Page:On the Central South African Tribes from the South Coast to the Zambesi.pdf/4

the Bushmen are rapidly dying out. The reason of this is, that their great characteristic is a love of liberty and fondness for living in mountains. They have been accustomed to live among the hills and descend into the valleys to shoot game with poisoned arrows. When the Dutch came into South Africa and killed the game, they thought that the Bushmen would come down and work as servants, but instead of doing so they took refuge in their mountains, and when the game disappeared they shot the cattle of the Dutch settlers. The result was that the Dutch treated them rather severely, shooting them down like dogs. In this way thousands of Bushmen were slain, and not more than about two per cent, of the number existing a hundred years ago are now alive. Even those few Bushmen who at present are working as servants for farmers long to get away to the mountains, and I saw some who had been living for about fifteen years with farmers, but who had run away more than thirty times. I did not notice any evidences of a religion among these Bushmen. I only know that they have a kind of esteem for a certain snake. With regard to their clothing, it is well known that a Bushman, when living in his mountains, uses only a piece of skin, or ostrich egg-shells formed into a small piece of cloth. His houses are caves high up in the crevices of the mountains. They use stone weapons and poisoned arrows, but the bows and arrows are of very simple construction when compared with those in use among the natives of North and South America and Japan. A piece of wood forming a crossbow is connected by a sinew of an animal, and the arrow is poisoned. The arrow-head is generally made of bone and ivory, it is fastened to a thin piece of reed about 1 1/2 feet long, and the poison is obtained from bulbs, euphorbias, etc. They make stone implements of a very simple kind, and they sharpen their arrows on stones. They also have stones with a hole in the centre, through which they put a stick, and with this implement dig out the roots and bulbs which form their principal food. Thus in every way this race, which is dying out, appears very low in the scale of civilisation. But, strange to say, these Bushmen, who are regarded as the lowest types of Africans, in one thing excel all the other South African tribes whose acquaintance I made between the south coast and 10° south latitude. I have in my possession about two hundred sketches on wood and stone and ostrich shells, by various tribes, but everyone who knows anything about drawing must acknowledge that those which were done by Bushmen are superior to any of the others. They draw heads of gazelles, elephants, and hippopotami astonishingly well. They sketch them in their caves and paint them with ochre, or chisel them out in rocks with stone implements, and on the tops