8. THE VARIOUS GROUPS OF BUSHMAN TRIBES

The Bushmen of Damaraland.

The Bushmen of the Ngami Region.

The Bushmen of the Kalahari.

The Bushmen of the West.

In reviewing the various groups of tribes, we will commence with those to the north, and pass from them to the western portion of the country, following up the inquiry through the Karoo and Middle Veld, thence to Griqualand, the Southern Bachoana territory, the valleys of the Kolong and the Vaal, the present Free State, the 'Nu-Gariep, Basutuland, and the east ; and finally noticing those of the Zuurveld, concluding with as much as is known of the life of the last great Bushman captain who ruled over that portion of their ancient territory before the Kaffir tribes attempted to obtain possession of it. To avoid repetition as much as possible, we will in every case where the Bushman history is intermixed with that of the intruding races, defer its consideration until we treat more particularly of the tribes with which they came in contact.

In pursuance of this plan we will begin with

The Bushmen of Damaraland.

These tribes or clans were visited by the traveller Chapman several times. In 1861 he was accompanied by Baines ; and from them we are able to glean a considerable amount of information. Some of these people joined Messrs. Chapman and Baines' hunting party and were glad to perform small services for a few charges of powder and ball. They showed no timidity, nor in fact any distrust or want of confidence. Living, as they did, between the Bachoana tribes and the Hottentots, and so far distant as to be subservient to neither, they had more independence of character than their less fortunate countrymen. Occasionally, however, the Namaqua Hottentots penetrated as far as this portion of their territory on hunting expeditions, and what with scouring the country by day and watching the water at night, they destroyed such immense numbers of game that they almost exterminated the animals for miles around them. Mr. Baines in his description of them added that he had not a little pleasure in being able to state that the behaviour of the Bushmen who visited them was civil and respectful, and they were not annoyed by the constant attempts at theft so common whilst they were travelling through a country occupied by other native tribes.

Some of the women were particularly diminutive, being a very few inches above four feet in height. Their real colour was a light yellowish brown, but they were generally nearly black with accumulated dirt. The general stature of the men seemed to be below five feet, but some of them were tolerably well made, and in good condition. The only one of the first party they met with who exceeded that height was a stout fellow, with well-developed muscles, the son of the old chief. At another place, however, some Bushmen were met with who were nearly five feet five or six inches in height. This variation in height was in all probability owing to some intermixture between these particular Bushman families and some of the Namaqua hunters who occasionally penetrated into their country, in the same manner as we shall find that half-castes of a similar description, more or less numerous according to the number of the intruders, sprang up in many portions of the Bushman territory. It seems an established fact that wherever we find such a marked deviation from the pure Bushman type, the modification can always be traced to the intercourse alluded to.

Baines noticed that one of these Damara Bushmen had a tinge of red in his cheeks, while a number of white feathers, cut short and stuck in his hair like curl-papers, gave him almost an effeminate appearance. One of them had the front of a secretary bird's head fastened in his crisp locks, with the beak projecting over his forehead ; and another wore the spoils of a crow in the same manner. In the general contour of their bodies they were similar to all other Bushmen. " The peculiar line of beauty formed by the protuberance behind, and the necessity of throwing back the shoulders to support the stomach, unnaturally distended by quantities of roots, melons, and other non-nutritious food, has been often remarked."

" In some the hair was shaved round the temples, ears, and back of the head, what remained on the scalp being felted with red clay and grease into a thick mat, to which ornaments of various kinds, such as beads and bits of ostrich eggshell of the size of shirt buttons, were attached behind and before."

" A bit of sinew from the backbone of a beast formed a necklace, and small bands of giraffe's or elephant's hair were tied about their limbs, the tail of the former serving at once as a sceptre and a fly-brusher to the old headman." Some of them had rather longer hair than the Bushmen of the Cape Colony, a small portion of which was drawn out into cords which formed a fringe or curtain three inches long behind.

