ABORIGINES OF EASTERN rROVINCE. -305 



cubic feet of shells were removed to fill up the lagoon behind 

 the east training- wall at East London, and that the mound 

 was 150 feet long- and 40 feet deep, covered with veg-etable soil 

 and with trees g-rowing- on it. 



There is little historical evidence relating' to the strand- 

 loopers of the Eastern Province, although they were seen at 

 the very earliest date of our liistory by Bartholomew Dias.* 

 At the present day, according to Rogers, in his " Geology of 

 Cape Colony," such mounds are being- made by Kaffirs in the 

 Transkei and Pondoland. The natives collect the shells, carry 

 them to a convenient spot close to the shore, and there remove 

 the edible portions, which they take back to their kraals in 

 baskets or cloths, leaving the shells behind. In this way 

 astonishingly large piles of more or less broken shells accumu- 

 late in course of time. Near Port Alfred a few Kaffirs may 

 usually be seen collecting sh'ell-fish off the rocks at low tide, 

 and Mr. A. E. Cronwright informs me that " when food is 

 scarce the wives and children of the Bantu servants hereabouts 

 always repair to the sea during times of spring tides, each with 

 a sack and some sort of rude line to wrench the shells from 

 the rocks. They will travel miles to do this, and carry their 

 full bags back on their heads a few hours later." However, it 

 is doubtful if the habit prevailed amongst the earliest Kaffir 

 invaders, for many writers liave testified to the fact that the 

 primitive Kaffir did not eat fish or shell-fish, regarding them 

 as unclean. On the other hand, the strandlooping habit in the 

 Western Province was characteristic of some degraded 

 Hottentot or Bushman tribes who are now extinct. The term 

 " strandlooper " or " watermans " was first applied by the 



* " The foiu-tli (negress) remained in the Bay of the Islets of 

 Santa Cruz, witli two others wliom they found there collecting shell-fish, 

 and they would not carry them away because the King commanded 

 them not to offer violence or give cause of offence to the inhabitants 

 of the lands they should discover.' — From De Barros in " Asia." 



There is a mucli earlier reference to strandloopers on the East 

 African coast. Edrisi, an Arab writer of the twelfth century, a.d., says: 

 " This country (Sofala) touches that of Ouac-Ouac, where are miserable 

 towns. The natives are black, of hideous figure and deformed com- 

 plexion ; their langua_ge is a species of hissing. They go absolutely 

 naked and are little visited by strangers, and they live on fish, shell-fish 

 and tortoises." The Ouac-Ouac, or Wak-Wak, have been identified 

 by recent authorities with the Hottentots, as if their name were merely 

 the Arab rendering of Khoi-khois. This seems important, for the 

 Wak-Wak of Edrisi were clearly strandloopers, like the Watermans 

 of the Cape, at any rate in habit. They were certainly not Bantu, who 

 for centuries had been well known to Arab traders under the name of 

 Zeug or Zindj. Other suggestions have, however, been made regarding 

 the origin of the word Wak-Wak ; and the Islands of Wak-Wak, 

 mentioned in the story of Ali Hassan as seven years' journey from 

 Bagdad, have been variously placed as the Seychelles, Madagascar, 

 Java and Japan. 



According to Mr. Hammond Tooke, the region referred to by Edrisi 

 must be south of the Zambesi, but north of the Limpopo ; but, according 

 to a foot-note in L. C. Smithers' edition of " Bui-ton's Arabian Nights," 

 vol. vi, p. 217, the locality in ciuestion is the peninsula of Guardafui. 

 The former interpretation agrees better with the statements of Mas'oudi 

 (a.d. 943), the land of the Wak-Wak adjoining that of Sofala. 



