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CHAPTER XI. 

 Ornaments. 



The records of the Cape Settlement, and the narratives of the 

 early travellers testify to the fondness of Hottentots for ornaments, 

 especially those made of copper. 



Sparrman mentions and figures the ornaments that some Hot- 

 tentots wear : strings of marine shells, which from the illustration 

 appear to be Nerita albicilla, L., and also a circular, diadem-like 

 head-dress of leather adorned with three spaced rows of " cowries," 

 but no allusion has, as far as I know, been made to that peculiar 

 object of ornament, the ostrich egg-shell discoidal bead. 



Had it been in use among the Hottentots, the travellers would 

 in all likelihood have mentioned the occurrence of a decoration so 

 unlike any other ; the absence of these beads would thus seem to 

 strengthen the belief that the Hottentots, whom Sparrman, among 

 others, met, were, comparatively, new-comers in South Africa. 



These disks are the ornament of these members of the Khoi- 

 khoin race, the Strand Looper, and possibly the Bushman, but 

 seemingly not of their congener the Hottentot.''' Pew rock- 

 shelters, few open-air middens can be said to be without them. 

 They are found in all stages of manufacture. The smaller kinds 

 are met with along the coastal belt only. We have them round 

 the loins of an exhumed Strand Looper skeleton at Blaauwberg, 

 or on the ankles of the skeleton of a child from Coldstream, but 

 we have them also of small size, and adhering still to human 

 remains, from the Orange River Colony. 



Those found up-country are usually more than twice the size 

 of the coast-belt ones ; the hole is not so broad in proportion, and 

 owing to their larger diameter the periphery is more regular. At 



* But worn round the waist, in the case of women, they may well have escaped 

 the attention of early travellers repelled moreover by the absolute body filth of the 

 aborigines, a filth to which all testify. 



