SOUTHERN AFRICA. 243 
so long as a man shall be left alive. It frequently happens on 
such occasions that a party will volunteer the /b7'/om /io/^e, by 
throwing themselves in the midst of the colonists in order to 
create confusion, and to give to their countrymen, concealed 
among the rocks or in the long grass, at the expence of their 
own lives, an opportunity of exercising more effectually their 
mortal weapons upon their enemies, and at the same time to 
facilitate the escape of their wives and children. 
Their plundering expeditions are not by any means con- 
ducted without system. If, in carrying off their booty, they 
should chance to be pursued, they always divide; one party 
to drive away the cattle, while the other continues to harass 
their pursuers ; and, when the peasantry prove too many for 
them, they stab and maim with poisoned weapons the whole 
herd. On all such plundering expeditions, they carry, in ad- 
dition to their bows and arrows, lances that resemble the 
Kaffers' hassagai, but of a much smaller size, and always 
steeped in poison. Their bows are remarkably small ; and, in 
the hands of any one but of a Bosjesman, would be entirely 
useless. From their earliest infancy they accustom them- 
selves to the use of the bow. All the little boys who came 
to us at the kraal carried their bows and small quivers of ar- 
rows. A complete quiver contains about seventy or eighty, 
made like those of the Hottentot that have already been 
noticed ; and, in addition to these, a few small brushes to lay 
on the poison ; pieces of iron, red ochre, leg-bones of ostriches 
cut in lengths and rounded, and two little sticks of hard wood 
to produce fire ; this is done by placing one horizontally on a 
piece of withered grass, and whirling the other vertically be- 
I I 2 
