S54 TRAVELS IN" 
Cape. With the Tambookies they live on friendly terms ; 
but, like the Dutch peasantry, they have declared perpetual 
war against the Bosjesmans. Their expeditions, however, 
against these savages are not attended with the same success 
as those of the colonists. The Bosjesmans care as little for a 
Hassagai as they dread a musquet. The principal weapoa 
used by the Kaffers is an iron spear from nine inches to a foot 
in length, fixed at the end of a tapering shaft about four feet 
long. Such an instrument is called by the Hottentots a has- 
sagai, but the Kaffer name is omkontoo. In throwing this 
spear they grasp it with the palm of the hand, and raising the 
arm above the head, and giving the shaft a quivering motion 
to find the proper point of equilibrium, it is delivered with the 
fore-finger and the thumb. At the distance of fifty or sixty 
paces they can throw at a mark with a tolerable degree of 
exactness; but beyond that distance they have no kind qf 
certainty. It appears to be a very indifferent sort of weapon, 
and easily to be avoided. In battle they receive the point of 
the hassagai upon an oval shield about four feet in depth, 
made from the hide of a bullock. Their other weapon, the 
keerie, is less formidable than the hassagai; this is a stick 
about two feet and a half long, with a round knob at the end 
about two inches in diameter, and very weighty, being the 
root of some shrub. They throw it in the same manner as the 
Hassagai, and are very expert in killing birds and the smaller 
sort of antelopes, particularly the little pygmma. The small 
end of the keerie serves, in time of peace, in their agriculture, 
as an instrument for dibbling, for which purpose it seems to 
be much better adapted than for a hostile weapon. The go- 
vernment oa the east side of the Keiskauima is not exactly 
