THE PORTUGUESE IN SOUTH AFRICA FROM 1505 TO 1700.

CHAPTER I.

THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF SOUTH AFRICA, TERMED BY EUROPEANS BUSHMEN, BY THE HOTTENTOTS SANA, BY THE BANTU OF THE EASTERN COAST ABATWA, BY THE BANTU OF THE WESTERN COAST OVATWA, BY THE BANTU OF THE INTERIOR BAROA

Proofs of the antiquity of man in South Africa.— Slow progress in knowledge of man in a savage state. — Physical features of South Africa. — Beneficial effects of hunger, disease, and war. — The aboriginal Bushmen. — Differences between Bushmen, Hottentots, and Bantu. — Skull measurements of these three divisions of mankind. — Origin of the name Bushmen. — Language of the Bushmen. — Expulsion from parts of South Africa by Hottentot and Bantu invaders. — Dwellings of the Bushmen. — Food. — Weapons. — Stone implements. — Clothing. — Ornaments of the person. — Fire sticks. — Prolific nature of the Bushmen. — Varying dispositions of individuals. — Personal qualities. — Love of liberty. — Domestic life. — Musical instruments.— Amusements. —Games. — Daily duties. — Manufactures. — Belief in charms and witchcraft. — Reasoning power. — Religion. — Power of mimicry. — Artistic power. — Low condition of living. — Incapability of adopting European civilisation. — Destruction of the race. — Note on a collection of stone implements. — Note on the cradle of the Bushman race .

In the present condition of geological knowledge it is impossible to determine whether South Africa has been the home of human beings for as long a time as Europe, but it is certain that men have roamed over its surface from an exceedingly remote period. The ancient shell mounds along the coast are usually regarded as furnishing one proof of this fact. The first of these that was examined carefully was a heap formerly to be seen in a cave at Mossel Bay, but one much larger has of late years been discovered on the left bank of a tributary of the Buffalo river at East London. Its discovery was due to the opening of a way to a quarry, for it had the semblance of a natural mound, being covered with a deep layer of vegetable soil, in which trees were growing ; and this appearance it had presented as far back as could be traced. Upon examination — which was very thorough, as over thirty-two thousand cubic metres of it were removed to fill a lagoon — it was found to consist of a mass 45" 7.2 metres or one hundred and fifty feet long and 1219 metres or forty feet deep, composed of oyster, mussel, and other shells, mixed with bones of animals of various kinds, ashes, and pieces of coarse pottery. No stone implements were obtained in it, but stones showing the action of fire were common.

The most ancient shell heaps that have yet been discovered, however, may have had their origin at a time not vastly remote, though beyond doubt a great many centuries must have passed away since such a one as that at East London began to be formed. Much older are various stone implements shaped by human hands, which have been found in situations where they must have lain undisturbed for an incalculable length of time. They have been picked up, for instance, in gravel washed by a stream into a recess when its bed of hard rock was more than twelve metres higher than it is at present ; in a stratum of clay that once was the muddy bottom of a pond, but is now the crown of a hill, and where they must have been deposited before the commencement of the wearing down of the ravine that separates the hill from a long slope beyond it ; and at great depths in seolian rock, where bones of animals and shells are also found.

None of the arrowheads, spearheads, scrapers, knives, or choppers for cracking bones found in these ancient deposits were ground or polished, as chipping comprised all the labour that was bestowed upon them. They were the products of the skill of man in the lowest stage of his existence. Workshops where they were manufactured have been discovered in various places, and to some of these the raw material, or unchipped stone, must have been brought from a considerable distance. The artisans may have lived there permanently, or, what is more probable, some superstition may have been connected with the localities. At these factories a quantity of stone from which flakes have been struck, some raw material, a very few finished articles, and a great many broken ones usually lie wholly or partially hidden by drift sand or mould, and it is generally by accident that they are discovered.

The most ancient implements were almost as skilfully made as those in use for similar purposes by the people termed by us Bushmen when Europeans first visited the country, but during the long period that must have elapsed the inventive faculty of man had not been entirely idle. One implement at least, and that one requiring more skill, time, and patience to prepare it than were needed in forming any of the others, had been brought into general use. The spherical perforated stone, which is not found in any of the oldest deposits, shows a considerable advance in art upon the chipped lancehead of the early river gravel washings. Still, progress, though thus measurable, was exceedingly slow during the countless centuries that had passed away. In the earliest stages of man's development three principal causes must have operated in forcing him to think : hunger, disease, and war. These were the elementary factors of civilisation. In favourable localities in other parts of the world commerce, as a powerful factor, came at a later period, but in South Africa that stage was not easily arrived at.

This is apparent if the physical condition of the country be considered. The land rises from the ocean level in terraces or steps, until a vast interior plain is reached. Deep gorges have been worn by the action of water, in some places internal forces have caused elevations, in other places depressions, and everywhere along the margins of the terraces distortions may be seen. There are no navigable rivers, and the coast is bold and unbroken. The steep fronts of the terraces, which from the lower side appear to be mountain ranges, and the absence of running water in dry seasons over large surfaces, tended likewise to prevent intercourse between the different parts of the country. The rude people of each section were left to themselves, without that stimulus to improvement which contact with strangers gives. There was very little necessity to exert the mind to provide clothing or habitations, for the climate is mild, and even on the elevated interior plain, though the nights in winter are sharp and cold, snow never lies long on the ground. Like the wild animals, man on occasions of severe weather could find some temporary shelter. In this respect a savage is far more callous than a civilised man.

