TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 689 



and solidly built. Their hair is black aud thick, their eyes dark brown, and 

 their faces wedge-shaped. The profile is negroid and there is no prognathism. 

 They are intellectual and bright, and live moral and blameless lives. There are 

 no ceremonies or rites to celebrate birth, marriage, or death. They have no 

 religion nor belief in a spiritual e.xistence after death, nor do they practise any 

 form of witchcraft or magic. They have a system of chieftainship. The original 

 clothing of these people was nothing more than a bark loin-cloth, but they now 

 wear clothes procured from the Malays and Chinese. Their only indigenous 

 weapon is the blow-pipe, through which they shoot poisoned darts. They possess 

 both percussion and wind musical instruments, and follow agricultural pursuits, 

 most of which they have learnt from the Malays. They cannot count beyond three. 



3. On the Bushmen of Basutoland. By S. S. Dornan. 



The Dutch on arrival in South Africa found races of diminutive people 

 occupying the ranges of mountains near Cape Town. They were afterwards 

 found far to the north, and Moshesh found them in Basutoland when he occupied 

 the country about 1820. The principal migrations to Basutoland occurred after 

 the Great Trek of 1836. There were two parties : the first party lived at Hermon, 

 near Wepener, and were known as Bushmen of Mamantso ; they were tall and 

 strong ; they left Hermon and went to Little Caledon, where they stole cattle 

 from Moshesh, were driven north to Teyateyaneng, aud eventually retired with 

 other clans to Griqualand East. The second party, known as Bushmen of Uphaki, 

 went south to Quthing. When driven out they divided into two bands, and 

 went up opposite banks of the Orange River. The principal leader was Swai, 

 whose fate extinguished the Bushmen as a nation in Basutoland. The place- 

 names in that part of the country are due to these bands. The last remnant also 

 retired to Griqualand East. 



The few Bushmen left in Basutoland are mostly half-breeds. They are 

 very unwilling to talk of the past, and the Basuto dislike any attempt to glean 

 information of their past history. They have had no influence on the physique 

 of other races. Their language was dLfiicult and peculiar, abounded in clicks, 

 of which traces persist in Sesuto and more extensively in Kafir. They are called 

 Baroa by the Basuto, Abatwa by the Kafirs, San by themselves. The Bushman 

 government was family, not tribal, and they lived mostly in caves. They were 

 partly monogamous, partly polygamous. Loose family relations prevailed. Cattle 

 were no inducement to polygamy as in other races. 



Their food was mostly game, supplemented by roots dug up with the qibi or 

 digging-stick, and grass seeds. Little pottery was made. The paintings in their 

 dwelling- caves are very numerous; the colours used are mostly black and brown. 



They called the storm spirit Qeng; believed in witchcraft, but did not 

 practise ' smelling ' out. They marked the places where they buried their dead 

 with a small cairn of stones. 



Bushmen place-names are very numerous in Basutoland, but the signification 

 of most is unknown. 



Their extinction was principally caused by their inability to change their 

 mode of life ; but a war of extermination was carried on by both Bantu and 

 Europeans. 



4. Marriage and Mating. By S. S. BuCKMAN, F.G.S. 



The ancestors of Homo and of the anthropoid apes must have started equal 

 at some remote period. Why has Homo become dominant and world-wide, while 

 the anthropoids are so few P The argument is that man has succeeded because 

 he remained in a social community in which jealousy in sexual matters was so 

 feeble as not to break up the herd, while the anthropoid apes have failed because 



1906. Y Y 



