124 MAN: PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



men and animals, customs, superstitions, genealogies, and 

 so on. 



In the tales and myths the sun, moon, and animals speak 



either with their own proper clicks, or else use the 



Hottentot" ordinary clicks in some way peculiar to themselves. 



Language Thus Bleek tells us that the tortoise changes clicks 



and Clicks. 



in labials, the ichneumon in palatals, the jackal 

 substitutes linguo-palatals for labials, while the moon, hare, and 

 ant-eater use " a most unpronounceable click " of their own. 

 How many there may be altogether, not one of which can be 

 properly uttered by Europeans, nobody seems to know. But 

 grammarians have enumerated nine, indicated each by a graphic 

 sign as under :- 



Cerebral ! Palatal \ 



Dental Lateral (Faucal) 



Guttural ] Labial [] 



Spiro-dental i Linguo-palatal Q 



Undefined x 



From Bushman a language in a state of flux, fragmentary as 

 the small tribal or rather family groups that speak it these strange 

 inarticulate sounds passed to the number of four into the remotely 

 related Hottentot, and thence to the number of three into the 

 wholly unconnected Zulu-Xosa. But they are heard nowhere else 

 to my knowledge except amongst the newly-discovered Wasan- 

 dawi people of South Masailand. At the same time we know 

 next to nothing of the Negrito tongues, and it would be strange if 

 clicks did not form an element in their phonetic system also, at 

 least on the assumption of a common origin of all these dwarfish 

 races. 



M. G. Bertin, to whom we are indebted for an excellent 



monograph on the Bushman 1 , rightly remarks that 



Bushman } ie j s not at } east mentally, so debased as he has 



mental 



characters. been described by the early travellers and by the 



neighbouring Bantus and Boers, by whom he has 



always been despised and harried. " His greatest love is for 



freedom, he acknowledges no master, and possesses no slaves. 



1 The Bushmen and their Language, in Jour. R. Asiatic Soc. XVIII. Part I. 