A belt from three to six or seven inches in width, which was worn by some of the young women, consisted of small circular pieces of ostrich eggshell bored in the centre, strung like buttons with their flat sides together, the cords were then laid side by side until they formed a belt of the required width ; and to support them in its proper shape, stiff pieces of leather were stitched behind like whalebone in a corset. In making one of these an immense amount of time and labour must have been expended, as the shell, which is naturally very hard, had first to be boiled and softened in cold water, then cut into small pieces through which a hole was pierced with a little flint or agate drill, then rubbed into small rings like beads and polished, which were afterwards threaded in the manner described.

No other race except that of the Bushmen had either the skill or the patience to manufacture these beads, which is certainly a mark of their indomitable industry and perseverance when any occasion called them forth. After the stronger races came in contact with the Bushman bead-makers, they used to purchase these pierced discs of eggshell from the latter for small pieces of iron.

Besides these bead-belts the other portion of the Damara Bushwomen's dress consisted of a fringed apron in front arid a small piece of soft skin behind. It was remarked that they " were much cleaner in their food than the Damara or Bachoana, the facility of obtaining fresh meat freeing them from the necessity of eating everything that came to hand." Those seen by these travellers not being smeared with grease, except in " their matted hair, were far less unpleasant to sit near than the Damara."

The arrows were carried in neat quivers of bark served round with sinew, the whole with the bow being carried in a buck-skin, the neck of which was bound tightly round the quiver, while the legs served as belts to sling it round their shoulders. Baines states that there was a " manly bearing about these fellows which he could not help but admire." Besides their bow and quiver, the Bushmen carried in their velzak their fire-sticks, sucking-reed for drinking water, sinew for thread, bone-awls, and a number of other implements.

In 1861 these Bushmen not only headed their arrows with bone, but also with iron.N The latter, however, was only a recent innovation, as the fact has already been pointed out that Mr. Palgrave found at the time of his first visit quartz and agate chips were used by the northern tribes for this purpose.

Notes: We have already shown that the Bushmen obtained such iron as they used by barter, as they never appear to have possessed the knowledge of smelting it from the ore and working it themselves.

To preserve the points from injury, the bone heads were reversed while carrying them in the quiver, that is, " the sharp envenomed point was inserted into the end of the reed forming the shaft," and replaced in its proper position immediately before being used. Thus when a beast was hit, the reed shaft fell off, like that of a harpoon, leaving the poisoned head fast in the victim. The iron head on the other hand, " with a sharp chisel edge a quarter of an inch broad, was carefully wrapped up by itself in bark or sinew, and was said to be specially reserved for the giraffe." The bow was strung with neatly twisted sinew, looped at one end and rolled round it at the other in such a manner that by merely turning it in the hand, as if it were the thread of a screw, it could be tightened or relaxed at pleasure. The bow was three quarters of an inch thick, and little, if at all, more than three feet long. It looked more like a plaything than a formidable weapon, but it required, nevertheless, a stronger pull than those of the Damara to bend it.

In obtaining fire two sticks of moderately hard wood were chosen, in one a little thicker than a pencil a small notch was made, and into this the point of another somewhat harder and thinner was inserted. This was made to revolve rapidly between the palms of the hands, until sufficient heat was gained to ignite a small tuft of carefully selected dry grass.N When one failed to produce fire in this manner, another sat opposite, and as the hands of the first came to the bottom of the stick the second caught it above and kept up the motion until the first one had raised his hand again.

Notes: Mr. Palgrave informed the writer that during his first journeys along the west coast and the west interior, the sight of fire suddenly bursting from the end of a lucifer match created the greatest astonishment, and the possession of two or three of them they looked upon as an invaluable treasure. On one occasion, being encamped near the kraal of a chief, he thought that he would amuse and surprise them by firing off a rocket in the evening. He did so, and immediately there was a hubbub, consternation, and panic among the terrified inhabitants, succeeded in a few moments by a death-like stillness. In the morning he found the place abandoned, every soul, man, woman, and child, had fled, leaving all their worldly gear behind them. For three days no trace of them could be discovered, when a few stragglers were seen, and the retreat of the rest found out ; but even then it was with difficulty they could be persuaded to return, and not before Mr. Palgrave had given a promise to the chief that he would not again attempt to knock any more stars out of the heaven as long as he was in the country.

