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NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
bless that system altogether. Almost every principle it has been contending for during the last twenty years is here confirmed. Most of the Hottentot myths are solar or celestial. This may seem of less importance at the present moment, when the opposition to the solar theory has gradually died away, crushed, as it were, by the evidence that has been pouring in simultaneously in support of it from Egypt, from Babylonia, from Polynesian, from American, and from African tribes. But what is far more curious is, that among the Khoi-khoi, too, we see how what is called the irrational element in mythology is due to a misunderstanding of ancient names, and how, so far from real events being turned into myths, myths have there, too, been turned into accounts of real events.
The name of the Supreme Being among the Khoi-khoi is Tsui || Goab, the two strokes before the G indicating the lateral click, which, however, in future we must dispense with. Tsuni-lgoam, the name given in the title of the book, is the reconstructed original of the same name. This name, as written down by travellers and missionaries, differs considerably, yet there seems no doubt that forms such as Tiqua, Thuickwe, Tuiqua, Tigoa, Tanquoa, Tsoi Koap, Tshu Koab, Tsu-goanı, are all meant for the same being, namely our Tsui-Igoab.
At first missionaries could hardly bring themselves to believe that the Khoi-khoi had any religion at all. Peter Kolb, in the beginning of the last century, quotes Saar, an officer of the Dutch Government, who says:
One does not know what kind of religion they have; but early, when the day dawns, they assemble and take each other
