158 Mr Louis Leslie''s Remarks on the 



dwellings are formed of mats, if in the plain, just large enough 

 to creep into ; but they often reside in a high and ridgy moun- 

 tain, under some projecting ledge of rock, the approach to which 

 is narrow and difficult. If attacked there, they seldom flee. They 

 have no fear of death ; and, if possessed of a more powerful wea- 

 pon, might defy the attacks of the Boors, make them less fre- 

 quent, and more fatal. Nothing but the privations they suffer 

 would make any one of them submit to the cruelty of the far- 

 mers ; and, living as they do on locusts, ants, and some fari- 

 naceous roots, there can be no better proof of the insufficiency 

 of their tiny bow, and of the general inertness of their celebrated 

 poison ; yet they are themselves impressed with the conviction 

 of its strength, and they have been able to impress their enemies 

 with a dread of its effects, if not of its fatality. I have never been 

 able to procure one well authenticated relation of death produced 

 by it in man. I have known some cases of horses and dogs 

 dying from the insertion of the arrow into the leg ; but some of 

 them seemed to die rather from the effect of violent inflammation 

 in the limb, than from any specific power in the poison itself. 

 In one instance of a dog, however, the animal became stupid 

 and insensible in a few minutes, and died in twenty. Some co- 

 lonists who have been wounded, assert that they are subject to 

 periodical attacks of insanity, under certain states of atmosphe- 

 rical influence ; but I believe this to be, like most of their tales, 

 quite unworthy of credit. The poison of the Bushman of the 

 Hornberg ? is extracted from plants, and from plants only, so far 

 as I have been able to learn. In that quarter, they use no mi- 

 neral poison, nor the venom of snakes. Two specimens of plants 

 used by them accompany this ; the bulb is a species of the 

 Hamanthus ; but never having seen the other plant in flower, 

 I have been unable to learn its name. Its leaf exudes a milky 

 juice, and, cut up and boiled, forms a tenacious extract, which is 

 spread upon the arrow, to some thickness. There is another 

 plant which they use likewise, either above or with the other 

 two ; which, together, forms the strongest they procure ; its name 

 is " mountain poison.'' Growing on the stony hills, and very 

 rarely to be found, I have never got a specimen of it. 



Their dexterity in the use of their bow is remarkable, and the 

 distance they can shoot, with such a light arrow, is astonishing. 



