ABORIGINES OF EASTERN PROVINCE, 307. 



toiiiied implements, chiefly scrapers, in chert, jasper, agate 

 and chalcedony, whicli will compare favonrably, as regards 

 form and finish, with the finest European or American 

 examples," were found at Port Alfred. The Albany Museum 

 has no specimens from Port Alfred that agree with this 

 eulogistic description, but several specimens from Kleinemond 

 (Dr. W. G. Atherstone) seem to conform to the Cape Flats 

 type, and quite recently some markedly superior implements 

 (proto-solutric) have been found at the Kasouja River mouth 

 by the Rev. P. Stapleton, S.J. Yet this latter type, which 

 is very characteristic, is also known to nie from a rock-shelter 

 ornamented with paintings in the Grahamstown neighbour- 

 hood, and it seems reasonable to expect that future discovery 

 will yield at inland localities the same advanced technique as 

 is at present known only from coastal sites. Traces of a type 

 allied to the European neolithic have indeed been found inland. 

 One of them from Vaalkiantz, near Grahamstown, takes the 

 form of an axe-head, or adze, with well-ground cutting eih^e, 

 and another from a rock-shelter at Spitzkop, near Alicedale, 

 also Avith ground cutting edges, seems to have been a lance 

 head, yet not equal in form and finish to European neoliths. 



The similarity in culture of the strandloopers and the 

 cave men is not limited to their pottery and implements,* for 

 the inland cave-dwellers were evidently fond of shell fish. In 

 most of their shelters arouiul Grahamstown, generally orna- 

 mented with " Bushman " paintings, quantities of fresh-water 

 mussel shells occur in the debris of the floor. Also at various 

 places far inland, as at Cradock, there are relics of veritable 

 strandloopers on the banks of rivers, their heaps of mussel 

 shells containing bits of pottery quite like those from the coast. 

 Another fact of interest as showing a direct connection 

 between the cave-dwellers and the coast is the freciuent presence 

 of marine shells within the caves. Sucli marine shells have 

 been found in rock-shelters both at Alicedale (G. W. Wilmot) 

 and Grahamstown. 



Of late years some confusion has arisen owing to the 

 restriction of the term " strandlooper " to a particular physical 

 type. FolloAving Dr. F. C. Shrubsall, the physical anthro- 

 pologists use this term in reference to a homogeneous race, of 

 Bushman affinity, whose skeletons have been found in the caves 

 of George, Knysna and Humansdorp. They are ultra-Bush 

 in skull characters, being more brachycephalic and more 

 orthognathous than any other tribe in South Africa. Skulls 

 from the same caves had previously passed as typically Bush- 

 man. These same people moreover, like the ordinary Bushmen, 



* According to Dr. Peringuey, the large palaeolithic implements 

 were also made by strandloopers, yet they do not seem to occur in our 

 coastal middens and none liave been taken in the local caves, so that 

 their connection with the historic aborigines is uncertain in this region. 

 We have typical specimens of bouchers and of " haches a talon " from 

 Alicedale presenting a singularly fresh appearance, and others from 

 Grahamstown greatly weathered. Yet in neither case does the state of 

 the specimen warrant an estimate of age, the nature of the stone being 

 the dominant factor in weathering. 