Hunger must have forced him to think, to plan the destruction of game, to search for edible plants, and to reject those that were noxious ; but after becoming acquainted with the flora in his locality and with the use of poison in the chase, that factor would lose much of its potency. The cultivation of the ground or the domestication of animals could no more enter the mind of a savage in the early palaeolithic stage than into that of a child learning to walk. Disease would compel him to think, but only in an exceedingly slight degree when compared with a modern European, for his ailments were few and were in general attributed to witchcraft. War, whether against his fellows or the powerful carnivora, would be a more important factor in obliging him to exercise his mind, and to it probably was due the gradual though tardy improvement in his weapons by the selection of harder stone and by fashioning them more carefully. But slow indeed was the progress in cultivation from the hunter who used the roughly formed spearhead of shale found in the seolian conglomerate to the Bushman who shot his bone-tipped arrow at an antelope only a century ago.

The Bushmen occupied the whole of South Africa, except possibly the belt bordering on the Indian ocean between the Zambesi and Limpopo rivers, until a century or two before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by Europeans, when they were deprived of a considerable portion of it by the people known to us as Hottentots and Bantu, who came down from the north. Being better armed and disciplined than the aboriginal savages, the invaders had little difficulty in exterminating them or driving them into the barren parts.

The variations between the three classes of human beings occupying the country after that event were very marked. In order to bring them clearly before the reader they are given here in consecutive paragraphs, though this chapter deals particularly with the primitive inhabitants only.

Bushmen : frame dwarfish, colour yellowish brown, face triangular or foxlike in outline, eyes small and deeply sunk, root of nose low, and the whole organ extremely broad, jaws very protuberant, but upper part of face almost vertical, head dotted over with little knots of twisted hair not much larger than peppercorns, no beard whatever, ears without lobes, stomach protuberant, back exceedingly hollow, limbs slender, hands and feet diminutive ; weapons bow and poisoned arrow ; pursuits those of a hunter ; government none but parental and leadership in war or the chase; habitations caverns or mats spread over slight frames made of branches of trees ; domestic animal only the dog ; demeanour that of perfect independence ; language abounding in clicks and in deep guttural sounds.

Hottentots : frame slight but sometimes tall, better formed than Bushmen, but back hollow, head scantily covered with little tufts of short crisped hair, occasional marks of beard, cheeks hollow, nose flat, eyes far apart and often to appearance set obliquely, hands and feet small, colour yellow to olive ; weapons assagai, knobkerie, bow and arrow, shield ; pursuits pastoral and to a very limited extent metallurgic ; government feeble ; habitations slender frames of wood covered with reed mats ; domestic animals ox, sheep, and dog ; demeanour inconstant, marked by levity ; language abounding in clicks.

Bantu : frame of those on the coast generally robust and as well formed as that of Europeans, of those in the interior somewhat weaker, head covered closely with crispy hair, frequently bearded, cheeks full, nose usually flat but occasionally prominent, hands and feet large, colour chocolate brown to deep black ; weapons assagai, knobkerie, shield, and among the northern and interior tribes battle-axe and bow and arrow ; pursuits agricultural, pastoral, and metallurgic ; government firmly constituted, with perfect system of laws ; habitations strong framework of wood covered with thatch ; domestic animals ox, goat, sheep, dog, barn- yard poultry ; demeanour ceremonious, grave, respectful to superiors in rank ; language musical, words abounding in vowels and inflected to produce harmony in sound.

The skull measurements show great differences in the three classes, though the number — especially of Hottentot skulls — carefully examined by competent men is as yet too small for an average to be laid down with absolute precision.

What is termed the horizontal cephalic index, that is the proportion of the breadth of a skull to its length, is given by Professor Sir William Flower, conservator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, from thirteen Bantu specimens as 73 to 100. The highest in this series is 76'8, and the lowest G84. Dr. Gustaf Fritsch, from thirteen specimens, gives the average as 72 to 100. The highest in this series is 78, and the lowest 64'3. M. Paul Broca, the French authority, gives the average of his measurements as 72. Thus the Bantu are dolichocephali, that is people whoso skulls average in breadth less than three-fourths of their length. The average horizontal cephalic index of white people is 78'7.

Of Hottentots, only four that are certainly genuine specimens are given in Professor Flower's volume. The average horizontal cephalic index of these is 72-7, the highest being 75, and the lowest 70 3. Dr. Fritsch had also only four skulls which were certainly those of Hottentots. The average horizontal cephalic index of these he found to be 72 6, the highest being 77, and the lowest 65"9. M„ Broca gives this index from his measurements as 72. The Hottentots are thus certainly true dolichocephali. But even in those that are regarded as pure Hottentot there may have been a mixture of Bushman blood, from causes that will be explained in the next chapter, so that the skull measurements are not altogether to be depended upon. This, however, would have raised the average, not lowered it.

