have passed down the enormous length of time that they certainly occupied the country. They probably did not migrate from the north in one horde, but in successive bodies, possibly with a long interval of time between the journeyings of each other, and in such a case the latest arrivals would regard those they found here as an older race. In this way the existence of the Ancient Shellmound Men can be easily accounted for. They were simply driven to the margin of the ocean, and compelled to live mainly upon the produce of the shore, by others of their own race who took possession of their former hunting grounds.
Another evidence, and of much greater weight, is the Bushman language, which possesses a verb of such marvellous power that it must be a very long way removed from primitive speech.
It is even possible that remnants of an earlier race than the Bushmen existed in South Africa until a very recent date.
There is a tradition among the people of a Bantu tribe in the Transvaal province 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.
The traveller and explorer Andrew A. Anderson thus describes some savages whom he saw in 1872 in the Kalahari desert:[1]
“At Narukus, on the Nosop river, I came upon a family of Bushmen, ten in number, of a different type to those I had in my service, evidently a lower caste. They have no forehead; the wool on their heads comes close down to the eyes, and the head falling back like a baboon; projecting
- ↑ See Twenty-five Years in a Waggon, Sport and Travel in South Africa, by Andrew A. Anderson. An illustrated demi octavo volume (second edition) of four hundred and twenty-three pages, published in London in 1888. The extracts given here will be found on pages 210 and 218. They are not to be depended upon too closely, as he may have mistaken Katea for Bushmen.
