338 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



Colony, and the very general absence of the pepper- 

 corn growth of the hair in the former which is 

 general in the latter ; but if further investigation 

 should definitely establish the fact that there is 

 a very close similarity between the very peculiar 

 languages spoken by the Koranas on the Orange 

 river and all the scattered Masarwa clans that 

 wander over the arid country stretching from the 

 Limpopo to the Chobi river, there must be a very 

 close racial connection between the two peoples. 

 On the whole, I am inclined to believe that the 

 greater part of the Bushmen I have met with were 

 of pure race, with very little, if any, admixture of 

 Bantu blood in their veins. 



I never remember to have noticed any marked 

 tendency to that wonderful development of the 

 buttocks {steatopygid) in Masarwa women which is 

 so characteristic a feature in pure -bred Korana 

 women after they have reached middle age. Bush- 

 men and Bushwomen, however, lead terribly hard 

 lives, and do not often get the chance to become 

 really fat, in the districts in which I have met with 

 them. Should they do so, the men noticeably — far 

 more so than the women — put on more flesh on the 

 buttocks than do well-fed Europeans ; but this is 

 the case with the men of all the Bantu races as well. 

 All the members of the royal family of Matabele- 

 land, both male and female, who had passed middle 

 age showed a most extraordinary development of 

 the thighs and buttocks. 



In addition to the yellow-skinned Bushmen, how- 

 ever, who are without doubt the oldest aboriginal 

 race in South Africa, there are — or were — also to be 

 found living in the eastern part of the Kalahari a 

 few scattered communities of a race known to the 

 Bechwanas as Bakalahari — they of the desert. 



Speaking of these people, Dr. Livingstone wrote 

 long ago, in that most admirable book Missionary 