Of genuine Bushman skulls, Professor Flower gives the measurements of five. The average horizontal cephalic index is 76-6, the highest being 78-4, and the lowest 75-7. The late Dr. George Rolleston, professor of anatomy in the University of Oxford, in an appendix to Oates' Matabeleland, gives the measurements of six Bushman skulls in the museum of the university. The average horizontal cephalic index he found to be 75*7, the highest being 81, and the lowest 70. Dr. Fritsch measured five Bushman skulls, and found the average horizontal cephalic index 74-2, the highest being 78'5, and the lowest 69"5. M. Broca found the average of his measurements as low as 72, but it is doubtful whether his specimens were not Hottentot skulls. It would appear that the Bushmen are on the border line separating the dolichocephalic from the mesaticephalic races, the breadth of skulls of the latter averaging between three-fourths and four-fifths of the length.

The cranial capacity, or size of the brain of each, is given by Professor Flower as: Bantu 1485, Hottentot 1407, and Bushman 1288 cubic centimetres. The average brain of a European is 1497 cubic centimetres in size. Dr. Rolleston found the average cranial capacity of his six Bushman specimens as low as 1195 cubic centimetres, and all other recorded measurements place these people among the extreme microcephalic or small-skulled races. The Hottentots in this classification are mesocephali, a name applied to races whose average cranial capacity is between 1350 and 1450 cubic centimetres, and the Bantu, like Europeans, are megacephali or large-skulled.

The alveolar index, index of prognathism, or the slope of a line from the top of the forehead to the point in the upper jaw between the insertion of the front teeth, is an important characteristic. According to the angle which this line makes with the horizontal plane of the skull, races are classified as orthognathous, mesognathous, or prognathous. In this classification the Bushman comes nearest the European, his face above the upper jaw being much more vertical than that of either of the others. Between the Hottentots and the Bantu there is scarcely any difference.

A marked feature of the Bushman skull is the smallness of the lower jaw and the want of prominence of the chin. In this respect he is among the least advanced of all races. The lower jaw of the Hottentot is much better formed, but is not by any means as massive as that of a member of the Bantu family or a European. The skulls of the three classes of people above described also differ from each other and from those of Europeans in many particulars which are only intelligible to professional anatomists. The subject can be studied in special works, and it is not necessary therefore to enter more deeply into it here.

The pigmy hunters, who were the primitive inhabitants of South Africa, received from the first European colonists the name of Bushmen, on account of their preference for places abounding in bushes, where they had a wonderful faculty of concealing themselves, partly owing to the colour of their skins being almost the same as that of the soil. They were members of a race that in early ages was spread over the whole continent south of the Sahara, and of which remnants still exist on both sides of the equator.

The locality in which this race had its origin is quite uncertain. The Bushmen show affinities, as Dr. Bleek has pointed out, with tribes in Australia, and, as Mr. Stow has shown, with sections of the Mongolian race, which might lead to the conclusion that they were offshoots of some primitive stock that threw out branches in different directions in the early days of man's existence on the earth. They cannot have come down from the north after the occupation of Central Africa by the Bantu, so that wherever they came from, their migration must have been at a very remote period. It was probably a slow but steady advance from some uncertain locality, occasioned by an increase of numbers at a time when large areas of land were needed for the support of a few individuals in the lowest stage of human existence.

Their language has not been examined very carefully, except by the late Dr. Bleek and by Miss L. C. Lloyd, whose researches have only partly been published. It is known, however, to be low in order as a means of expressing any but the simplest ideas, and to be divided into a great number of dialects, some of which vary as widely as English from German. Many of its apparent roots are polysyllabic, but there is a doubt whether some of these are not really composites. It is so irregular in its construction that the plural of nouns is often formed by reduplication, as if we should say " dog dog " instead of " dogs," and sometimes the plural is expressed by a word which has nothing in common with the singular. Yet there is an instance of a dual form in the first personal pronoun. In none of the dialects has any word for a numeral higher than three been discovered, from that number up to ten being indicated by showing fingers or by repetition, thus two two for four, two two one for five, two two two two one for nine. Any number beyond ten was simply termed a great many. Dr. Bleek and Miss Lloyd found that the language could be represented in writing, though to the ear it sounds like a continuous clattering combined with hoarse sounds proceeding from the depths of the throat.

After the advent of the Hottentots and the Bantu the great majority of the Bushmen were driven from the choicest portions of South Africa, though a few managed to hold their own for a long time in the tracts occupied by the intruders. The arid interior plain south of the Orange and the Vaal and the rugged mountains, however, were still entirely in their possession when Europeans made their first appearance in the country. Though regarded and spoken of by the Hottentots and the Bantu as wild animals of a noxious kind that should be exterminated, in one particular this opinion was not acted upon. Bushman girls when captured were generally kept as concubines by the destroyers of their families, and thus a mixture of blood was gradually taking place. Hottentot and Bantu women on the other hand would have looked with horror upon intimacy between Bushmen and themselves.

