Many Are Of Low Stature,
Though Not Dwarfish; The Specimens Brought To Europe Have Been Selected,
Like Costermongers' Dogs, On
Account of their extreme ugliness;
consequently, English ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same way
as if
The ugliest specimens of the English were exhibited in Africa
as characteristic of the entire British nation. That they are like baboons
is in some degree true, just as these and other simiae are in some points
frightfully human.
The Bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest
of the Bechuana tribes, and they are said to have possessed
enormous herds of the large horned cattle mentioned by Bruce,
until they were despoiled of them and driven into the Desert
by a fresh migration of their own nation. Living ever since
on the same plains with the Bushmen, subjected to the same
influences of climate, enduring the same thirst, and subsisting
on similar food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof
that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account
for difference in races. The Bakalahari retain in undying vigor
the Bechuana love for agriculture and domestic animals.
They hoe their gardens annually, though often all they can hope for
is a supply of melons and pumpkins. And they carefully rear
small herds of goats, though I have seen them lift water for them
out of small wells with a bit of ostrich egg-shell, or by spoonfuls.
They generally attach themselves to influential men
in the different Bechuana tribes living adjacent to their desert home,
in order to obtain supplies of spears, knives, tobacco, and dogs, in exchange
for the skins of the animals they may kill. These are small carnivora of
the feline species, including two species of jackal, the dark and the golden;
the former, "motlose" (`Megalotis capensis' or `Cape fennec'),
has the warmest fur the country yields; the latter,
"pukuye" (`Canis mesomelas' and `C. aureus'), is very handsome
when made into the skin mantle called kaross. Next in value
follow the "tsipa" or small ocelot (`Felis nigripes'),
the "tuane" or lynx, the wild cat, the spotted cat, and other small animals.
Great numbers of `puti' (`duiker') and `puruhuru' (`steinbuck') skins
are got too, besides those of lions, leopards, panthers,
and hyaenas. During the time I was in the Bechuana country,
between twenty and thirty thousand skins were made up into karosses;
part of them were worn by the inhabitants, and part sold to traders:
many, I believe, find their way to China. The Bakwains bought tobacco
from the eastern tribes, then purchased skins with it from the Bakalahari,
tanned them, and sewed them into karosses, then went south to purchase
heifer-calves with them, cows being the highest form of riches known,
as I have often noticed from their asking "if Queen Victoria had many cows."
The compact they enter into is mutually beneficial, but injustice and wrong
are often perpetrated by one tribe of Bechuanas going among
the Bakalahari of another tribe, and compelling them to deliver up the skins
which they may be keeping for their friends. They are a timid race,
and in bodily development often resemble the aborigines of Australia.
They have thin legs and arms, and large, protruding abdomens,
caused by the coarse, indigestible food they eat. Their children's eyes
lack lustre. I never saw them at play. A few Bechuanas may go into
a village of Bakalahari, and domineer over the whole with impunity;
but when these same adventurers meet the Bushmen, they are fain
to change their manners to fawning sycophancy; they know that,
if the request for tobacco is refused, these free sons of the Desert
may settle the point as to its possession by a poisoned arrow.
The dread of visits from Bechuanas of strange tribes causes the Bakalahari
to choose their residences far from water; and they not unfrequently
hide their supplies by filling the pits with sand and making a fire
over the spot. When they wish to draw water for use, the women come
with twenty or thirty of their water-vessels in a bag or net on their backs.
These water-vessels consist of ostrich egg-shells, with a hole
in the end of each, such as would admit one's finger.
The women tie a bunch of grass to one end of a reed about two feet long,
and insert it in a hole dug as deep as the arm will reach;
then ram down the wet sand firmly round it. Applying the mouth
to the free end of the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath,
in which the water collects, and in a short time rises into the mouth.
An egg-shell is placed on the ground alongside the reed,
some inches below the mouth of the sucker. A straw guides the water
into the hole of the vessel, as she draws mouthful after mouthful from below.
The water is made to pass along the outside, not through the straw.
If any one will attempt to squirt water into a bottle
placed some distance below his mouth, he will soon perceive
the wisdom of the Bushwoman's contrivance for giving the stream direction
by means of a straw. The whole stock of water is thus passed
through the woman's mouth as a pump, and, when taken home,
is carefully buried. I have come into villages where, had we acted
a domineering part, and rummaged every hut, we should have found nothing;
but by sitting down quietly, and waiting with patience
until the villagers were led to form a favorable opinion of us,
a woman would bring out a shellful of the precious fluid
from I know not where.
The so-called Desert, it may be observed, is by no means
a useless tract of country. Besides supporting multitudes of both
small and large animals, it sends something to the market of the world,
and has proved a refuge to many a fugitive tribe - to the Bakalahari first,
and to the other Bechuanas in turn - as their lands were overrun
by the tribe of true Caffres, called Matebele.
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