460 
BUSHMAN MUSIC OLD WOMEN. 
17 Nov. 
drawing made on the spot. Beneath are added the notes ex- 
jiressed in the manner in which they were played ; or, at least, as 
they sounded to my ear : although I find a difficulty in conceiving 
how an instrument, giving its tones on the principle above described, 
can produce either the tonum majus or the heptachordon. The crotchets, 
of that part which is in triple time, were exactly of the same length 
as those in the common time preceding and following ; consequently, 
the time, reckoning by bars, was there accelerated. The whole 
piece, played once through, occupied just seventy seconds, and was 
repeated without variation. There is sufficient in these few notes, 
to show that he possessed an ear capable of distinguishing musical 
intervals ; and they are besides remarkable, under all circumstances, 
as a specimen of natural modulation. In the following year, I had 
an opportunity of noting down other pieces of Bushman music, 
which were in a style much differing from that which is here given. 
Our female visitors, who were past the middle age, were ex- 
tremely filthy and ugly ; their small blinking eyes seemed as if 
nearly closed, or sunk into their head 5 wrinkles, filled with dirt, 
covered their faces and body ; their hair was clotted together in 
large lumps, with the accumulated grease and dust of years, perhaps 
of their whole lives; and the odor with which they tainted the air, 
kept me at the distance of a couple of yards, the nearest at which a 
person having any delicacy of smell, could endure their presence. 
A wooden bowl, in which was left a quantity of liquid Hippopotamus 
grease, was eagerly seized upon, and its contents drunk off, with an 
avidity most nauseous and disgusting to behold ; while that which still 
adhered to the bowl, they carefully scraped out with their hands, 
and smeared upon their bodies. 
Curious to know what degree of intellect these beings possessed, 
I endeavoured, by means of an interpreter, to question them on a 
mountain : but the ground has been engraved in too spotted a manner. By a mistake of 
the engraver, the hair is represented too much like curls, instead of wool, as described 
at page 161. ; but this has, in some measure, been rectified by the colouring. 
