Note 1 — PREFACE.

In inscribing to you this little book, I do no more than offer that which is your due, as its appearance is mainly owing to you. It was by your desire that I wrote, in 1861, to different Missionaries in South Africa, requesting them to make collections of Native Literature, similar in nature to those which, through your instrumentality, had been so abundantly rescued from oblivion in New Zealand. I then wrote, among others, to the Rev. G. Krönlein, Rhenish Missionary at Beerseba, Great Namaqualand; but it was not till after you had left us, on a new mission of honour and duty, that I received from him (at five different periods) the original manuscripts from which most of the Fables given here are translated. He sent us, altogether, twenty-four Fables, Tales, and Legends, besides twelve Songs of Praise, thirty-two Proverbs, and twelve Riddles; all in Hottentot (as taken down by him from the mouth of the Natives) and German, partly accompanied by explanatory notes, including fragments of the ǀNūsa1 Bushman language. Mr. Krönlein’s manuscripts fill sixty-five pages, mostly in quarto, with double columns.