440 Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society. 



same time. Kholoboto went to Griqualand East some time after- 

 wards, but Hoko remained, and died there in 1902. 



Some half-castes and very few pure-bred people, mostly women, 

 still live in Basutoland, but they are now reckoned as part of the 

 Basuto nation ; and it is difficult to get them to talk of their ances- 

 tors, as they feel the changed condition of things very keenly. A 

 few chiefs have Bushman grooms, and I am informed they are 

 superior to all others. In addition to their natural reluctance to 

 talk of the past, the Basuto discourage any systematic attempt to 

 glean information about their history, partly because their own part 

 in the various events which led to the extinction of the Bushmen 

 was none too generous, and partly because they dislike intensely to 

 see white men take any interest in such vermin as Bushmen, in the 

 charitable language of the Basuto. If one asks for any details of 

 paintings, they invariably say they do not know. They are so much 

 afraid of white men obtaining any information about the country 

 that they always suspect them of wanting to discover gold or 

 diamonds, and lead them to seize ultimately the country. 



There is no necessity to dwell upon the physical character- 

 istics of the Bushmen. They have been often described. They 

 have left no impression to any appreciable extent upon the other 

 races, except probably upon the Hottentots. But it is worthy of 

 remark that such half-breeds as I have seen have inherited more 

 of the Bushman than of the Basuto type, for example the hollow 

 back and projecting buttocks. 



Some linguistic peculiarities which are shared by certain Kafir and 

 Bechuana tribes, and more largely by the Hottentots, call for remark. 

 Chief of these are those harsh faucal sounds termed clicks. Speak- 

 ing generally, the Bushman language has had no influence upon 

 Sesuto either in syntax or accidence, with perhaps the single excep- 

 tion of the locative case. 



This case, if one can term it such, is not formed by a prefix, but 

 by a suffix, as ''thaba," a mountain; " thabeng," at the mountain. 

 Now it is a curious fact that the same formation occurs in the 

 Bushman dialects, as Qibing, at the digging stone, from Qibi, a 

 digging stick ; Qhoasing, at the water, from qhoa, water : all place- 

 names in Basutoland. Of course there is no absolute proof of the 

 connection between the two cases, but the resemblance is certainly 

 remarkable, especially when one remembers that the locative case 

 formation is a standing exception to the prefix method in Sesuto. 

 With reference to pronunciation, the case may be somewhat 

 stronger. Bushman speech abounded in clicks, almost every word 

 having one of some kind or other. Philologists distinguish five 



