BOSllIES-MEN. 
1-29 
means they render themselves odious to the rest of the inhabitants of 
the Cape, and are pursued and exterminated like the wild beasts 
whose manners they have assumed. Others are kept alive, and made 
slaves of. Their weapons are'poisoned arrows, which, shot out of a 
small bow, will fly 200 paces, and hit a mark, with a tolerable degree 
of certainty, at the distance of 30 or even 100 paces. From this 
distance they can convey death to the game they hunt for food, as 
W'ell as to their foes, and even to so large and tremendous a beast as 
the lion. The Hottentot, in the mean time, safe in his ambush, is 
certain of tfee operation of his poison, which is always of the most 
virulent kind, and it is said he has only to wait a few minutes to see 
the beast languish and die. 
The dwelling of these foes to a pastoral life are generally not more 
agreeable than their manners. Like the wdld beasts, bushes and clefts 
in rocks serve them for houses, and thev are even said to be much 
worse than beasts in some of their domestic concerns. A great many 
of them are entirely naked, but such has have been able to procure 
the skin ofnny sort of animal, great or small, cover their bodies with 
it, from the shoulders dowmwards as far as it will reach, wearing it till 
it falls off their backs in rags. 
Ignorant of agriculture, they wander over hills and dales after w ild 
roots, berries, and plants, which they eat raw, to sustain a life that 
this miserable food would soon extinguish, were they used to better 
fare. Their table, however, is sometimes composed of several other 
dishes, such as the larvm of insects, caterpillars, white ants, the termes, 
grasshoppers, snakes, and some sorts of spiders. The Boshies-man 
is nevertheless frequently in want, and famished to such a degree, as 
to waste almost to a shadow. It was with no small astonishment,’' 
says Dr. Sparrman, “ that, for the first time, I saw in Lang Kloof a 
lad belonging to this race of men, with his face, arms, legs, and body, 
so monstrously small and withered, that I could not have been induced 
to suppose but that he had been brought to this state by the fever 
which was epidemic in those parts, had I not seen him at the same 
time run like a lapwing. It required but a few w'eeks to bring one 
of those starvelings to a thriving state, and even make him fat ; their 
stomachs being strong enough to digest the great quantity of food 
with which they are crammed, as they may be rather said to bolt 
than eat.” 
The capture of slaves from among this race of men is by no means 
difficult ; and is effected, Dr. Sparrman informs us, in the following 
manner: “Several farmers join together, and take a journey to that 
part of the country where the Boshies-men live. They, as well as 
their Lego-Hottentots, or else such Boshies-men as have been caught 
some time before, and have been trained up to fidelity in their service, 
endeavour to spy out where the wild Boshies-men have their haunts. 
This is best discovered by the smoke of their fires. They are found 
in societies from 10 to 100, reckoning great and small. Notwith- 
standingthis, the farmers will venture, in a dark night, to set upon them 
with only six or eight people, which they contrive to do by previously 
stationing themselves at some distance round the kraal. They then 
give the alarm by firing a gun or two. By this means there is such a 
R 