It appears that the Bushmen had a distinguishing appellation for every pit and spring of water. This was noticed to be especially the case in the Kalahari region : thus the one named " Stink Fontein " by Anderson was called 'Thounce by the Bushmen, and by the Bachoana Letje-piri, both signifying " the Fountain of the Hyena." It is to be regretted that so many travellers attach names of their own to a multitude of localities, instead of ascertaining wherever practicable the one by which it is designated by the natives, as their modem nomenclature cannot possibly assist those who may follow their footsteps, the natives being ignorant of the new titles thus given to them by the foreign visitors.

Chapman found the Bushmen of this part of the country extending into Ovambo-Land, and Bushmen alone occupied the intervening country to Lake Ngami.

The Bushmen of the Ngami Region.

The country to the north of the Kalahari, and between Damaraland and Ngami, was a region full of pans and plains, very similar to those which form the great central portion of the old lacustrine formation in part of Griqualand West and the Cape Colony, and to which in the latter their brethren gave the general name of Karoo, a designation which by a coincidence the northern Bushmen have also given to the country which they inhabit. These people, as was probably at one time the case in the lower country, have given special names to all the great pans, three of which are 'Goo-i-naw, Sa-ba-'tho, and 'Karoo (Dry).

Mr. Baines found Bushmen as far as he travelled to the north-west of the lake, they were known by the name of Ma-'kow-'kow to the lake people who live to the north-west of the Bataoana, or Batauana, the Men of the young Lions. Most of them are armed with the large assagai, or rather spear, as it is not intended for throwing, as well as the bow and arrow. The former appear to be used principally in elephant hunting. Large weapons of this character were manufactured for this express purpose, and called elephant spears by the Bamangwato and Mashuna tribes, who are considered the great blacksmiths of the interior.

Those, however, possessed by these Bushmen were not of the same gigantic dimensions as some of the others belonging to the tribes alluded to, having a blade of only some eight inches in length and two in breadth, with a strong shaft of five or six feet. They had also kerries, or knobbed sticks, of hard black wood like the Ovambo.

When they had a desire to show that they were friendly, many of them would lay down their weapons and sandals a long way off before approaching those they were visiting. A similar custom was observed among the painter-tribes, and is found depicted in some of their paintings representing friendly interviews. They carried sticks for producing fire. Their cookery was simple, yet not without method. Their favourite plan was to dig a hole with a sharp stick under the fire, and in this to cover up the food with hot ashes. Thus one of them placed "several good-sized prickly melons like ostrich eggs in a nest, and though they are generally bitter before they are cooked, yet after it they came out very juicy and agreeable." Another method was to roast, or rather broil, the meat on a stick, which acted as a temporary spit.

These Bushmen could work very tastefully with beads, and wore their medicines and roots as necklaces round their necks. One of them had a spiral tuft made of the ends of black ostrich feathers with short pieces of the stems tied together, the filaments radiating from them so as to form a perfect globe of jetty hue, which he wore as an ornament on his head. Their colour was a light sienna brown, very different from the sallow dry-leaf colour of the Bushmen of the Cape Colony. All the large game pits near the lake were exclusively the work of the Makobas and Bushmen, as it is in some parts of the Kalahari. Their spade was the national digging-stick of the Bushmen. The water at which any chief or headman of these Bushmen drank was soon known by his name, and his successor in the post, as a matter of convenience, continued to bear it.

“In this manner, perhaps," says Mr. Baines, " a series of stations along the pools in a river will have separate names, and thus a European arriving at one of them, if not aware of the custom, applies to the stream the name given to him where he strikes it ; another in like manner applies, as a general name, the word he hears at the next post ; and in this manner contradictory and confused statements are made upon the maps, and the new comer who uses these in conversation to the natives will be guided not where he wants to go, but to the spot where the word he happens to use is properly applicable."

