RAIDS OF THE BUSHMEN. 101 



to the southwest of our actual position, a tribe of these 

 natives for many years were in the habit of practicing 

 raids with impunity upon the herds of the farmers in 

 the Raw-feldt, assisted by avast and impracticable des- 

 ert which intervened between their country and the 

 more fertile pastoral districts. They seemed to prefer 

 extremely dry seasons for these incursions, their object 

 in this being that their pursuers, who of course follow- 

 ed on horseback while they were always on foot, should 

 not obtain water for their horses. Their own wants 

 in this respect they provided for m the following curi- 

 ous manner. They had regular stages at long inter- 

 vals in a direct line across the desert, where, assisted 

 by their wives, they concealed water in ostrich eggs, 

 which they brought from amazing distances, and these 

 spots, being marked by some slight inequality in the 

 ground, they could discover either by day or night from 

 their perfect knowledge of the country. They were 

 thus enabled fearlessly to drive off a herd of cattle, whose 

 sufferings from thirst gave them little concern, and to 

 travel day and night, while their mounted pursuers, re- 

 drive them to their sechided habitations iu the desert, •svhere they mas 

 sacre them indiscriminately, and continue feasting and gorging tliem- 

 selves until the flesii becomes putrid. When a KafBr has lifted cattle, 

 and finds himself so hotly pursued by the owners that he can not escape 

 with his booty, he betakes himself to flight, and leaves the cattle un- 

 scathed ; but the spiteful Bushmen have a most provoking and cruel 

 system of hon-ibly mutilating the poor cattle when they find that they 

 arc likely to fall into the hands of their rightful owners, by discharging 

 tlieir poisoned arrows at them, hamstringing them, and cutting lumps 

 of Hesh off their living carcasses. This naturally so incenses the owners 

 that they never show the Bushmen any quarter, but shoot them down 

 right and left, sparing only the children, whom they tame and convert 

 into servants. The people wlio suffer from these depredations are 

 Boers, Griquas, and Bechuanas, all of whom are possessed of large herds 

 of cattle, and the massacres of the Bushmen, arising from these raids, 

 are endless. 



