344 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



American lady remark of the atmosphere of a small 

 mosque in which we had been watching some dancing 

 Dervishes at Constantinople, it gave off " a poor 

 odour" one of the poorest, I think, I have ever 

 encountered, in her sense of the word, though by 

 many people it might have been thought too rich. 



With the Bushmen, however, an egg in the 

 hand was evidently considered to be worth more 

 than a problematical animal in the bush, and they 

 at once sat down, and taking turn and turn about, 

 slowly and with evident relish licked up the foetid 

 contents of the treasure which fortune had thrown 

 in their way. Up to this time we had not even 

 seen the fresh track of a giraffe, but not long after- 

 wards we sighted a magnificent old bull, which I 

 managed to kill for them after a hard gallop through 

 some very thick and thorny bush. 



When I met with the first Bushmen I ever 

 saw on the banks of the Orange river, in 1872, 

 I was a very young man, and regarding them 

 with some repugnance, wrote in my diary that 

 they appeared to be very few steps removed from 

 the brute creation. That was a very foolish and 

 ignorant remark to make, and I have since found out 

 that though Bushmen may possibly be to-day in the 

 same backward state of material development and 

 knowledge as once were the palaeolithic ancestors 

 of the most highly cultured European races in pre- 

 historic times, yet fundamentally there is very little 

 difference between the natures of primitive and 

 civilised men, so that it is quite possible for a 

 member of one of the more cultured races to live 

 for a time quite happily and contentedly amongst 

 beings who are often described as degraded savages, 

 and from whom he is separated by thousands of 

 years in all that is implied by the word " civilisation." 

 I have hunted a great deal with Bushmen, and 

 during 1884 I lived amongst these people con- 



