropped down in the midst of
Hottentots.
The
Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way.
He would have fraternized with obscure
Hottentots. And above all, he was overwhelmed in tenderness for his friends, who were all illustrious.
The
Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course.
Eilon, Daniel (1983) 'Swift's Yahoo and Leslie's
Hottentot', Notes & Queries n.s.
Charmaine's brilliant multi-textured piece, "The '
Hottentot Venus' in Canada" links historical visual representations to cultural practices exposing Canadian censorship.
In the same issue, Jacqueline Schaalje notes how Dutch can fuse words almost ad infinitum into compound nouns, as in muisklikactivisme 'mouse-click activism.' That compounding is part of the genius of Germanic languages generally (as distinct from Romance languages, say): consider the standard apocryphal example in German, Hottentotten-potentatenmutterattentatertoten 'killing the assassin of a
Hottentot potentate's mother,' or the Icelandic bilvelaihlutaframleiosluaoferoir 'manufacturing processes for car-engine components.'
More examples of Haskell's peculiar sense of form: In "Elephant Feelings," Haskell links the stories of Topsy the elephant (who was electrocuted at Coney Island in 1903 for killing a man), Saartjie Baartman (who is better known as the
Hottentot Venus) and the Hindu god Ganesha (who walks with the body of a man but carries the head of an elephant) to illustrate how the combination of frustrated love and anger can destroy a life.
Bertha's entrance recalls that of the "
Hottentot Venus," one of the most notorious figures in London freak shows, who would emerge "like a wild beast, and [was] ordered to move backwards and forwards, and come out and go into her cage, more like a bear in a chain than a human being" (qtd.
Paddling serenely on an evergreen-rimmed two-acre pond are greater scaup and
Hottentot ducks; bar-headed, brent and emperor geese; and whistler swans.
The name "
Hottentot" itself is explained by almost all of them as a word or name they consistently utter during their dances, Dampier adds laconically "[t]he Word probably hath some signification or other in their Language, whatever it is" (Dampier 1906, vol.