THEAFRICANS
times entire bands, were assimilated into the herding way of life and incor-
porated into the herders' clans. When Europeans began to settle in the
southwestern part of the region in the seventeenth century, they found that
the herding culture was dominant wherever the pastures were suitable for
stock farming. The herding population was most numerous where the
environment was most favorable-namely,
in the lower Orange River val-
ley and, especially, the Cape peninsula and its vicinity.
Herding had distinct advantages over hunting and gathering. The food
supply was more reliable; milk was a most nutritious component of the
herders' diet. That would have made them"taller and stronger than their
aboriginal ancestors and contemporaries. The herders, however, did not
eliminate the hunting and gathering economy in their vicinity. There were
always people who owned no livestock living among or near them. As a
nineteenth-century observer put it:
Nearly everytribe is found to consist ofthree distinct classesofpersons. First,
the wealthy class. Second, a portion of the poorer class disposed to reside
with and serve the former, and third, the remainder of the latter class who
either from disinclination to servitude or an inability to obtain it, trust for