182 Annals of the South African Museum. 



tively late immigrants. But who can say that they did not occupy 

 afresh territories that they inhabited in former years ? 



Like the Hottentot race, they are of pastoral habits, but, unlike 

 the former, they are also agriculturists, which the Hottentots and 

 his ascendants have seemingly never been. 



Of the use of iron these Bantu-speaking " Kaffirs " are cognisant, 

 and yet among some of them this commodity is sufficiently scarce 

 for women of the Xosa and Pondomise tribes to use, until quite 

 lately, wooden hoes — hoes of a shape that is paddle-like, a shape 

 that suggests survival also : the paddle used for propelling canoes 

 on Central African lakes. 



But are the Kaffirs belonging to the tribes mentioned acquainted 

 also with the use of stone implements ? Yes, they are ; especially 

 when hammers or grinding tools, such as querns and hand mullers, 

 are required. 



The Kaffir woman of to-day often spends many months in fashion- 

 ing out the hollow of a stone mortar to a particular curve by beating 

 with stones held in the hand. I quote here Gooch :'■■■ " Dr. Suther- 

 land, of Natal, ones watching the slow process made by an old 

 Kaffir woman at a kraal where he had passed the night, sought to 

 teach her the much more rapid progress which an iron-pointed tool 

 would make, and, by a few blows on the stone she was working, 

 expected to have earned her gratitude, but was only met by indigna- 

 tion, as she vowed the stone was spoilt by him, and, despite his 

 arguments and explanations, ruefully returned to her work, and 

 sought to eradicate the damage he had done." 



In Basutoland, and especially in Southern Ehodesia, we find 

 ■occasionally mullers fitting these querns, but they are tools which 

 have undergone a thorough preparation for the purpose ; that is to 

 say, they have been smoothed in such a way as to fit exactly the 

 cavity of the quern. This quern so made, and the posture assumed 

 of necessity by the worker for its manipulation, would resemble 

 almost exactly that represented by an Egyptian statuette of 

 Dachchour, of the Third Dynasty.! 



And there lies the difference between the quern attributable to 

 Kaffir industry and that of the Hottentot. While in the case of the 

 former it has been worked ah initio for a well-thought, specific 

 purpose, in the latter it is continued use only that has produced the 

 groove or depression in the mortar and the corresponding smooth- 

 ness of the muller. If one of these mullers or pounders is found 



* " The Stone Age of South Africa," Journ. Anthr. Inst., 1881, p. 143. 

 f De Morgan, " Les origines cle I'Egypte," i., p. 144, fig. 325. 



