Genre:

Essay, Travelogue

Subjects:

Ethnography, Race, Display, Lecturing, Charlatanry

    Relates how, amongst the pavilions set up for a shooting-match in Gotha, a 'family of "Live Bushmen" excited [...] curiosity' and were displayed for money inside a 'booth' (493). In the booth, a 'young fellow' who 'performed the part of lecturer and interpreter' declared, 'I will show you the wild people of Africa, the only specimens in Europe' (493–94). However, when there 'appeared a little old woman, with a yellow skin and an immense bushy head of hair, followed by a girl of eighteen' it became clear that 'Bushmen they were not, nor Africans: very likely ordinary gypsies, dyed and frizzled' (494).