290 
A FAREWELL TO THE BUSHMEN. 27, 28 June, 1812. 
back : but it was ten o'clock before they reached home, as they had, 
at the time we fired, advanced too far to hear the report. 
As the men had not yet forgotten the trouble occasioned by the 
cattle straying away, these were carefully made fast to the waggons 
and bushes, and a kraal for the sheep, was formed with green boughs. 
2Sth. In order to bring our cattle sooner to the water, we 
resumed the journey early in the morning, directing our course 
northward across the plain, to a range of mountains which forms 
the boundary between Bichuania, if I may use the word, and 
the country inhabited by the Bushmen. We were now to take our 
leave of those hordes of wild men, as they are justly called, and to 
quit their dubious tribes : — men who are moved by various motives 
either to hostility or to friendship ; to the former, often by feelings of 
revenge or retaliation, and too often by a spirit of plunder ; to the latter, 
often won by trifling acts of kindness, and by treatment founded on a 
due and reasonable view of their untutored state and of the comfortless 
existence of a nation without a head, without laws, without arts, and 
without religion. Towards such men, vengeance and punishment, 
however justly merited, should be mitigated by pity and forbearance, 
such as we are taught by the mild and genuine spirit of Christianity. 