A cave with its opening protected by a few branches of trees, or the centre of a small circle of bushes over which mats or skins of wild animals were stretched, was the best dwelling that they aspired to possess. Failing either of these, they scooped a hole in the ground, placed a few stones round it or bent a few sticks over it, and spread a mat or a skin above to serve as a roof. A little grass at the bottom of the hole formed a bed, and though it was not much larger than the nest of an ostrich, an individual by bending the body into a curve could lie down in it. Each person, male or female, except young children, in such circumstances thus required a separate reposing place.

The ordinary food of these people consisted of roots, berries, wild plants, grass seed, locusts, larva of ants — now commonly called Bushman rice by European colonists, — honey, gum, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammalia of all kinds. No chance of plundering the intruding tribes of domestic cattle was allowed to escape them. They were capable of remaining a long time without food, and could then devour immense quantities of meat without any ill effects. They were careless of the future, and were happy if the wants of the moment were supplied. Thus, when a large animal was killed, no trouble was taken to preserve a portion of its flesh, but the time was spent in alternate gorging, sleeping, and dancing, until not a particle of carrion was left. When a drove of domestic cattle was stolen, several were slaughtered at once and their carcases shared with birds of prey, while if their recapture was considered possible, every animal was hamstrung or killed.

Such wanton destruction, more than any other circumstance, caused the wild people to be detested by the Hottentots and the Bantu, as well as by the European colonists at a later date. From their point of view, however, they regarded any injury they could inflict upon the members of other races as justifiable. Those races were intruders into the land that had been in the sole possession of their ancestors from the earliest times, the game, which was their cattle, was killed without scruple by the invaders of their domains, their fountains and streams were appro- priated without their consent, only the deserts were left to them ; why then should they not retaliate, and do as much harm as they possibly could to those who had done such grievous wrong to them ?

In some parts of the country the Bushmen made long walls by piling up stones, for the purpose of capturing game. These walls were constructed in the form of the sides of an isosceles triangle, with a narrow open space at the apex. Just beyond this was a deep pit carefully covered over, into which the animals that were driven forward fell without chance of escape. The construction of these walls required much labour, but the hunters were not deficient in energy when the capture of game was the end in view, and the embankments were probably only gradually lengthened and increased in height as the utility of the device became more apparent. They made pits for entrapping the elephant and the hippopotamus at the approaches to rivers, and poisoned pools of water, so that any animal which drank perished. Those who lived in the vicinity of streams containing fish used long baskets shaped like scoop nets made of reeds for the purpose of capturing the smaller kinds, and speared the huge barbels and yellow fish with harpoons of bone.

Honey was obtained in many localities in large quantities. The bees frequently make their hives in crevices in the faces of precipices, but it was a very lofty precipice that a Bushman would not scale or be lowered down from above to secure the spoil. A peg driven into a crack in the rock or any little projecting ledge gave him a foothold, and no baboon would venture where he feared to go. The comb was used for food, but most of the honey was fermented and consumed as an intoxicant. The Bushmen were inveterate smokers of dacha or wild hemp, a plant widely distributed in South Africa, and which possesses great intoxicating properties.

Their weapons were bows and arrows. The bows were nothing more than pieces of saplings or branches of trees scraped down a little and strung with a cord formed by twisting together the sinews of animals. It was thus almost useless in wet weather, as the cord when damp was liable to relax, so at such times the Bushmen never went abroad. The arrows were made of reeds, pointed generally with bone, but sometimes with chipped stone flakes. The arrow-head and the lashing by which it was secured to the reed were coated with a deadly poison, so that the slightest wound caused death. The arrows were carried in a quiver usually made of the bark of a species of euphorbia, which is still called by Europeans in South Africa the kokerboom or quiver tree. They were formidable chiefly on account of the poison, as they could not be projected with accuracy to a distance of over fifty metres, and from their frailty had in general little penetrating power. The most expert Bushmen were able to discharge arrows in very rapid succession and at short distances with a fairly accurate aim.

They — or at least some of them — were acquainted with antidotes to the poisons which they used, but were very careful not to inflict wounds upon themselves or even to allow the deadly substance to come in contact with any part of their bodies. The poisons were obtained from snakes, some kinds of caterpillars, and different shrubs.

With the flora in his neighbourhood the Bushman was much better acquainted than Europeans who are not botanists in general are. He knew the qualities of every plant, could at once select those that were edible and reject those that were noxious, and could even make use of those with medicinal properties in case of illness. In this branch of knowledge he had been educated by his mother, when as a little child he went with her daily to seek for food.

The Bushmen used stone flakes for various purposes, but took no trouble to polish them or give them a neat appearance. Many implements were commonly made of horn or bone. There was a stone implement, however, upon which a large amount of care and labour was bestowed in general use among these people when Europeans first became acquainted with them, though it was unknown in very remote times. It was a little spherical boulder, from nine to fourteen centimetres in diameter, such as may be picked up in abundance in many parts of the country, through the centre of which the Bushman drilled a hole large enough to receive a digging-stick, to which it gave weight. With the tools at his disposal, this must have required much time and patience, so that in his eyes a stone when drilled undoubtedly had a very high value. On it he depended for food in seasons of drought, when all the game had fled from his part of the country. Drilled stones of smaller size have occasionally been found in places once the favourite abodes of Bushmen, but from which those savages have long since disappeared. None not sufficiently large to give weight to a digging-stick have been seen in use by any European who has put his observations on record, but it is conjectured that they were intended as amulets.

