SOUTHERN AFRICA. 195 
would be lost for ever ; that it was deadly poison, and used 
by the Hottentots to smear the points of their arrows. They 
all agreed in the baneful qualities of this black matter, from 
having experienced the fatal effects of it on several of their 
companions, who had suffered lingering deaths from wounds 
received with arrows poisoned by the klip gift j or rock poison. 
Not having as yet the opportunity of trying the deleterious 
quality of the substance, I cannot pretend to say whether this 
account of the peasantry be strictly true, but I should rather 
conclude that it is exaggerated. 
In the course of the day we arrived at the house of Kriiger, 
the commandant of Sneuwberg, vrho kindly offered his services 
to be of our party, though he had but just returned from an 
expedition against the Bosjesmans. He had at this time with 
him in the house one of these wild men, with his two wives 
and a little child, which by lot had fallen to his share out of 
forty that had been taken prisoners. The man was only four 
feet five inches high, and his wives were still of a shorter sta- 
ture, one being four feet two, and the other four feet three 
inches. He represented to us, through a Bosjesman interpre- 
ter, the condition of his countrymen as truly deplorable. That 
for several months in the year, when the frost and snow pre- 
vented them from making their excursions against the farmers, 
their sufferings from, cold and want of food were indescriba- 
ble : that they frequently beheld their wives and children pe- 
rishing with hunger, without being able to give them any 
relief. The good season even brought little alleviation to 
theii' misery. They knew themselves to be hated by all man- 
kind, and that every nation around them was an enemy planning 
c c 2 
