The Stone Ages of South Africa. 165 



great rovers, and had seen in their wanderings towards the North 

 both crocodiles and giraffes. They, or at least one of them, retained 

 such an impression of the latter as to be able to retrace one, 

 awkwardly it is true, but none the less realistically, on his return 

 to the South. 



The Inland Districts Eock-Shelters or Caves. 



If, leaving the littoral, we proceed to investigate the rock- 

 shelters of the inland districts, we find there, also, in addition to 

 the characteristic rock-paintings, relics of a stone and bone 

 industry. 



As long as the cave-dwellers' centres are not found far from the 

 littoral, there is some similarity in the domestic implements — not in 

 the implements themselves, but in their execution. Thus, at 

 Montagu, Cape Colony, in a cave-shelter filled with bat guano, was 

 found under several feet of this material the W'Onderful club repre- 

 sented in PL XIX., Fig. 153 ; with it was discovered the stone bead, 

 (No. 3 of Fig. 186, PL XXV.). At the entrance of the rock-shelter 

 were a few painted figures. It is interesting to note that this club 

 is really a phallus, bearing plainly the intaglios of a stone scraper- 

 knife. Made of one of our hardest indigenous woods {Olea spec), it 

 has been thinned at the end so as to allow of a small hand, like 

 the one we know to prevail among our present Bush races, to 

 grasp it firmly. The shape and composition of the bead will be 

 treated in the chapter dealing with ornaments. Human bones are 

 said to have been found in the Montagu cave, but I have seen no 

 proof of their occurrence. 



That the food of the aborigines of the littoral was mainly shell- 

 fish must be readily admitted. But the inland districts aboriginal 

 did certainly appreciate fresh-water molluscs, and their remains are 

 often found in rock-shelters. The contents of one sent us lately by 

 Dr. C. E. Piers, occurring in the Beaufort West District of the 

 Cape Colony, include nacreous pieces of the large fresh-water 

 bivalve Mutela wahlbergi, as well as pieces of the sea-shells Patella 

 and Haliotis. 



It is thus probable that these rock-shelter dwellers resorted to 

 the sea, for a change of diet, prompted, maybe, by a craving for 

 salt or salted food. 



But so far as our knowledge of the relics left by the up-country 

 cave-dweller goes, it may safely be stated that the more removed 

 from the littoral, the more primitive is the culture, even when his 

 talent at portraying is superior. The stone implements found in 