Mr. Stow mentions various implements of stone which were manufactured by Bushmen with much labour and skill, but these were only produced after their contact with other races, and were confined to small localities. None of them surpassed the common drilled spherical weight as a work of labour or art, except perhaps a pipe bowl of soft material which was found in a cave residence, and which may, or may not, have been fashioned by their hands.

There is no record of a European having ever seen a Bushman manufacturing other stone implements than knives and arrowheads, and no one except Mr. Stow appears to have made inquiry into the matter until it was impossible to derive any information from the people themselves. Even he commenced his investigations at least half a century too late to gain full knowledge of the matter. But as the various crude unpolished implements found in all parts of South Africa were in use by the Bushmen when white men first came in contact with those savages, there can be no doubt that they fashioned them.

In many other parts of the world perforated stones are plentiful, but most of them differ in some respects from those drilled by the Bushmen, which were all of one type. In the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh there is a very fine collection of such stones found in Scotland. There are small ones evidently used in comparatively recent times as weights for nets and in spinning, there are enormously large ones also of not very ancient manufacture, and there are many of the usual size of the Bushman implement. Some are elegantly ornamented, showing the use of tools of metal. Others have holes the same size throughout, leading to a similar conclusion. Those that have holes narrowing from both sides towards the centre, like all the Bushman stones, are usually flat at top and bottom, not globular in form. The Bushman for some unknown reason preferred an approximate sphere, thus any observant eye with a series of each in view would at once detect that they were made by different classes of workmen.

A few chipped flakes and other weapons of stone much larger than those ordinarily used by Bushmen have been picked up in the interior of South Africa, and these have given rise to an opinion that the country may once have been occupied by more robust savages. Myths have been gathered from Bushmen themselves, in which they speak of an older race. But weapons made by Hottentots for their own use could have been taken from them and removed to a great distance by their puny enemies, and the myths probably refer to the supplanting of one horde by another in a particular locality. There is no other evidence — at least of a trustworthy nature — that the Bushmen were not the earliest inhabitants of South Africa, and this seems altogether too slight a foundation to build a theory upon.

The traveller Andrew A. Anderson, in his Twenty-five Years in a Waggon in South Africa, describes some savages that he met in the Kalahari as lower in the scale even than ordinary Bushmen, and he was of opinion that they belonged to an older race. But all Bushmen were not exactly alike, a great deal depending upon the circumstances in which they lived, and the degraded beings seen by him, scarcely human in appearance and mode of existence, probably bore the same relation to the more favoured specimens of the race that the wretched Bakalahari bear to the Bakwena among the Bantu of the interior. It must be added, however, that there is a tradition among the people of a Bantu tribe in the Transvaal that when their ancestors arrived on the banks of the Limpopo eight generations ago they found some savages there who were unacquainted with the use of fire and were without other weapons than natural stones and sticks.

People in a low condition of society do not use clothing for purposes of modesty, but to protect themselves against inclement weather. And as the Bushmen were hardly affected by any degree of either heat or cold that is experienced in South Africa, whether on the plains in mid-summer or on the mountains in midwinter, the raiment of the males was usually scanty, and in the chase was thrown entirely aside. At the best it consisted merely of the skin of an animal wrapped round the person. Adult females wore a little apron, and fastened a skin over their shoulders. Both sexes used belts, which in times of scarcity they tightened to assuage the pangs of hunger, and on festive occasions they rubbed their bodies with grease and coloured clays or soot, sometimes powdered with aromatic plants such as buchu, which made them even more ugly than they were by nature.

When the men expected to meet an enemy, they fastened their arrows in an erect position round their heads, in order to appear as formidable as possible. But they never ex- posed themselves unnecessarily to danger, and tried always to attack from an ambush or a place that would give them the advantage of striking the first blow before their adver- saries were aware of their presence. A poisoned arrow, shot from a little scrub in which a Bushman was lying concealed, often ended the career of an unwary Hottentot traveller.

The Bushmen wore few ornaments, not because they were careless about decorating their persons, but because it was difficult to obtain anything for the purpose. They were without metals of any kind, and in the vast interior,, as they knew nothing of commerce, they could not obtain sea-shells. The best they could aspire to was to cut little circular disks of tortoise and ostrich egg shell, drill holes in them, and string them on thongs. It requires some reflection to realise the amount of patient labour expended upon a single ornament of this kind, manufactured with stone and bone implements. In other cases they made grooves round the teeth of animals, and. then strung a number together. These ornaments were worn on the fore- head, and round the neck, arms, waist, and legs. Sometimes a cord of sinew was passed through the nose and ostrich egg-shell disks were strung on each side, which then hung over the cheeks.