The watering-place called Kobis and Koobie by Chapman and Baines was named after a Bushman formerly living there, and his son afterwards bore the same name. Some of the Bushmen were in a state of vassalage to the neighbouring Bachoana tribes, and were supposed to form a sort of outposts around the territories of the latter, to give the alarm in case of any marauders making their appearance in the direction in which they were stationed.

Leshulatibi, the chief of Lake Ngami, claimed a kind of sovereignty over some of the clans living nearest to the country in which he resided, and although, as we have seen, many of these northern Bushmen were living in a state of isolation and perfect independence, those living on the borders of this territory, and who were thus brought into contact with stronger races, were treated by the latter with the same merciless barbarity as elsewhere. The chief we have just mentioned not only asserted a kind of sovereignty over them, but demanded of them as a species of tribute the tusks of all the elephants which they killed in hunting ; those near his great place were held in a state of abject servitude, and subjected to the greatest cruelty.

On one occasion, two horses having been suffocated in a quagmire, he ordered the two Bushmen who had charge of them to be bound to them and thrust back again into the morass, with an injunction not to lose the horses again.

Again, in 1854, when this chief was attacked by Sekeletu, the son of Sebitoane, and the last of the Makololo chiefs, the Bushmen on this side thought it was a good chance to sweep off a lot of his cattle. His people could neither pursue, nor dare engage these " black serpents " of the desert, so after a while he dropped a hint that he supposed they thought he was dead and the cattle without a master, that they were hungry, and that now the affair was forgotten. He then sent a man with tobacco to buy skins of them, and having by a long course of deceitful kindness lulled their suspicions, he proclaimed a grand battue. Of course the quarry was the Bushmen themselves, who were surprised, disarmed, and brought before him where he was sitting on his veld-stool. He superintended the deliberate cutting of their throats, embittering their last moments by every taunt and sarcasm his imagination could supply. One of the actors in this bloody drama was afterwards in Chapman's service, and " related with great gusto the part he had sustained in it."

Baines states that some of these Bushmen in the immediate vicinity of the Lake were fine fellows, six feet high. Livingstone also visited these people, and tells us that he found many Bush families living at a place far to the north called Matlomaganyana or the Links, a chain of never-failing springs, who unlike those of the plains of the Kalahari, who are generally of short stature and light yellow colour, were tall strapping fellows of dark complexion.

Heat alone does not produce blackness, but heat with moisture, says the doctor, " seems to insure the deepest hue." Baines, however, considered they were half-castes, like the Bastaard Hottentots of the Colony, while Moffat says that the Bushmen who are " the most northerly, exist among the inhabited regions, where they remain perfectly distinct, and what is very remarkable, do not become darker in their complexion, as is the case with all the other tribes that inhabit the torrid zone."

The explanation of this apparent divergence is doubtless to be traced, as in other well-authenticated cases, to an admixture of foreign blood, rather than to mere variations of climatical conditions upon such nomads as some of the branches of this old hunter race, especially as we find such an admixture taking place upon other border lines, where other Bushman tribes have been thrown in contact with the stronger races that were being impelled upon them.

In Livingstone's second visit we obtain some further particulars about this half-caste tribe. He met them at Rapesh, under a captain named Haroye. " He and some others were at least six feet high, and of a darker complexion than the Bushmen of the south. They frequented the Zouga, and had always plenty of food and water. They were a merry laughing set." From some of their observances they appeared to regard the dead as still in another state of living, for they requested one whom they were burying " not to be offended, even though they wished to remain a little longer in the world." These Bushmen killed many elephants, which they hunted by night when the moon was full, for the sake of the coolness. They chose the moment succeeding a charge, when the animal was out of breath, to run in and give him a stab with their long-bladed spears.

The Bushmen of Ngami reported that others of their race existed much farther to the north. Some of these men joined Mr. Baines' expedition, and one of his attendants, " though he knew one dialect of the Bushman language, could not understand theirs. At length a Damara was found who could carry on some sort of conversation with them, when they stated " that their chief lived very far to the north and hunted elephants with dogs near a very great water, the distance of which seemed to increase every time they were asked about it."

