The Stone Ages of South Africa. 149 



or for good, or that the dwellers had selected another more or less 

 distant spot to resume their mode of life. The evidence of the shell 

 mounds of the San Francisco Bay region might be comparable 

 to ours. 



" These people buried their dead in the collection of shells and 

 other debris in the neighbourhood of their dwellings." '■' But there 

 is no suggestion that they resumed their abode above their dead. In 

 these caves or shelters of the Tzitzikama we, however, meet with 

 evidence of a nature not hitherto recorded, and the parallel of which 

 has also not been found hitherto, because in several cases the 

 dwellers seem, in spite of some precautions against the possible 

 return of the dead, to have either continued to live in the necropolis, 

 or to have returned to it for the resumption of their mode of life.t 



Most of these caves have been disturbed and their contents sifted 

 and removed, because the farmers in these parts utilise the mixture 

 of dark loam, decomposed shells, wood ashes, and especially bat 

 guano which fill the caves, as fertiliser for their lands. With this 

 debris, which has been known to be 20 feet thick, have been found 

 coarse flake-knives, some of them of large size and made mostly of 

 a glassy quartzite (PI. XIII., Fig. 104). 



But before discussing their affinity with the South African relics, 

 I shall quote here original accounts given me, which will, I am sure, 

 prove of interest. 



The first of Mr. E. E. Dumbleton's communications, relating his 

 search for skeletons, was printed in the Caj^e Toicn Diocesan 

 College and School Magazine, 1892, but he has since supplemented 

 it on several points. 



" The cave is situated not far from the mouth of the Touw Kiver 

 in the George District, Cape Colony, and contains a very thick 

 layer of guano. At various times people digging in this have dis- 

 covered bones, shells, ashes, and other unmistakable traces of human 

 habitation ; but it was not until about a year ago that any human 

 remains were discovered. Then a farmer, anxious to turn the 

 guano deposit to account, removed a quantity of it, and in so doing 

 discovered a skeleton, apparently of a young man. However, either 

 from curiosity, superstition, or some other cause, the skull was 

 broken in and some of the bones were lost. For the purpose of 



* N. C. Nelson, " Shell Mounds of the San Francisco Bay Kegion." 

 t Sparrman, who visited Tzitzikama in 1775, says of some fugitive Hottentots 

 which he met on a farm in the " Lange Kloof," that they confessed having come 

 from the Outeniqua by crossing the mountains ; that they had there a good master, 

 but that they preferred returning to their country, especially because the death of 

 one of them made it a law that they xhoiiUl change their abode. 



