Notes on tlie Bushmen of Basutoland. 445 



Kolo mountain and elsewhere, where it is known that no Bushmen 

 have Hved for over sixty years at any rate, but those of the 

 Malutis are certainly not more than fifty years old, as the Bush- 

 men were driven up there about 1860. Thus there is nothing to 

 prove their great antiquity. There are paintings in Cape Colony, 

 near Wellington, which may be far more ancient, but the question 

 is, were they there when the Dutch occupied that part of the 

 country? I have not been able to discover whether the Dutch 

 found them there when they occupied that district. If it were 

 so, then they are more than two hundred years old. Is it possible 

 that the Bushmen have obtained the art from the white men ? To 

 me it seems probable that painting is the only relic left of a higher 

 civilisation the Bushmen once possessed. More reliable information 

 may one day throw some light on the question as to the age of 

 the oldest paintings. 



From the number of paintings in Basutoland it is evident that the 

 knowledge of painting was not confined to a few individuals. Every 

 little clan seems to have had its painter, or family of painters, who 

 depicted its exploits on the walls of the cave where it dwelt. Some 

 of the Baphuti, a tribe of Kafirs near the Drakensberg, who are said 

 to have some Bushman blood in them, and can still speak a little of 

 the Bushman language, can paint — an art they have evidently learnt 

 from the latter, but their paintings are vastly inferior. 



It is a pity that these paintings could not be preserved as 

 memorials of a bygone and deeply interesting race. The Basuto 

 herd-boys who inhabit these caves during the summer months, when 

 the cattle are sent to the higher pastures, take what looks like a 

 malicious delight in defacing them. Usually this takes the form of 

 smearing them with red clay, which, needless to say, does not 

 improve them. Besides the Basuto are so jealous of anyone visiting 

 and examining the pictures that they wilfully destroy them. The 

 chiefs themselves encourage it, so that if this is allowed to go on 

 there will soon be none left. The Basuto are utterly wanting in 

 talent of this kind ; they see no beauty in, and put no value upon, 

 such things. It is certainly strange that a people like the Basuto, 

 who take the greatest delight in cattle, and notice anything peculiar 

 in the shape of a cow's horn, should be so utterly deficient in artistic 

 skill, while a race that possessed no domestic animals but dogs, 

 should have developed such a considerable degree of talent. 



These rock-paintings are so numerous, and of such uniformity 

 that detailed description is needless. A group of these paintings 

 from one of the most recently inhabited caves will serve as a type of 

 all the others. This is a cave at Sehonghong on the Senqu, or 