We have already seen that the Bushmen of the north apply the same appellation to a portion of the country in which they live as do those of the Middle Veld of the Cape Colony, viz. Karoo. Livingstone met with another instance among those in the far interior where a name was used which was identical with one employed by the tribes of the south. The spot alluded to was called 'Kama-kama, or Pools, Pools, that is, 'a chain of pools,' while we find Kisi 'kama on the Vaal, near 'Gong-'Gong,N ' 'Keis or Khais-kama in British Kaffraria, ' Kragga-' kama near Port Elizabeth, ' Ziet-zei-kama on the border of the district of George, and a number of others. Now as it is certain that no Hottentot tribes ever lived in the country where the Bushman 'Kama-' kama is found, the name could not have been derived from them, but must have been of pure Bushman origin. We have therefore reason to conclude that Kama was originally a Bushman, and not a Hottentot word ; and that therefore the names given above, belonging to these widely separated localities, were of Bushman nomenclature also.

Notes: Gong-Gong is the Bushman name for a waterfall, over which all the waters of the Vaal rush ; and is explained by them to imitate its noise Gong-Gong, Gong-Gong, Gong-Gong.

This similarity of words used by distant tribes that have been cut off and isolated for unknown generations from each other, is another link in the chain of corroborative evidence of the southern migration of the old hunter-race.

The Bushmen of the Kalahari.

The Kalahari extends from the Orange river, 29° south latitude, to near Lake Ngami in the north, and from 24° east longitude to near the west coast. It is intersected by beds of ancient rivers, yet it contains no running waters, and very little in wells. Most of the latter are in the ancient river-beds, but the water never rises now to the surface. The ancient Mokolo, found towards the north of this region, must have been joined by rivers lower down, as it becomes broad and expands into a large bed, of which the present Lake Ngami forms but a very small part. Large salt pans are also met with in this portion, one of which, visited by Dr. Livingstone, was fifteen miles broad and one hundred long ; in another there was a cake of salt and lime, an inch and a half thick. Some of the pans were covered with shells identical with those found in Lake Ngami and the Zouga. This traveller therefore considered it probable that the salt was the leavings of slightly brackish lakes of antiquity, large portions of which must have been dried out in the general desiccation.

The Kalahari proper is covered with grass and creeping plants, and in some parts patches of bushes and even trees. It is remarkably flat, and prodigious herds of antelopes wander over its surface. Here the Bushmen live from choice, and the Bakalahari from compulsion. ' " The Bushmen," writes Livingstone, "are distinct in language, race, habits, and appearance, and are the real nomads of the country. They never cultivate the soil, or rear animals save wretched dogs. They are intimately acquainted with the habits of the game, and chiefly subsist on their flesh eked out by the roots, and beans, and fruits of the desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy plains have generally thin wiry forms, and are capable of great exertion and severe privations. Many are of low stature, although not dwarfish." " That they are," continues the doctor, " to some extent like baboons is true, just as these are in some points frightfully human.”

The inhabitants of the Kalahari frequently " hide their supplies of water, by filling the pits with sand." In the olden times the Bushmen who inhabited those portions of the country now comprised in the Cape Colony used to do the same, merely leaving a small reed pipe through which they sucked up their supplies. One reason given by the Colonial Bushmen for this custom of covering up the springs was that there might be fewer places for the game to drink, and thus they were able to watch the more easily the remaining drinking places when hunting. Ostrich eggshells furnished them with water-bottles, in which to carry the fluid to the place of their haunt.

At Kanne, beyond Letloche, Livingstone found one of these " sucking-places," around which were congregated great numbers of Bushwomen with their eggshells and reeds. At one of the stations in the desert, named Boatlanama, were deep wells, in the neighbourhood of which was an abundance of pallahs, springboks, guinea-fowl, and small monkeys.

