18 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



deadly serpent which infests their path, keeping them always on the alert 

 during their perambulations." 



When they build huts they are, as we have already said, of the most 

 primitive description ; but frequently they have no claim to such an appella- 

 tion. Lichtenstein, a very careful observer, gives a very graphic account 

 of their temporary abodes ; although it is but right to say that the Bushmen, 

 since the time of his writing, have benefited in this and many other respects 

 from their more frequent intercourse with the Europeans, and more cultivated 

 tribes, he says: — 



"He (the Bushman) is fond of taking up his abode for the night in 

 caverns among the mountains, or clefts in the rocks ; in the plain he makes 

 himself a hole in the ground, or gets into the midst of a bush, when, 

 bending the boughs around him, they are made to serve as a shelter against 

 the weather, against an enemy, or against wild beasts. . . It is this 

 custom which has given rise to the name by which these savages are 

 known. The holes in the ground above mentioned, which sometimes serve 

 these people as beds, are only a few inches deep, of a longish round fox'm, 

 and even when they have to serve for a whole family, not more than five 

 or six feet wide. It is incredible how they manage to pack together in so 

 small a space, perhaps, two grown persons and several children : each is 

 wrapped in a single sheep-skin, in which they contrive to roll themselves 

 up in such a manner, round like a ball, that air is all but entirely kept 

 from them. In very cold nights they heap up twigs and earth on the 

 windward side of the hole; but against rain they have no other shelter 

 than the sheep skin. In the hot season of the year, they are fond of 

 lying in the beds of the rivers, under the shade of the mimosas trees, 

 the branches of which they draw down to screen themselves from the 

 sun and wind." 



The following, from Mr. Gordon Cumming, gives a reason for the con- 

 stant hostility of the native tribes and the settlers to the Bushmen : — 



11 Unlike the Kaffre tribes, who lift cattle for the purpose of preserving 

 them and breeding from them, the sole object of the Bushmen is to drive 

 them to their secluded habitations in the desert, where they massacre them in- 

 discriminately, and continue feasting and gorging themselves until the flesh 

 becomes putrid. When a Kaffre has lifted cattle, and finds himself so hotly 

 pursued by the owners that he cannot escape with his booty, he betakes him- 

 self to flight, and leaves the cattle unscathed ; but the spiteful Bushmen have 

 a most provoking and cruel system of horribly mutilating the poor cattle, 

 when they find that they are likely to fall into the hands of the rightful 

 owners, by discharging their poisoned arrows at them, ham-stringing them, 

 and cutting lumps of flesh off their living carcases. This naturally so incenses 

 the owners, that they never show the Bushmen any quarter, but shoot them 



