233 TRAVELS IN 
closed behind with a second mat. They were about three 
feet high and four feet wide, and the ground in the middle 
was dug out like the nest of an ostrich ; a little grass strewed 
in this hollow served as their bed, in which they seemed to 
have lain coiled round in the manner of some quadrupeds. 
It was customary, as it seemed, for the elderly men to have 
two wives, one of them old and past child-bearing, and the 
other young. No degree of consanguinity prevented a ma- j 
trimonial connection, except between brothers and sisters, 
parents and children. One of these miserable huts, or rather 
holes in the ground covered with matting, served for a whole 
family. The population of the horde was calculated to 
amount to about a hundred and fifty persons. They pos- 
sessed no sort of animals except dogs, which, unlike those of 
the Kaffers, were remarkably fat. They appeared to be of 
a small cur-kind, with a long-pointed head not unhke that 
of the common jackal. The high condition in which these 
creatures were found seemed difficult to be accounted for. 
They have neither milk nor animal food to eat. The only 
viands we found in the huts were a few small bulbous roots, 
the eggs or the larvee of white ants, and the dried larvae of 
locusts. The boors say that the dogs of Bosjesmans exist 
almost wholly upon the last article ; and if so, the great 
plenty of these creatures, in the present year, may account 
for their fatness. 
The men were entirely naked, and most of the women 
pretty nearly in the same condition. Their only covering was 
a belt of springbok's skin, with the part that was intended to 
hang before cut into long threads like those before mentioned 
