The Stone Ages of South Africa. 105 



the present moment they are still manufactured by the Ba-sarwa, 

 or Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, for adorning not only them- 

 selves but also the dusky Damara or Ovampo belles/'- and among 

 the miserable tools of these most degraded, or, perhaps, most 

 primitive people are found the rude, well-nigh shapeless, chalcedony 

 borers, that are represented in PI. XX., Fig. 147. 



But apart from these flat, perforated egg-shell disks, we find 

 ornaments which have a character connecting them with the 

 I kwes, owing to their mode of perforation, the importance of which 

 is greater than would at first appear. 



Thus the bead. Cut 3 of Fig. 186 (PI. XXV.). It was found 

 together with the club Fig. 152 (PL XIX.). The boring is the 

 same as that of the ! kwes, that is to say, it was begun at each pole. 

 The same obtains for Cut 2 of the same Fig. It was discovered, 

 with two more, I am told, in a grave near Vryburg. Both these 

 examples are unique. But Cut 1 or Fig. 186, instead of being made 

 of stone, is an earthenware bead, which, however, assumes a shape 

 not very dissimilar from that of No. 2 ; it does not present the 

 same kind of perforation, because it is made of clay built over 

 a reed, which disappeared, of course, if left in position, in the baking 

 process,! or, and this is a simpler explanation, the clay when 

 fashioned to the requisite shape, was perforated from end to end 

 before baking. 



This mode of perforation beginning at each pole, or extremity, 

 to meet in the centre, is repeated even in that of the ostrich 

 egg-shell disks, which are of themselves so thin. It has been 

 followed in the nacreous shell-beads with two parallel holes. 

 Fig. 187, PI. XXV.; in the bead or pendants. Figs. 206 and 207, 

 PL XXVII. ; and if it has not been resorted to in shells forming 

 a (?) necklace. Fig. 206 of PL XXVII. , it is because of the im- 

 possibility of completing the boring from the inner part. These 

 holes are, in consequence, very roughly punched. 



As ornaments also we shall have to consider the flat disks 1 and 



* We have in the Collection a waist-band, 28 cm. in diameter, consisting 

 of 27 ropes of these strung egg-shell beads, twelve of which go to the inch. 

 A. A. Anderson (" Twenty-five Years in a Waggon,'' 1887. i., p. 280), estimates to 

 8,000 the number of these beads required to make one set of ornaments worn by a 

 young bush-girl. 



t We have now two such ornaments. The second is shorter than the one 

 figured. Three were found, while digging or ploughing a field and a garden 

 respectively, in the Stellenbosch District, Cape Colony. From the Becord 

 Book of the Museum I find that a "clay-bead'' was found together with Cut 3 

 of Fig. 186, but it seems to have been lost or mislaid. 



