386 Transactions of the Boyal Society of South Africa. 
their cattle took refuge on an island in the swamps, to which their 
Makuba piloted them, and which was only fordable — neck deep— from 
one point, being inaccessible to the Matabele, who had no canoes, from 
other sides owing to the deep water and dense reeds and rushes. The 
Batawana being well armed with rifles and ammunition took up a 
strategical position on the bank of the island, under cover of the reeds 
commanding the narrow channel of approach, and were successful in 
driving off several determined attacks by Lobengula's impi, who, 
hampered by the deep water and reeds, were at the mercy of the rifles 
of their enemy and suffered considerable losses, the wounded being 
finished off in the water by the crocodiles and by the Batawana when the 
Matabele had retired, which the latter eventually did, much exasperated 
by hearing the lowing of the Batawana cattle safely kraaled in the centre 
of the island, since it was for the cattle that Lobengula had sent them. 
Tsau, the name of the present Batawana village, which takes its name 
from the particular "veldt" in which it is situated, is a Sesarwa or 
Bushman word (pronounced Qao — the " Q " representing a linguo-dental 
click) meaning "many buffaloes." 
The Batawana all reside at Tsau, except when visiting their outlying 
cattle-posts and cornfields, or when a few occasionally go out huntting for 
a few weeks. Most of the women spend half the year away at the corn- 
fields where there are summer huts and little villages, returning into Tsau 
for the winter. The corn grown is *' Kafir corn," or Sorghum vulgare. 
The Motawana young man of to-day has degenerated, in character and 
stamina, partly the result of in-breeding, but chiefly through his inactive 
and unmanly life, doing nothing, and is an inferior being to the old men, 
who were brought up in a stricter and manlier school and with a severer 
parental discipline. 
As to the races in the Batawana Eeserve subject to the Batawana, 
besides the Makuba, there are on the sandbelts, as stated, Makhalahadi 
and Masarwa. Both of these have been described by others. Concerning 
the nomadic Mosarwa, or Bushman, of the Kalahari, he has been so often 
described that there is nothing new with regard to him that I can 
contribute, excepting the following one bit of information, and that is the 
detailed process by which he makes the poison for his arrows, since, as 
far as I am aware, no European has hitherto discovered it in detail. It is 
as follows : — 
The Mosarwa in the Batawana Eeserve first seeks out a certain thorn- 
bush in the sandbelt which he calls " Doru " (the Batawana have no 
name for it, as they do not know it, at least the majority of them). This 
* The " Doru " bush is the bush used by Masarwa in N'gamiland, roughly North of 
Latitude 20° 30'. South of this, in the Kalahari proper, it is not to be found and 
another is used. 
