Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 391 



thirty — men, women, and children. Their dwellings are formed of 

 mats, if in the plain, just large enough to creep into ; but they often 

 reside in a high and ridgy mountain, under some projecting ledge 

 of rock, the approach to which is narrow and difficult. If attacked 

 there, they seldom flee. They have no fear of death ; and, if pos- 

 sessed of a more powerful weapon, might defy the attacks of the 

 Boors, make them less frequent, and more fatal. Nothing but the 

 privations they suffer would make any one of them submit to the 

 cruelty of the farmers; and, living as they do on locusts, ants, and 

 some farinaceous roots, there can be no better proof of the insuffi- 

 ciency of their tiny bow, and of the general inertness of their ce- 

 lebrated poison ; yet they are themselves impressed with the con- 

 viction of its strength, and they have been able to impress their 

 enemies with a dread of its effects, if not of its fatality. I have 

 never been able to procure one well authenticated relation of death 

 produced by it in man. I have known some cases of horses and 

 dogs dying from the insertion of the arrow into the leg ; but some 

 of them seem to die rather from the effect of violent inflammation 

 in the limb, than from any specific power in the poison itself. In one 

 instance of a dog, however, the animal became stupid and insensi- 

 ble in a few minutes, and died in twenty. Some colonists who have 

 been wounded, assert that they are subject to periodical attacks of 

 insanity, under certain states of atmospherical influence; but I be- 

 lieve this to be, like most of their tales, quite unworthy of credit. 

 The poison of the Bushman of the Hornberg is extracted from 

 plants, and from plants only, so far as I have been able to learn. 

 In that quarter, they use no mineral poison, nor the venom of 

 snakes. Two specimens of plants used by them accompany this ; 

 the bulb is a species of Hcemanthus ; but never having seen the 

 other plant in flower, I have been unable to learn its name. Its 

 leaf exudes a milky juice, and, cut up and bled, forms a tenacious 

 extract, which is spread on the arrow, to some thickness. There 

 is another plant which they use likewise, either alone or with the 

 other two ; which, together, forms the strongest they procure ; its 

 name is "mountain poison." Growing on the stony hills, and very 

 rarely to be found, I have never got a specimen of it. 



Their dexterity in the use of their bow is remarkable, and the 

 distance they can shoot, with such a light arrow, is astonishing. 

 They will throw the arrow upwards of a hundred yards, and with 

 great correctness ; but, as might be expected, it will seldom wound 

 at such a distance ; and I have known a cavalry cloak protect a 

 soldier at twenty paces. The bow is not brought to the eye in 

 shooting. They fix their eye upon the object, grasping the bow 

 with the left hand, while the arrow passes through the fingers on 

 the right side, — a mode of shooting 1 believe peculiar to them. 



Their treatment of a wound made by a poisoned arrow is truly 

 scientific. It is laid freely open, the poison cleaned out, and a horn 

 applied in the manner of a cupping-glass, exhausted by suction at 

 the small extremity. This, as far as I could learn, is the only treat- 

 ment they adopt, never making use of any herb as a specific. The 



Boors 



