A HOSPITABLE PEOPLE. 225 



poor Bechuanas, named Bakalahari, are the lowest. The latter live on the 

 desert, and some of their little villages extend down the Limpopo. They 

 generally attach themselves to influential men in the Bechuana towns, who 

 furnish them with dogs, spears, and tobacco, and in return receive the skins of 

 such animals as they may kill either with the dogs or by means of pitfalls. 

 They are all fond of agriculture, and some possess a few goats; but the 

 generally hard fare which they endure makes them the most miserable objects 

 to be met with in Africa. From the descriptions given in books, I imagine 

 the thin legs and arms, large abdomens, and the lustreless eyes of their 

 children, make the Bakalahari the counterparts of Australians. 



" But though it is all very well, in speaking in a loose way, to ascribe 

 the development of national character to the physical features of the country, 

 I suspect that those who are accustomed to curb the imagination in the severe 

 way employed to test for truth in the physical sciences would attribute more 

 to race or breed than to mere scenery. Look at the Bushmen — living on the 

 same plains, eating the same food, but oftener in scantier measure, and 

 subjected to the same cHmatorial and physical influences as the Bakalahari, 

 yet how enormously different the results ! The Bushman has a wiry, compact 

 frame ; is brave and independent ; scorns to till the ground or keep domestic 

 animals. The Bakalahari is spiritless and abject in demeanour and thought, 

 delights in cultivating a little corn or pumpkins, or in rearing a few goats. 

 Both races have been looking at the same scenes for centuries. Two or three 

 Bechuanas from the towns enter the villages of the Bakalahari, and pillage 

 them of all their skins of animals without resistance. If by chance the Bechu- 

 anas stumble on a hamlet of Bushmen, they speak softly, and readily deliver up 

 any tobacco they may have as a peace-offering, in dread of the poisoned arrow 

 which may decide whether they spoke truly in saying they had none. 



" Again, look at the river Zouga, running through a part of the Bushman 

 and Bakalahari desert. The Bayeiye or Bakoba live on its reedy islets, culti- 

 vate gardens, rear goats, fish and hunt alternately, and are generally possessed 

 of considerable muscular development. Wherever you meet them they are 

 always the same. They are the Quakers of the body politic in Africa. They 

 never fought with any one, but invariably submitted to whoever conquered 

 the lands adjacent to their rivers. They say their progenitors made bows of 

 the castor-oil plant, and they broke ; ' therefore (!) they resolved never to fight 

 any more.' They never acquire much property, for every one turns aside 

 into their villages to eat what he can find. I have been in their canoes and 

 found the pots boiling briskly until we came near to the villages. Having 

 dined, we then entered with the pots empty, and they looked quite innocently 

 on any strangers who happened to drop in to dinner. Contrast these Friends 

 with the lords of the isles, Sekote and others, living among identical circum- 

 stances, and ornamenting their dwellings with human skulls. 



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