336 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



language as the Bushmen Hving in the Limpopo 

 valley near the mouth of the Shashi. Farther west, 

 I have listened to Tinkarn conversing not only 

 with the Masarwa of the Mababi, but also with 

 Bushmen living on the Botletlie river, and in many 

 places in the desert between there and Shoshong, 

 and also with some of these people living on the 

 Limpopo. Tinkarn told me that he had learned 

 the language of the Bushmen when he was a child, 

 and I always thought that he spoke to all of them 

 in the same language, not in a number of dialects. 

 At any rate, he was perfectly fluent with all of 

 them. 



Although, however, there would seem to be 

 strong presumptive evidence that all the various 

 families or tribes of Bushmen living scattered over 

 the more arid regions of South-Western Africa to 

 the north of the Orange river speak a language, 

 or dialects of a language, which is essentially the 

 same as that spoken by the Koranas, yet, speaking 

 generally, all the Bushmen I have seen differ con- 

 siderably in physical appearance not only from pure- 

 blooded Koranas — very few of whom are left to-day 

 — but also from the descriptions I have read of the 

 dwarf race of Bushmen that used to inhabit the 

 Cape Colony. It is these latter whose language 

 was studied by Dr. Bleek, and pronounced to be 

 fundamentally different to that of the Hottentot 

 tribes inhabiting the country near Cape Town. 

 That, prior to the incursion of the tall, dark-coloured 

 Bantu tribes from the north, the whole of Africa 

 south of the Zambesi was inhabited by a race akin 

 to the Bushmen of the Cape Colony is, I think, 

 proved by the similarity of the rock-paintings in 

 Mashunaland and Manicaland — which I think that 

 I was the first to discover — to those existing in 

 caves in many parts of the Orange and Cape 

 Colonies. 



