50 
THE BAKALAHAEI. 
Chap. II. 
agriculture and domestic animals. Tkey lioe their gardens annu¬ 
ally, though often all they can hope for is a supply of melons and 
pumpkins. And they carefully rear small herds of goats, though 
I have seen them lift water for them out of small weUs with a bit 
of ostrich egg-sheU, or by spoonfuls. They generally attach 
themselves to influential men in the different Bechuana tribes 
living adjacent to their desert home, in order to obtain supphes 
of spears, knives, tobacco, and dogs, in exchange for the skins of 
the animals they may kill. These are small carnivora of the 
fehne species; including two species of jackal, the dark and the 
golden; the former, “ motlose ’’ [Megalotis capensis or (Jape 
fennec), has the warmest fur the country yields; the latter, 
pukuye'^ (^Canis mesomelas and (7. aureus), is very handsome 
when made into the skin mantle called kaross. Next in value 
follow the “ tsipa ” or small ocelot {Felis nigripes), the “ tuane ” 
or lynx, the wild cat, the spotted cat, and other small animals. 
Great numbers of puti (duiker) and puruhuru (stemhuck) 
skins are got, too, besides those of hons, leopards, panthers, and 
hysenas. During the time I was in the Bechuana country between 
twenty and thhty thousand skins were made up mto karosses; 
part of them were worn by the inhabitants, and part sold to 
traders: many, I believe, find their way to Chma. The Bak- 
wains bought tobacco from the eastern tribes, then purchased 
skins with it from the Bakalahari, tanned them, and sewed them 
into karosses, then went south to purchase heifer-calves with them, 
cows being the highest form of riches known, as I have often 
noticed from their asking “if Queen Victoria had many cows.” 
The compact they enter into is mutually beneficial, but injustice 
and wrong are often perpetrated by one tribe of Bechuanas gomg 
among the Bakalahari of another tribe, and compelhng them to 
dehver up the skins wliich they may be keeping for their friends. 
They are a timid race, and in bodily development often resemble 
the aborigines of Austraha. They have tliin legs and arms, and 
large protruding abdomens caused by the coarse indigestible food 
they eat. Their cliildren’s eyes lack lustre. I never saw them 
at play. A few Bechuanas may go into a village of Bakalahari, 
and domineer over the whole with impunity; but when these 
same adventurers meet the Buslnnen, they are fain to change 
their manners to fawning sycophancy; they know that, if the 