A consideration of how much value such a simple implement as a tinder-box would have had to these people may aid in enabling a European to comprehend the life that they led. They knew how to obtain fire by twirling a piece of wood round rapidly in the socket of another piece, but the preparation of the apparatus took much time, and a considerable amount of labour was needed to produce a flame. Under these circumstances it was a task of the women to preserve a fire when once made, and as they moved their habitations to a large animal when it was killed, instead of trying to carry the meat away, this was often a difficult matter. Sometimes it necessitated carrying a burning stick for four or five hours, or, when it was nearly consumed, kindling a fire for the sole purpose of getting another brand to go on with. No small amount of labour would therefore have been saved by the possession of a flint and a piece of steel.

These wild people lived in little communities, often consisting of only a few families. It was impossible for a large number, such as would constitute an important tribe, to gain a subsistence solely from the chase and the natural products of the earth in any part of South Africa at any time, and more especially after the Hottentots and the Bantu had taken possession of the choicest sections. When a Bushman tribe is spoken of therefore, the term implies only a puny horde never exceeding two or three hundred souls at most. Such a band claimed the right to a fairly well defined tract of country, and any aggression beyond its borders would naturally be resented by the occupants of the next section. If a mountain intervened, the probabilities would be that the dialects of the language spoken on the different sides would vary so greatly as to prevent intercourse, had there been no other cause to keep each little band within its own bounds. Mr. Stow ascertained that these groups called themselves by the names of the animals that were depicted on the walls of their principal caves or engraved on the rocks at their principal residences, thus one band would be the people of the ostrich, another the people of the python, another the people of the eland, and so on.

The early Dutch colonists observed that they were amazingly prolific, a circumstance that is not surprising if one reflects that they were much less subject to disease than Europeans, and that every woman without exception bore children. Their numbers must therefore in remote times have been kept down by war or violence among themselves, just as they were kept down by constant strife in the territory bordering on that occupied by the Hottentots and Bantu after the intrusion of those races. In such a condition of society there could never have been peace for any length of time, for with a rapid growth of population the only alternatives would have been aggression or death from famine.

There was a difference in the disposition of individual Bushmen, though not to the same extent as is seen in civilised people. Towards the races that despoiled them of their game and their hunting grounds it was but natural that they should show vindictiveness and relentless cruelty; bnt they were fierce and passionate in their dealings with each other. Human life, even that of their nearest kindred, was sacrificed on very slight provocation. They did not understand what quarter in battle meant, and as they never spared an enemy who was in their power, when themselves surrounded so that all hope of escape was gone, they fought till their last man fell. Yet after the colonisation of the country Europeans often observed that many of those who lived temporarily on farms at a distance from their former abodes were not insensible to acts of kindness, and were even capable of feeling gratitude. In this respect they were like those wild animals that in a state of restraint show attachment to their keepers. A pleasing trait in their char- acter was fidelity in positions of trust. At the beginning of the nineteenth century many colonial farmers were in the habit of entrusting herds of cattle to the care of Bushmen in their neighbourhood, supplying them with food and tobacco in return, and seldom found them unfaithful. Another favourable feature was that no distress was so great as to induce them to devour human flesh, as so many Bantu were in the habit of doing.

Their manner of living was such as to develop only qualities essential to hunters. In keenness of vision and fleetness of foot they were surpassed by no people on earth, they could travel immense distances without taking rest, they could scale mountains and steep rocks with the agility of baboons, and yet their frames were so feeble as to be incapable of protracted labour. Their sense of smell vvas so dull that they experienced no sense of discomfort from remaining for days together close to carrion, and their cave dwellings were disgustingly filthy. The stench from their persons was excessive, owing chiefly to their uncleanly habits and to their use of rancid grease when painting themselves for any festivity.

They possessed an intense love of liberty and of their wild animal way of life. Given only an abundance of food, especially of the flesh of game, and they were cheerful and merry in the highest degree. Mr. Stow states that before the intrusion of the stronger races they were governed by hereditary chiefs, and even down to our own times there have been claimants to such positions. But these chiefs were mere leaders in war and hunting exploits, and their rule did not extend to the exercise of judicial control. Far more than is the case among people possessing domestic cattle, each man was independent of every other. Even parental authority was commonly disregarded by a youth as soon as he could provide for his own wants.

Mr. Stow states that polygamy was common among the Bushmen in the days of their undisputed possession of the country ; in modern times, however, the instances of a man living with more than one woman at a time have been exceedingly rare. Miss Lloyd, after long inquiry, could learn of but one such case, and other investigators could hear of none whatever. That is not to say that one male and one female attached themselves to each other for life, though this may often have occurred ; but that as long as they lived together a second man or a second woman was not admitted as a member of the family. Their passionate tempers prevented the presence of rivals in the same abode. Chastity, however, was unknown and uncared for, and any disagreement was sufficient to cause the separation of the man and woman, when new connections could immediately be formed by both. In general there was no marriage ceremony, the mere consent of both parties being all that was needed, but in some of the communities a youth who desired to take to himself a girl was obliged to prove himself a man by fighting with others for her and. winning her by victory.