The game which frequented these wilds in large numbers were elands, duikers, steenboks, gemsboks, and porcupines, all able to exist without water for a long time, living on bulbs and tubers containing moisture. The koodoo, springbok, and ostrich can live where there is moisture in the vegetation on which they feed. The rhinoceros, buffalo, gnu, giraffe, zebra, and pallah are never seen except in the vicinity of water. There were likewise two species of jackals, the dark and the golden, a small ocelot, the lynx, the wild-cat, and others, besides lions, leopards, panthers, and hyenas.

The desert was a refuge for many a tribe when their lands were overrun by the ferocious Matabili.

The natives of the Kalahari, the Bushmen and Bakalahari, eat some of the snakes which are found in their country, such as the python. The largest of these are from fifteen to twenty feet in length. They live on small animals, chiefly the rodentia, although occasionally steenboks or pallahs fall victims. They are harmless to man. One was shot by Dr. Livingstone about eleven feet ten inches long and as thick as a man's leg. The flesh, he states, was much relished by the Bakalahari and the Bushmen, each carrying away his portion on his shoulder like a log of wood. The Kaffirs, on the other hand, hold these serpents in superstitious dread, believing they are animated by the spirit of some great chief ; and in former days any person destroying one was punished with death.

In rainy seasons, Chapman informs us, there is an abundant supply of water in the Kalahari, but frequently when the superficial moisture has dried away, its existence is only known to the Bushmen, who suck it from the damp sand several feet below the surface by means of a tube of reed buried in it, having a sponge-like tuft of grass inserted at the end.

At one of their camps, where they appeared to have nothing to live upon but water, they were asked how they managed to be so fat. It proved that their principal article of diet was the iguana, which happened to be very plentiful in the neighbourhood. The Bushmen trace them by their spoor or trail to the hole they inhabit, and then dig them out, after which they stew the flesh nicely, stamp it fine, and mix it with the fat and eggs of the reptile, which makes a savoury and nourishing dish. These huge land lizards are from three to four feet long, while another larger kind is about six. They are quite distinct from the water kind, which are of a darker and lighter colour, and have the tail laterally compressed like the crocodile to aid them in steering under water. These Kalahari lizards are of a pale raw sienna ground-colour, irregularly marked down the back with brown lozenge-shaped patches, with small spots between. They ascend and descend trees with great rapidity. When irritated they not only defend themselves, but attack and give chase to man, when they erect their tails and expand their cheeks, which are of a pale cobalt blue. They dart out their long forked tongues with great rapidity like a snake, and inflict severe blows with their tails, or bite ; but their bite is not venomous.

The precarious life led by the Kalahari Bushmen was strikingly shown by the vast difference in the appearance of the inhabitants of the various encampments ; some were fat and plump, others the most pitiable objects imaginable, men, women, and children shrivelled with hunger. The conditions of their existence and the sudden vicissitudes to which they were exposed, must doubtless have rendered their life one that was constantly veering between a feast and a famine.

"When food is plentiful," says Chapman, "the Bushmen seem to be the happiest of mortals in their simple state, and in their parched wilds, which just give what life requires, but give no more." The wide desert with its life of comparative freedom imparts even to the civilised white man a degree, not exactly of happiness, but of freedom from care and anxiety, which it is hardly possible to obtain in a civilised state of society.

This sense of freedom, however, was not the only enjoyment which these Bushmen possessed ; for the excitement of the chase was their greatest glory. The huntsmen of the Kalahari constructed great lines of fences and a continuous series of pitfalls, which, when we consider the primitive and imperfect tools at their disposal to carry out such extensive works, requiring so large an amount of labour to accomplish, must excite our wonder, if it does not arouse our admiration of their perseverance and enduring energy, which such achievements unquestionably demonstrate.

These fences and pitfalls, which were called telle-kello by the Bushmen, were formed by long funnel-shaped fences converging towards a certain point, in the gorge or apex of which a large pitfall of a particular construction was placed. When these works were completed and a grand battue was decided upon, the Bushmen commenced to watch in shelters adjacent to the telle-'kello fences, in which during the daytime a large fire of hard wood was made. In the evening the hunters covered up the burning embers, and a gentle warmth for a certain distance within their influence was imparted to the atmosphere around.

