196 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



formerly acute senses, he had, with all the desperate 

 pluck of his race, been prepared to do battle for his 

 hearth and home. 



"In his own tongue, Klaas interrogated this 

 antediluvian Bushman, and then, suddenly, as he 

 was answered by the word ' 'Ariseep,' a light flashed 

 across his countenance. Seizing his aged country- 

 man by the shoulders, he turned him round and 

 carefully examined his back. Lifting the skin 

 kaross, and rubbing away the coating of grease and 

 dirt that covered the right shoulder, Klaas pointed 

 to two round white scars just below the blade-bone, 

 several inches apart. Then he gave a leap into 

 the air, seized the old fossil by the neck, and 

 shrieked into his ears the most wonderful torrent 

 of Bushman language I have ever heard. In his 

 turn the old man started back, scanned Klaas 

 intently from head to foot, and, in a thin pipe, 

 jabbered at him almost as volubly. 



" Finally, Klaas enlightened me as to th,is comical 

 interlude. It seemed incredible ; but this old man, 

 'Ariseep by name, was his grandfather, whom he 

 had not set eyes on since, long years before, the 

 Boer Commando had broken into his tribal fastness, 

 slain his father and mother and other relatives, and 

 carried himself off captive. The old man before 

 us had somehow escaped in the fight, had crept 

 away, and after years of solitary hiding in the 

 mountains around, had somehow penetrated to this 

 grim and desolate valley, where he had subsisted 

 on Bushman fare — snakes, lizards, roots, gum, bulbs, 

 fruit, and an occasional snared buck or rock-rabbit ; 

 these, and a little rill of water that gushed from the 

 mountain-side hard by, supplied him with existence. 



