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.
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