68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



known authority on South African matters of science. The boy 

 to whom he refers belonged to a wild tribe living in caves in the 

 Drakenberg, who plundered outlying farms, and were pursued by the 

 neighboring colonists. He was wounded and captured, then sent to 

 hospital, and subsequently taken into service. He was under Dr. 

 Mann's observation in the year 1860, and has recently died, to the 

 great regret of his employer, Mr, Proudfoot, to whom he became a 

 valuable servant. 



Dr. Mann writes as follows : " This lad was very skillful in the 

 proverbial Bushman art of drawing animal figures, and upon several 

 occasions I induced him to show me how this was managed among his 

 people. He invariably began by jotting down, upon paper or on a 

 slate, a number of isolated dots which presented no connection or trace 

 of outline of any kind to the uninitiated eye, but looked like the stars 

 scattered promiscuously in the sky. Having with much deliberation 

 satisfied himself of the sufficiency of these dots, he forthwith began to 

 run a free bold line from one to the other, and as he did so the form 

 of an animal horse, buffalo, elephant, or some kind of antelope 

 gradually developed itself. This was invariably done with a free 

 hand, and with such unerring accuracy of touch that no correction of 

 a line was at any time attempted. I understood from this lad that 

 this was the plan which was invariably pursued by his kindred in 

 making their clever pictures." It is impossible, I think, for a drawing 

 to be made on this method unless the artist had a clear image in his 

 mind's eye of what he was about to draw. 



Other living races have the gift of drawing, but none more so than 

 the Esquimau. I will therefore speak of these, and not of the Australian 

 and Tasmanian pictures, nor of the still ru^er performances of the old 

 inhabitants of Guiana, nor of those of some North American tribes, as 

 the Iroquois. The Esquimaux are geographers by instinct, and appear 

 to see vast tracts of country mapped out in their heads. From the 

 multitude of illustrations of their map-drawing powers, I will select ' 

 one from those included in the journals of Captain Hall, at p, 224, 

 which were published last year by the United States Government under 

 the editorship of Professor J. E. Nourse. It is the f ac-simile of a chart 

 drawn by an Esquimau who was a thorough barbarian in the accepted 

 sense of the word. That is to say, he spoke no language besides his 

 own uncouth tongue, he was wholly uneducated according to our mod- 

 ern ideas, and he lived in what we should call a savage fashion. This 

 man drew from memory a chart of the region over which he had at 

 one time or another gone in his canoe. It extended from Pond's Bay, 

 in lat. 73, to Fort Churchill, in lat. 58 44', over a distance in a straight 

 line of more than 960 nautical, or 1,100 English, miles, the coast being 

 so indented by arms of the sea that its length is six times as great. 

 On comparing this rough Esquimau outline with the Admiralty chart 

 of 1870, their accordance is remarkable. I have seen many route maps 



