334 



AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



Orange river, being a member of the Korana clan 

 ruled over by Klas Lucas. He is an absolutely pure 

 Korana by blood, of a pale yellow brown in colour, 

 beautifully proportioned, with small, delicately made 

 hands and feet, and the sparse-growing peppercorn 

 hair which I have often seen amongst full-blooded 

 Koranas, but only rarely amongst the Bushmen 

 living in the countries north and west of the Trans- 

 vaal, who are, moreover, darker skinned than the 

 majority of the Koranas of the Orange river, though 

 very much lighter, as a rule, than Bantu Kafirs. 



John, speaking as his native tongue one of the 

 most extraordinary of known languages — a language 

 full of clicks and clucks and curious intonations of 

 the voice, and absolutely impossible of acquirement 

 by a full-grown European — travelled with me some 

 eight hundred miles to the north of the country 

 where he was born on the banks of the Orange 

 river, and there met with a race of wild people 

 living in the desert country immediately south of 

 the Zambesi, who he found, much to his surprise, 

 spoke a language so similar to his own mother- 

 tongue that, after a very little intercourse with 

 them, he was not only able to understand what 

 they said, but to talk to them with perfect fluency. 

 Is not this a most remarkable fact, well worthy the 

 attention of philologists ? 



When John first told me that, by listening 

 attentively to the Bushmen inhabiting the country 

 immediately to the south of the Chobi and Zambesi 

 rivers, he soon discovered that they were speaking 

 a language very similar to his own, he concluded 

 his explanation by saying in Dutch : "Ik kan maar 

 say daat's de selde taal " ("I can just say it's the 

 same language "). 



The Nero family, with their dependents, numbered 

 some eight or ten persons, amongst whom was a 

 pure-blooded Korana woman named " Mina," a 



