40 BUSHMEN. — BAKALAHARI. 



melon after another with a hatchet, and applying the 

 tongue to the gashes. They thus readily distinguish 

 between the bitter and sweet. The bitter are deleterious, 

 but the sweet are quite wholesome. This peculiarity of 

 one species of plants bearing both sweet and bitter fruits 

 occurs also in a red eatable cucumber often met with in 

 the country. It is about four inches long, and about an 

 inch and a half in diameter. It is of a bright scarlet 

 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 Bushmen and Bakalahari. The former are probably 

 the aborigines 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 inordinate 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 costermongers' dogs, on account of 

 their extreme ugliness ; consequently 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 enormous herds of the large horned cattle 

 mentioned by Bruce, until they were despoiled of them 



