XX JOHN AND THE MASARWA 335 



lady most bountifully endowed with all the physical 

 characteristics peculiar to the Hottentot race. These 

 people all came originally from Griqualand, and they 

 all spoke Dutch in addition to Sintabele (the lan- 

 guage of the Matabele) and their mother -tongue, 

 which they told me was Korana. I have heard all 

 these people over and over again talking with the 

 most perfect ease and fluency with the Masarwa 

 Bushmen inhabiting the country to the west of 

 Matabeleland, and they all assured me that they 

 had had no difficulty in learning Sasarwa, as it was 

 practically the same as the language spoken by the 

 Koranas living in Griqualand and along the Orange 

 river. 



The apparent uniformity of the language spoken 

 by the scattered families of Bushmen living in 

 widely separated areas of country in the interior 

 of South Africa is somewhat remarkable. My boy 

 John could converse without any difficulty not only 

 with the Masarwas we met with in the valley of 

 the Limpopo, but also with those we came across 

 in the country between the Chobi and Mababi rivers, 

 several hundred miles farther north, although there 

 was never any intercourse between these widely 

 separated clans. 



In 1879 I became very well acquainted with 

 Tinkarn, one of Khama's headmen, who has a very 

 thorough knowledge of, and great influence over, 

 the Bushmen living throughout the country over 

 which that chief exercises jurisdiction. I first met 

 Tinkarn in the neighbourhood of the Mababi river, 

 and subsequently travelled with him from there to 

 Shoshong, and later on again met him on the 

 Limpopo. The Masarwa in the Mababi un- 

 doubtedly spoke the same language as those living 

 only a couple of days' journey farther north, with 

 whom I heard my boy John talking in 1874, and 

 these latter, according to John, spoke the same 



