The Stone Ages of South Africa. 191 



invented. This assumption is, moreover, borne out by facts. 

 Thus, among the few colonial aborigines left who still use the 

 Bush language, some cannot understand their very neighbours, 

 or they do so to a limited degree, owing to certain "clicks" 

 having significances that they do not understand, or perhaps 

 cannot acquire. 



The number of these clicks is also variable. A lady, brought up 

 among the Hottentots, tells me that the Bush people of South-West 

 Africa (German South-West) have one click only more than the 

 Hottentots. Miss D. Bleek informs me that she met in Griqualand 

 West (Cape Colony) with people using a click the meaning of which 

 she is not only non-cognisant herself, but which is also not under- 

 stood by people of the same race living in the vicinity. 



It is on record that some thirty or forty years back the Bush 

 people from what are now the districts of Calvinia and Carnarvon, 

 in the Cape Colony, could not understand their congeners from the 

 Stormberg, Cape Colony, or from parts of the Orange Free State. 

 If we proceed further north we find the same conditions obtaining 

 now in the Kalahari region among the Ba-sarwas, some clans of 

 which live only a few miles apart. 



The present mode of life of this race compels isolation. Isolation 

 must of necessity affect speech,'-' and that speech is thus affected 

 is sufficiently shown by the examples given. 



The presence of more numerous clicks cannot therefore justify 

 the conclusion that because there are seven or more in the Bush 

 and four only in the Hottentot dialects, the former race is neces- 

 sarily older, more authochtonous, or had remained more homo- 

 geneous than the latter, a race, moreover, which although nomadic, 

 lived in communities, and would on that account retain the tradi- 

 tions of its language.! 



But if, putting aside the question, Which of these two languages 



* Eev. E. Moffat remarks on the Balala, serfs of the Bechuanas, who, once 

 inhabitants of towns, have been appointed to live in the desert, are singularly cor- 

 roborative of this assumption. " They are never permitted to keep cattle, and are 

 exposed to the caprice, cupidity, and tyranny of the town lords. They live an 

 hungry life, much as the Bush people do. . . . The dialects of the Sechuana, 

 as spoken by these people, are now so different from that spoken by the nation 

 generally that interpreters are frequently required " (" Missionary Labours," 

 London, 1844). 



t It should not be forgotten that there is nothing to prove that all the Hottentot 

 tribes spoke a language similar to, or having the same number of clicks as the sur- 

 viving " Xama," or nearly extinct Koranna. The first colonists noticed that one 

 of the nations — the Saldanhers, I believe — had less clicks than the others. Unfor- 

 tunately I c.innot again find my authority for this statement. 