During the day large clubs of touchwood were prepared, generally from some decayed baobab, and when at night the game poured down to the water, the huntsmen rushed out on either side from their places of concealment, extending themselves towards either end of the funnel-shaped fences, at the entrance they threw the clubs which they had previously ignited at the panic-stricken animals as they tried to avoid entering between the two fences. The burning brands caused them to change their course, until at last the startled animals rushed between the fatal fences, which gradually narrowed as they advanced, increasing at the same time in height and strength.

The demoniac yells and blazing firebrands of their pursuers added to the terror and consequent speed with which the hindermost were impelled onward, until at length, when their terror was at its height, between the highest part of the fences an escape seemed at hand, by the opening in front. Men on either side guarded the fences so that they did not break through, and with one terrific bound they leaped the low fence fronting the pit and were swallowed in the treacherous abyss into which they were precipitated one upon another, until the whole presented an indescribable chaos of writhing, smothering, tortured animals. The pit was filled with probably from fifty to a hundred head of game, and the living made their escape by trampling over the dying, while the delighted and triumphant Bushmen rushed in, spear in hand, and slew the uppermost as they were struggling to escape.

Chapman states that there was a sociability about these Bushmen which was not always found among the members of tribes of other native races, thus when the larger game was scarce they would hunt all day for roots, bulbs, tortoises, etc., and then in the evening meet together to share and devour the spoils.

He also mentions another trait in their character, that few who know the special weaknesses of the Hottentot race would be inclined to give them credit for. He states that the Bushmen generally were less corrupt in their morals than any of the larger congregated tribes, excepting when they had been long in close contact with them. They lived comparatively chaste lives, and their women were not at all flattered by the attention of their Bachoana lords. Instead of an honour, they looked upon intercourse with any one out of their tribe, no matter how superior, as a degradation.

As the Kalahari tribes have been occupying a country, probably from a remote past, which has been removed from the great lines of migration of the stronger races, they have remained more perfectly isolated than any other portion of the Bushman family, and have probably, in consequence, retained their habits and modes of thought with less alteration and innovation than any others.

The Bushmen of the West.

It would appear from the frequent occurrence of stone implements used by the Bushmen and the scattered remains of some of their paintings, that, until the intrusion of the pastoral Hottentots, the entire country to the shores of the Atlantic was occupied by them, and that after that intrusion, although many retired more to the eastward, a considerable number clung to the mountain strongholds of their old land, and kept up a continuous warfare against the invaders, which ever increased in intensity until, from the exasperation which it engendered, it became a struggle characterised by peculiar vindictiveness. Some of the weaker clans in like manner sought an asylum among the rocks and solitudes of the sea coast.

Some of these last still survived in 1779, and were then visited by a party of travellers composed of Colonel Gordon, Lieutenant Paterson, Sebastian and Jacobus van Reenen, and a Mr. Pienaar, while fortunately Lieutenant Paterson put on record what they saw of them. He states that they reached the Great river after being nine days in crossing the arid and desolate country they had travelled through, and frequently being more than two days together without obtaining a drop of water. On the banks of the river they observed several old uninhabited huts, where there were numbers of baboons' bones with those of various other wild beasts. Colonel Gordon launched his boat, hoisted the Dutch colours, first drank to the States' health, then that of the Prince of Orange and the Company, after which he gave the river the name of Orange, in honour of that prince.

Crossing the river near its mouth, they came upon a great number of huts which were uninhabited. They were much superior to those built by the generality of the Bushmen, they were loftier and were thatched with grass and furnished with stools made of the back bones of the grampus. The tribe that inhabited them must have at one time been numerous,N although at the time of Paterson's visit only eleven members of it were to be found there. A Namaqua woman was living among them. They were styled Shore-Bushmen, and were living under a chief called 'Cout. Their mode of living was wretched in the highest degree, and they were apparently the dirtiest of all the Hottentot tribes. They had all cut off the first joint of the little finger. Their dress was composed of the skins of seals and jackals, the flesh of which they ate.