The Bushmen possessed several musical instruments, but all of the crudest kind. The most common was a bow, with a piece of quill attached in the cord, with which by blowing and inhaling the breath a noise agreeable to their ears was produced. Pieces of reed of different lengths were used as flutes, and a drum was formed by stretching a dried antelope skin over any hollow article. To their persons when dancing they attached rattles, made of hollow globes of dried hide containing pebbles, which added to the noise of the rude chant and the stamping of the feet.

They were fond of dancing by moonlight, after abundance of flesh had been obtained by the slaughter of some large animal. There were various kinds of dances, each of which had its appropriate chant, but nearly all consisted of contortions of the body rather than of movements from place to place. Some of them were lascivious to the last degree, for the savages were devoid of all feeling of shame. Others, which perhaps must be considered the highest in order, were imitations of the actions of different animals. These dances caused much excitement, one especially, which was attended with great exertion of the body, frequently causing blood to flow from the noses of some of the performers and ending in the utter exhaustion of others.

The games that they practised were chiefly imitation hunts, in which some or all of them were disguised and represented animals. In this pastime they displayed much cleverness, whether they acted as men, or as baboons, or as lions in pursuit of antelopes. But it was not often that they engaged in play, for the effort to sustain existence was with them severe and almost constant.

At early dawn the Bushman rose from his bed of grass, and scanned the country around in search of game. If any living thing was within range of his far-seeing eye, he grasped his bow and quiver of arrows, and with his dog set off in pursuit. His wife and children followed, carrying fire and collecting bulbs and anything else that was edible on the way. They could pursue his track unerringly by indications that would escape the keenest European eye : a broken twig, a freshly turned stone, or bent blades of grass being sufficient to guide them in the right direction. At nightfall, if they were fortunate, they collected about the body of an antelope, and there they remained till nothing that could be consumed was left. Or if a small animal was killed early in the day, it might be carried to the cave where they and others had their chief abode, to be generousty shared with all the occupants, for in this respect the wild people were unselfish to the last degree. Such in general was their mode of existence, varied occasionally by either a great feast with boisterous revelry or a dire famine and tightened hunger belts. And so from day to day and year to year life passed on, without anything of an intellectual nature to ennoble it.

If the stone, horn, and bone implements, the weapons of the chase, the crude musical instruments, and the shell beads already mentioned be excluded, the Bushmen had little knowledge of manufactures. They had not advanced beyond the stage of making the coarsest kind of pottery, and even this was extremely limited in use. Add to it rush mats and net bags of fibres, in which their women carried ostrich egg-shells filled with water, and the list is exhausted.

They were firm believers in charms and witchcraft, and were always in dread of violating some custom — as for instance avoiding casting a shadow upon dying game — which they believed would cause disaster. A Bushman would not make a hole in the sandy bed of a river in order to obtain water, without first offering a little piece of meat, or some larvae of ants, or an arrow if he had nothing else, to propitiate the spirit of the stream, that was imagined by him to have the figure of a man hideous in aspect, and capable of making himself visible or invisible at will. And so with every act of his life, something had to be done or avoided to avert evil, to bring game within reach of his arrows, or to make the wild plants appear.

Their reasoning power was very low. They understood the habits of wild animals better than anything else, yet they believed the different species of game could converse with each other, and that there were animals and human beings who could exchange their forms at will, for instance that there were girls who could change themselves into lions, and baboons that could put on the appearance of men. The moon, according to the ideas of some of them, was a living thing, according to the notions of others it was a piece of hide which a man threw into the sky. In the same way the stars were once human beings, or they were pieces of food hurled into the air. As well might one attempt to get reasons for their fancies from European children sis or seven years of age as from Bushmen : the reflective faculties of one were as fully developed as of the other.

Dr. Bleek and Miss Lloyd obtained from several individuals prayers to the moon and to stars. But everything connected with their religion — that is their dread of something outside of and more powerful than themselves — was vague and uncertain. They could give no explanation whatever about it, and they did not all hold the same opinions on the subject. Some of them spoke indeed of a powerful being termed 'Kaang or 'Cagn', but when questioned about him, their replies showed that they held him to be a man like themselves, though possessing charms of great power. Many are supposed to have had a vague belief in immortality, because they buried a dead man's weapons with him and laid the corpse with its face towards the rising sun, and their custom of cutting off a joint of the little ringer was imagined to be due to a belief that by doing so they would secure an abundance of food in the future life ; but probably very few of them ever gave a thought to such a matter. The wants of the present day were sufficient to occupy all their attention.

It is difficult to conceive of a human being in a more degraded condition than that of a Bushman. In some respects, however, he showed considerable ability, and there was certainly an enormous gulf between him and the highest of the brute creation. He possessed extraordinary powers of mimicry. Enclosed in a framework covered with the skin and plumage of an ostrich, he was in the habit of stalking game, and, by carefully keeping his prey to windward, was able to approach within shooting distance, when the poison of his arrow completed the task. This, though the commonest disguise assumed by a hunter, was but one of many, which varied according to circumstances. He could imitate the peculiarities of individuals of other races with whom he came in contact, and was fond of creating mirth by exhibiting them in the drollest manner.

