MODE OF TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS. 33 



their intervals stand in a very different relation one to another than ours. 

 Yet they imitate these intervals and the melody of these songs upon their 

 imperfect instruments very true. One of the women employed herself in 

 making baskets of rushes, such as are mentioned by Sparman, thick enough to 

 hold milk. The work is uncommonly neat, and does great honour to the 

 inventor ; but the mode in -which it is done could not be described without 

 great prolixity." 



The agriculture of the Kaffres and the Bechuana and other tribes of South 

 Africa was originally of a most primitive description. To the north, where 

 game was abundant, it was very much neglected. Their corn is known as the 

 Indian millet or Guinea corn, and is called Kaffre corn by the colonists. The 

 grain grows in a large bunch at the top of the stalk, differing from Indian corn, 

 the grain of which forms a large cylindrical ear. Among the Bechuanas it is 

 known as mabbeli. The stalk, when the plant is not over ripe, is very juicy 

 and refreshing, and is frequently chewed by the natives, especially when 

 water is scarce. 



The grain is mostly eaten after boiling in water ; and it is sometimes 

 pounded into a thick pulp with milk after boiling, and left until it becomes 

 sour and solidifies, when it is called Bukoli or bread. 



A small species of kidney bean is cultivated in considerable quantities. 

 The stalk grows to a height of from two to three feet, and the seed is smaller 

 than our garden bean. Water melons and bulbous plants of various kinds, as 

 we shall see further on, form no inconsiderable portion of the diet of the 

 natives to the south of the river Zouga, and in periods of drought, when the 

 animals leave the country in search of water, these together with locusts, frogs, 

 snakes, and almost any kind of animal they can surprise and kill form their 

 only food. Several of the bulbous plants, a kind of pumpkin and the cala- 

 bash gourd, are cultivated in their gardens. Various wildberry-producingplants, 

 roots, and fruit trees form no unimportant addition to their food when in season. 



The natives are all hunters, and they sometimes organise a battue on a 

 large scale. Several hundred natives, armed with spears, and as many 

 muskets as they can muster, silently surround a herd of antelopes, zebras, 

 and quaggas. Advancing slowly and silently they drive the game inwards, the 

 human cordon gradually thickening as they close in, until the startled herd find 

 themselves surrounded by a living wall of yelling savages. In their frantic 

 efforts to break through they are speared in great numbers. After a gorge on 

 the half cooked flesh, they cut the flesh into strips and hang it on the 

 branches of trees and shrubs, to dry it for preservation. 



They frequently form a couple of long fences of shrubs, commencing wide 

 apart and converging at a point, where pit-falls have been dug, and carefully 

 covered over with grass and shrubs ; in these pit-falls they fix sharp pointed 

 stakes, on which the animals impale themselves. Sometimes animals enter 



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