The Conduct Of The People During This Long-Continued Drought
Was Remarkably Good.
The women parted with most of their ornaments
to purchase corn from more fortunate tribes.
The children scoured the country
in search of the numerous bulbs and roots which can sustain life,
and the men engaged in hunting. Very great numbers of the large game,
buffaloes, zebras, giraffes, tsessebes, kamas or hartebeests,
kokongs or gnus, pallahs, rhinoceroses, etc., congregated at some fountains
near Kolobeng, and the trap called "hopo" was constructed,
in the lands adjacent, for their destruction. The hopo consists of two hedges
in the form of the letter V, which are very high and thick near the angle.
Instead of the hedges being joined there, they are made to form a lane
of about fifty yards in length, at the extremity of which a pit is formed,
six or eight feet deep, and about twelve or fifteen in breadth and length.
Trunks of trees are laid across the margins of the pit, and more especially
over that nearest the lane where the animals are expected to leap in,
and over that farthest from the lane where it is supposed
they will attempt to escape after they are in. The trees form
an overlapping border, and render escape almost impossible.
The whole is carefully decked with short green rushes, making the pit
like a concealed pitfall. As the hedges are frequently about a mile long,
and about as much apart at their extremities, a tribe making a circle
three or four miles round the country adjacent to the opening,
and gradually closing up, are almost sure to inclose a large body of game.
Driving it up with shouts to the narrow part of the hopo,
men secreted there throw their javelins into the affrighted herds,
and on the animals rush to the opening presented at the converging hedges,
and into the pit, till that is full of a living mass.
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