Chap. II. BUSHMEN— BAKALAHARI. 49 



colour when ripe. Many are bitter, others quite sweet. Even 

 melons in a garden may be made bitter by a few bitter kengwe 

 in the vicinity. The bees convey the pollen from one to the 

 other. 



The human inhabitants of this tract of country consist of Bush- 

 men and Bakalahari. The former are probably the aborigmes 

 of the southern portion of the continent, the latter the remnants 

 of the first emigration of Bechuanas. The Bushmen live in the 

 Desert from choice, the Bakalahari from compulsion, and both 

 possess an intense love of liberty. The Bushmen are exceptions 

 in language, race, habits, and appearance. They are the only 

 real nomades in the country ; they never cultivate the soil nor 

 rear any domestic animal, save wretched dogs. They are so 

 intimately acquainted with the habits of the game, that they 

 follow them in their migrations, and prey upon them from place 

 to place, and thus prove as complete a check upon their inor- 

 dinate increase as the other carnivora. The chief subsistence of 

 the Bushmen is the flesh of game, but that is eked out by what 

 the women collect of roots and beans, and fruits of the Desert. 

 Those who inhabit the hot sandy plains of the Desert possess 

 generally thin wiry forms capable of great exertion and of severe 

 privations. Many are of low stature, though not dwarfish ; the 

 specimens brought to Europe have been selected, like coster- 

 mongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness ; conse- 

 quently English ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same 

 way as if the ugliest specimens of the English were exhibited in 

 Africa as characteristic of the entire British nation. That they 

 are like baboons is in some degree true, just as these and other 

 simise are in some points frightfully human. 



The Bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest of 

 the Bechuana tribes, and they are said to have possessed enor- 

 mous herds of the large horned cattle mentioned by Bruce, until 

 they were despoiled of them and driven into the Desert by a fresh 

 migration of their own nation. Living ever since on the same 

 plains with the Bushmen, subjected to the same influences of 

 climate, enduring the same thirst, and subsisting on similar food 

 for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof that locality 

 is not always sufficient of itself to account for difference in races. 

 The Bakalahari retain in undying vigour the Bechuana love for 



E 



