COMELY WOMEN, 



237 



he did not believe th2re was a single specimen of the 

 breed in the country. Mynheer responded in the 

 usual phlegmatic way of his countrymen : " You tak 

 my Bosheman herd with you to-morrow, he'll show 

 you plenty leaws." This my friend did, and to his 

 unutterable surprise, had no less than four lions 

 pointed out to him by the keen-eyed native in the 

 course of the day. 



The Griqua was unquestionably right, he had seen 

 the lion, for we found its fresh spoor, and not impro- 

 bably while we were searching for it, it was ' >lly 

 taking stock of us, and possibly imagining what a 

 nice meal one of our horses would affo* 1 it, for horse 

 flesh or zebra are its favourite diet. 



1 returned to my waggons by way of the Griqua 

 camp, which was much closer to my domicile than I 

 had anticipated. It was scarcely a pleasant sight to 

 look upon, being entirely without order and clean- 

 liness. A cluster of about a dozen whitey-brown 

 children amusing themselves with the bones of 

 various kinds of game, was the first thing to catch 

 my attention. These brats were dressed in the 

 primitive manner of our great progenitors, or in 

 other words, their raiment was conspicuous by its 

 absence. Many of the representatives of this embryo 

 population were not bad-looking, or even unattrac- 

 tive, but for their repulsive filthiness. This would 

 not have been so conspicuous on a black skin, but a 

 coffee and milk-coloured complexion did not hide 

 this neglect. Like black children, the stomachs of 

 these half-breeds appear abnormally large. I should 

 imagine this hideous deformity to result from the 

 irregularity of their meals ; eating to repletion one 

 day and starving the next. Notwithstanding these 

 disadvantages, however, they grow up into well pro- 

 portioned men and women ; indeed, I have seen 

 many of the latter quite comely. The celebrated 

 traveller, Sir Cornewall Harris, of the Bombay En- 



