226 
THE BUSHMEN TAKEN. 
[1820. 
the dry reeds, which burned the whole day with 
much grandeur. 
On the morning of the 29th, the men who went 
in pursuit of our stolen cattle returned, bringing 
two Bushmen prisoners along with them. Some 
difficulty was found in securing the culprits. 
One of the Hottentots defended himself from a 
poisoned arrow by the timely intervention of his 
caross. When the Bushmen were secured, which 
was not effected without a struggle, the Mat- 
chappees, with their accustomed hatred to that 
race of people, could scarcely be restrained from 
dispatching them with their spears. One of the 
prisoners was grown to manhood, the other was 
about fifteen years of age. 
At the time I first saw the Bush man, he ap- 
peared to be in great agitation ; and was crouching 
under the cloak of a Hottentot for protection from 
the Matchappees. When the Matchappees were 
reasoned with on the cruelty of their dispositions 
to the Bushmen, they justified themselves by the 
bad qualities they ascribed to them. I told them. 
If the Bushmen deserved to die for stealing cattle, 
the Bootchuanas deserved an equal fate, for they 
had been guilty of the same crime. I tried to 
show them that the only difference between the 
crime of the Bootchuanas and the Bushmen was, 
that the former did it upon a, larger scale than 
