THE BAKALAHARI. 91 



eggs, and circumstances will not allow of their remaining on 

 the spot, they take away as many as they can carry, and 

 break the rest ; or, when they meet with a great herd of spring- 

 bocks, they will wound as many as possible with their poisoned 

 arrows, though six or eight would suffice them with food for 

 many days. It is a state of society like that to which, pro- 

 bably, the communists would reduce civilized Europe, if their 

 insane doctrines could ever be realized. Despite the many 

 privations they have to endure, the Bushmen prefer the 

 utter freedom of the desert to the constraint of an agricultural 

 and pastoral life. They live in the Kalahari by choice, 

 the Bakalahari from compulsion, and both possess an intense 

 love of liberty. 



The Bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest of 

 the Bechuana tribes driven into the desert by a fresh migration 

 of their own nation. Though living ever since on the same 

 plains with the Bushmen, under the same influences of climate, 

 enduring the same thirst, and limited to the same scanty food 

 for centuries, they still retain in undying vigour the Bechuana 

 love for agriculture and domestic animals, hoeing their gardens 

 annually, though often all that they can hope for is a supply of 

 melons and pumpkins, and carefully rearing small herds of 

 goats, although to provide them with water is a task of no 

 small difficulty, since the dread of hostile visits from the 

 adjacent Bechuana tribes makes them choose their abode far 

 from the nearest spring or pool, and leads them not unfre- 

 quently to hide their supplies by filling the pits with sand and 

 making a fire over the spot. When they wish to draw water for 

 use, the women come with twenty or thirty of their water 

 vessels in a bag or net on their backs. These water vessels 

 consist of ostrich egg-shells, with a hole in the end of each, 

 such as would admit one's finger. The women tie a bunch of 

 grass to one end of a reed about two feet long, which they insert 

 in a hole dug as deep as the arm will reach, and then ram down 

 the wet sand firmly round it. Applying the mouth to the free 

 end of the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath, in 

 which the water collects, and in a short time rises into the 

 mouth. An egg-shell is placed on the ground alongside the 

 reeds, some inches below the mouth of the sucker. A straw 

 guides the water into the hole of the vessel as she draws mouth- 