He was also an artist. On the walls of caves and the sheltered sides of great rocks he drew rude pictures in profile of the animals with which he was acquainted. The tints were made with different kinds of ocre having considerable capability of withstanding the decay of time, and they were mixed with grease, so that they penetrated the rock more or less deeply according to its porousness. There are caves on the margins of rivers containing paintings which have been exposed to the action of water during occasional floods for at least a hundred years, and the colours are yet unfaded where the rock has not crumbled away.

In point of artistic merit, however, the paintings were seldom superior to the drawings on slates of European children eight or nine years of age, though there were occasional instances of game being delineated not only in a fairly correct but in a graceful manner, showing that some of the workmen possessed more skill than others. In none of them was any knowledge of perspective, and in only one or two of the very best any attempt at shading displayed. Two or more colours were sometimes used, as, for instance, the head or legs of an animal might be white, and the remainder of the body brown, but — with extremely rare exceptions — each colour was evenly laid on as far as it went. In short, the paintings might be mistaken for the work of children, but for the impressions of the hands often accompanying them, and the scenes being chiefly those of the chase. A peculiarity in them is that the human form is almost invariably grotesquely outlined. Sometimes disguises are represented, usually a man's body with an animal's head, though these are rare.

In some places, where the rock was very smooth and hard, the Bushman drew an outline of a figure, and then chipped away the surface within it. The labour required for such a task, without metallic implements, must have been great, and the workman was undoubtedly possessed of much patience. He was a sculptor in the elementary stage of the art. Mr. Stow believed that the engravers and painters were distinct branches of the race, and in his work he classified them as such. Miss Lloyd, however, is of opinion that the method of delineating the figures depended merely upon the condition of the locality, the artists being the same, and with this view Messrs. Bain, Dunn, and other investigators agree.

These wild people possessed too a faculty — it might almost be termed an additional sense — of which Europeans are destitute. They could make their way in a straight line to any place where they had been before. Even a child of nine or ten years of age, removed from its parents to a distance of several days' journey and without opportunity of carefully observing the features of the country traversed, could months later return unerringly. They could give no explanation of the means by which they accomplished a task seemingly so difficult. Many of the inferior animals, however, have this faculty, as notably the dove, so that it is not surprising to find the lowest type of man in possession of it.

The life led by these savages was in truth a wretched one, judged from a European standard. They had no contact with people beyond their own little communities, except in war, for they carried on no commerce. If a pestilence had swept them all from the face of the earth, nothing more would have been left to mark where they had once been than the drilled stones, rudely shaped arrowheads, rough pottery, rock paintings, and crude sculptures. Their pleasures were hardly superior to those of dumb animals. But it is not correct to look at them from this standpoint, or to com- pare them with white people reduced to the same level of poverty. They knew of nothing better, they were all in the same condition and shared alike, so that envy was not felt, their cares were very few, and serious illness was hardly known among them. They probably enjoyed, therefore, more real happiness in life than the destitute class in any European city.

It can now be asserted in positive language that these people were incapable of adopting European civilisation. During the first half of the nineteenth century agents of various missionary societies made strenuous efforts for their improvement, and often believed they had in some cases succeeded and in others were in a fair way towards success. Men more devoted to their work than many of these missionaries have never existed, and it would be unjust to accuse them of wilfully misstating the result of their teaching, but the very excess of their zeal and their dwelling constantly upon the expression that the whole human family is of one blood, without reflecting that different branches of it even in Europe are incapable of thinking alike, led them to distort what they saw and heard, so that their reports are commonly misleading. In these reports Bushmen were represented as having become civilised and Christian. But no one else ever saw those transformed savages, and no trace of them exists at the present day. The wild people in the missionary writings are described as offshoots of a higher stock, degraded by oppression or neglect, and needing only instruction and gentle treatment to elevate them again. Some of the reasoning in favour of this theory is highly acute, but it is not borne out by the deeper investigations of our day.

Apart from missionary teaching also many persons tried during long years to induce families of Bushmen to abandon their savage habits, and there were even experiments in providing groups of them with domestic cattle, in order to encourage a pastoral life, but all were without success. To this day there has not been a single instance of a Bushman of pure blood having permanently adopted the habits of a white man, though a few mixed breeds are to be found among the least skilful class of labourers in some parts of the country. Even these are generally too feeble in body to endure anything like severe toil, and unless they intermingle with blacks — as in the instance of the degraded Batlapin tribe — quickly decrease in number. Those of unmixed blood who were not destroyed as noxious animals by the invaders of their hunting grounds could not exist in presence of a high civilisation, but dwindled away rapidly, and have now nearly died out altogether. It would seem that for them progress was possible in no other way than by exceedingly slow development and blending their blood in successive stages with races always a little more advanced.

CHAPTER II.

THE HOTTENTOTS, TERMED BY THE BANTU OF THE EASTERN COAST AMALAWU, AND BY THE BANTU OF THE SOUTH-WESTERN COAST OVASERANDU.