222 THE MASARWAS AND THEIR LANGUAGE. 



stant infusion of foreign blood, brought amongst them by refugees from 

 different Kafir tribes, they have to a great extent lost the physical charac- 

 teristics of that race, though they still retain their ancient language 

 almost intact." 



Over against this we may set the testimony of Air. C. C. 

 Clements \"ialls, who has spent over twenty years amongst the 

 Masarwas. The latter thus writes, in an article in the African 

 MontJiIy, for December, 1908: — 



" They appear to be possessed of a very small degree of intellect, 

 but an abnormal degree of instinct. Their vocabulary I do not think 

 consists of more than three hundred words, and is a series of clicks, 

 like the Hottentot, but quite unintelligible to that tribe: Either because 

 they are more reticent than other natives, or else have no capacity of 

 retention, I have so far been unable to extract from them, or through 

 the Bakalahari (who have been in contact with them from a remote past) 

 any national traditions. 



" One pecularity I have noticed is that among them there are some 

 with a much darker skin, almost black, of whom the men all have 

 beards or tufts of hair on the face, and a good crop on the head, 

 whereas the light-skinned or yellow ones have no beards or hair on the 

 face, and a very sparse quantity on the head." 



The trtith lies between these two views. Taken together, 

 they sum up the morphological and linguistic facts tolerably well. 

 The vocabulary is much larger than Air. Maills supposes. I have 

 collected 1,750 words, and I am quite sure that I have by no 

 means exhausted the list. This does not include derivatives or 

 verbal forms, which would bring the list up to 2,000 words. 

 With regard to the closeness of the relationship of Sesarwa to 

 Korana, as indicated by Mr. Selous, I regret that materials suf- 

 ficient in the latter language are not in nly possession to decide 

 the point. If the relationship is not closer than between Sesarwa 

 and Namacjua, j\Ir. Selous is in error in describing it as a dialect 

 of Korana. As the question stands at present, all that can be 

 said is that they both belong to the same family of languages, 

 and there would be no difficulty in any person who knew Nama- 

 qua or Korana picking up Sesarwa. 



There are thirty-one letters in the alphabet, and four clicks 

 which do dtity as consonants. Of these there are five vowels, 

 a, c, i, a and 11, each of wdiich has two sounds, the open or long, 

 and the close or short. Diphthongs do nbt exist in the lan- 

 guage, and when two vowels come, the first is short and the 

 second is long, both being thus sounded separately. There is no F 

 in the language. The clicks are four, possibly five, in number, 

 and are termed the dental, palatal, lateral and cerebral clicks. 

 They are formed by pressing the tongue against the front teeth, 

 the palate, the side of the teeth and palate, and by closing the 

 faucal region with the tongtie. There are various modifications 

 of these harsh soimds, such as aspirating and hardening, or 

 softening, but they are not distinctive enough to merit detailed 

 description, and can only be detected by familiarity with the 

 langtiage. These clicks are interchangeable to some extent, as 

 the dental and lateral, or dental and cerebral, btit seldom the 

 palatal and cerebral, examples of which are \gao and \\gao, 

 a snake, \\ghani and \kam, the sun, \khaine and \\khaine, a star, 