Notes: Sometimes great havoc was committed among the Bushmen and other native tribes by the occasional visitation of a severe epidemic, which has sometimes swept off whole tribes, as if before the blast of a pestilence. Chapman informs us that a raging sickness of this kind having decimated some of the Kalahari tribes, an old Bushman named Casse emphatically passed his hand before his mouth and blowing against it strove thus to indicate the clean sweep the extensive mortality had made amongst them. " There are no people left," he said," only stones." He was equally as figurative when speaking of the unseasonable weather, declaring that " the cold wind was cutting off the summer from the winter."

Their principal food appeared to be fish, which was found suspended from poles. When a grampus was cast on shore, they removed their huts to the place, and subsisted upon it as long as any part of it remained, and in this manner it sometimes afforded them subsistence for several months, though in a great measure decayed and putrified in the sun. They smeared their bodies with oil or train, the odour of which was so powerful that their approach was perceived some time before they presented themselves in sight. They carried water in the shells of ostrich eggs and the bladders of seals, which they shot with bows. Their arrows were the same as those of other Hottentot Bushmen.

When they were first seen they took to flight. They were evidently perfectly unacquainted with Europeans, and it was only after considerable persuasion that they made their appearance. This was probably a remnant of a similar tribe to the people called strandloopers by the early Dutch. They were certainly a more primitive race than the nomadic pastoral Hottentots which followed them.

The Bushmen who clung to the mountain fastnesses were still numerous at the time of Barrow's visit in 1796-7. He says that formerly the kloofs of the Khamiesberg abounded with elands and hartebeests, gemsboks, quaggas, and zebras, and were not a little formidable on account of the number of beasts of prey that resorted thither ; but at the period when he wrote, although the lion was still troublesome, the country was almost deserted by beasts in a state of nature, and the Dutch, who in their turn had almost entirely superseded the original Hottentot intruders, were too much in dread of the Bushmen to range far over the country in quest of game.

He found a Bastaard chief (old Cornelius Kok) living near the foot of the mountain, with a mixed horde of Bastaards and Namaquas. In his younger days this man had been a great lover of the chase, and the inside of his matted hut still showed trophies of his prowess. He boasted that, in one excursion he had killed seven camelopards and three white rhinoceroses. But although the intruding races had almost annihilated the game, the Bushmen were still in considerable numbers along the borders, and the same continued state of unrest and alarm prevailed. They were said to be particularly vindictive to any of their own countrymen who had been taken prisoners and continued to live with the Dutch farmers. Should any of those unfortunates again fall into their hands, they seldom escaped being put to the most excruciating tortures.

In the Kaabas mountains, not far from Pella, a narrow pass winds through. It is, says Thompson, a remarkably bold and picturesque defile, cutting its way apparently through the bowels of the mountains, which rise on either hand in ; abrupt precipices at least a thousand feet in height, giving a grand and solemn effect to the scenery, with its rocks and caverns rising round in dim perspective. This poort, or pass, received an appellation which signified in the Namaqua and Bushman languages the Howling of the Big Men, from an event which took place there in the early days. A party of Boers had left the Colony to survey the banks of the 'Gariep, probably in hopes of discovering in these remote regions a land flowing with milk and honey, with no one to dispute their occupation of it but the feeble and famished natives. Whether they committed any aggressions on the route upon the Bushmen is not now known, but they were waylaid in this defile on their return by the crafty savages, and many of them slain by showers of stones and poisoned arrows ; and from the dismal holing they made in their flight the pass received its name.

Many other similar traditions were connected with other portions of the country, which have in like manner been marked by some tragedy in the determined and desperate struggle that was made by these aborigines to maintain the independence of their country, and they are evidence of the feelings which were excited in the breasts of the tribes of the desert by the cruel oppressions and arrogant usurpations of the white men.