340 METHODS OF KILLING GAME. 



boiled it in blood, to which, they often added milk ; " this 

 they look on as a glorious dish/' They were, however, both 

 filthy and careless about their cookery, and the meat was often 

 eaten half putrid, and more than half raw.* 



Their weapons consisted of bows and poisoned arrows, 

 spears, javelins or assagais, stones, and darting sticks or 

 "kirris," about three feet long and an inch thick. With 

 these weapons they were very skilful, and feared not 

 to attack the elephant, the rhinoceros, or even the lion. 

 Large animals were also sometimes killed in pitfalls, from 

 six to eight feet deep, and about four feet in diameter. 

 They fixed a strong pointed stake in the middle. "Into this 

 hole an elephant falling with his fore-feet (it is not of di- 

 mensions to receive his whole body) he is pierced in the neck 

 and breast with the stake and there held securely/' t for the 

 more he struggled the farther it penetrated. They caught 

 fish both with hooks and in nets. They also ate wild fruits 

 and roots of various kinds, which however they did not take 

 the trouble to cultivate. * 



For domestic animals the Hottentots had oxen, sheep, and 

 dogs. It might have naturally been supposed that oxen were 

 used in the same manner all over the world. They seem evi- 

 dently adapted either for draught or for food. With the dog 

 the case is different ; we ourselves use him in various ways, and 

 one feels therefore the less surprise at the different services 

 which he performs for different races of savages. But even 

 with regard to cattle the same was the case ; besides what we 

 may call their normal uses, the Veddahs, or wild inhabitants 

 of Ceylon, used oxen in hunting .; and the Hottentots trained 

 some to serve as what we may call sheep-oxen, or cow- oxen, 

 that is to say to guard and manage the flocks and herds, 

 and others as war-oxen, a function which might have been 



* Thunberg, p. 141 ; Kolben, p. 203 ; Harris, Wild Sports of Africa, p. 142. 

 f Kolben, p. 250. 



