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.
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