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CHAPTBE XVI. 

 Caves and Rock-Shelteks. 



The Haavston Cave. 



It is not known if to the north of Cape Town the caves or rock- 

 shelters along the coast were once occupied by aborigines in the 

 manner of those of Outeniqua or Tzitzikama. 



But rock- shelters or caves are found along the southern coast 

 between Cape Town and Mossel Bay, Cape Colony. At the 

 extremity of the Cape Peninsula, towards Cape Point, we know of 

 cave-shelters, but so ransacked are they now that no information as 

 to the mode of life of their former inmates is any longer obtainable. 

 The Museum possesses numerous examples of the original Cape 

 Point finds, including two human skulls. They consist of the usual 

 middens types: mullers or braders, pounders, querns or mortars, 

 ! kwes and potsherds. Bone tools or ostrich egg-shell beads may, 

 however, have been disregarded, and the accumulation of sea-shells 

 not recorded. Close to the spot a conical earthenware pot was 

 lately discovered. 



At a short distance from the hamlet of Hawston, on the coast of 

 the Caledon Division, fortuitous circumstances revealed there lately 

 evidence of occupation by man and beast of rock-shelters differing 

 somewhat from those recorded hitherto. 



While removing slabs for building purposes from the roof of a 

 moderate-sized cave having a broad opening, and well known to the 

 inhabitants of the neighbourhood, mostly fisher-folk, there were 

 exposed to view several long, tunnel-like fissures, which, on exami- 

 nation, were found to be almost completely filled with bones of 

 animals. 



These fissures, numbering six or seven, radiated from that part of 

 the open chamber from which the slabs had been removed; the 

 floor was covered with cave dust, sand mixed with a certain 

 quantity of humus, and they allowed of the passage of a man for 



