The Elephant,
True Lord Of The Forest, Revels In This Fruit, And So Do
The Different Species Of Rhinoceros, Although Naturally So Diverse
In Their Choice Of Pasture.
The various kinds of antelopes feed on them
with equal avidity, and lions, hyaenas, jackals, and mice,
all seem to know and appreciate the common blessing.
These melons are not,
however, all of them eatable; some are sweet, and others so bitter
that the whole are named by the Boers the "bitter watermelon".
The natives select them by striking one melon after another with a hatchet,
and applying the tongue to the gashes. They thus readily distinguish
between the bitter and sweet. The bitter are deleterious,
but the sweet are quite wholesome. This peculiarity of one species of plant
bearing both sweet and bitter fruits occurs also in a red, eatable cucumber,
often met with in the country. It is about four inches long,
and about an inch and a half in diameter. It is of a bright scarlet color
when ripe. Many are bitter, others quite sweet. Even melons in a garden
may be made bitter by a few bitter kengwe in the vicinity.
The bees convey the pollen from one to the other.
The human inhabitants of this tract of country consist of
Bushmen and Bakalahari. The former are probably the aborigines
of the southern portion of the continent, the latter the remnants of
the first emigration of Bechuanas. The Bushmen live in the Desert
from choice, the Bakalahari from compulsion, and both possess
an intense love of liberty. The Bushmen are exceptions in language, race,
habits, and appearance. They are the only real nomads in the country;
they never cultivate the soil, nor rear any domestic animal
save wretched dogs. They are so intimately acquainted
with the habits of the game that they follow them in their migrations,
and prey upon them from place to place, and thus prove
as complete a check upon their inordinate increase as the other carnivora.
The chief subsistence of the Bushmen is the flesh of game,
but that is eked out by what the women collect of roots and beans,
and fruits of the Desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy
plains of the Desert possess generally thin, wiry forms,
capable of great exertion and of severe privations. 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 49 of 572
Words from 26414 to 26926
of 306638
