NATIVK IDEAS OF COSMOLOGY'. 179 



much of their reHgion is demonology. Neither is there any 

 patticvilar trace amongst them of the sort of diiahsm that is said 

 to prevail amongst the Hottentots, though the Kaffir name for 

 God, Utixo, is a Hottentot word. Amongst the Hottentots Tsuni- 

 Hgoam is the good god, who gives men ahundance of sheep and 

 cattle, collects the clouds, and causes the rain. He made all 

 things, and all good things come from him. He lives m a beautiful 

 heaven, all red, while his enemy, Gaunab, lives in a dark heaven, 

 all black. They made war upon each other, and Tsuni-||goam 

 killed Gaunab.* Here we have the old conflict of light with 

 darkness, which is quite unknown amongst the Bantu legends 

 of creation. If the commonly-received explanation of the origin 

 of the Hottentots be right, this dualism must have had its origin 

 in the far North-East of Africa, and is not indigenous. 



I shall now give some of the leading stories of the Creation as 

 current amongst the Bantu peoples of this country. They are 

 all, with the one exception noted above, curiously alike. The 

 Basuto version of the origin of man is as follows : — 



Both men and the animals came out of the bowels of the earth by 

 an immense hole, the opening of which was in a cavern, and the animals 

 appeared first. Another tradition, more generally received among the 

 Basutos, is that man sprang up in a marshy place where reeds were 

 growing.f 



A Bushman from the Northern Kalahari narrated to me a 

 fuller form of this legend, which he stated he had often heard 

 amongst the Bechuanas. " In the beginning of things, the animals 

 came out in this way, at least, so the Bechuanas say. Near 

 Sechele' town there is a big hole called Loowe, which goes down 

 into the ground a long, long way. It is so deep that if you take a 

 stone, and let it drop down the hole, you can hear it falling for a 

 great while, but you never hear it striking the bottom. In this big 

 hole the animals and men were together at the time. But the 

 hole became far too small for them, and they were constantly 

 quarrelling for want of room; each one wanted to get near the 

 entrance, so that he might have a little light. At last they got 

 so angry with each other that the men began to drive out the 

 animals, and they drove them out backwards. Now at the mouth 

 of the cave there was a marsh full of reeds, and the groitnd was 

 very soft, so that the animals made much sjjoor, and the place 

 was quite cttt up with their tracks. The animals were afraid, 

 and kept trying to get into the cave the first night. By and by 

 they all wandered away. After a while the men began to be many 

 in the cavern, and they, too, fell to t|uarrelling, and so they drove 

 each other out, and when they were going out, they destroyed the 

 spoor of the animals, so that you cannot see their tracks now, 

 bitt only the tracks of the men. If you go to Loowe, you will see 

 that what I tell you is true." A Bechuana teacher, an intelligent 

 man, related to me another version of the same tale. " Near 

 Linchwe's town is a big cave, very deep. No man has ever seen 



* Hahn ; "' Tsuni-||goam, the Supreme Being of the Klmi-Khoi," 4:). 

 t Casalis : " The Basutos,"' 240. 



