through various stages of barbarism to civilisation is represented on the continental plateau by the Bushmen, all hunters; the Hottentots, mainly herdsmen; the Bantus, mainly husbandmen; the Boers, mainly herdsmen and husbandmen; and the Britons, who constitute the higher cultural element.

All these, without exception, are here intruders in the order in which they are named. First came, in remote prehistoric times, the Bushmen, whose primeval homes have now been traced to the Nyasa and Tanganyika lands beyond the Zambesi. Everywhere in this region have been found those peculiar rounded stones, with a hole drilled through the centre, which are still used by the southern Bushmen for weighting their digging-sticks.

In these northern lands they must have long dwelt in contact or association with the pygmy peoples who are dispersed over the Central African forest tracts, and of whom they are regarded by many observers as somewhat remote kinsmen. Like the Batwa and other Negritos ("Little Negroes") of the Congo basin, they are undersized, averaging about feet 6 inches, have the same dirty yellowish

4

complexion, and the same short black woolly hair growing in tufts, which, however, are spread evenly over the scalp, and not separated by intervening bald spaces as is often asserted.

But there are differences, which may well be explained by the more open, treeless, or scrubby environment of the southern groups. These are especially distinguished, like the cave-dwellers of Dordogne in the Stone Ages, by a remarkable sense of pictorial art, as shown by the rock paintings of men and animals true to life found in their caves and rock-shelters all over South Africa. The scenes here depicted, which some think may even be pictorial writings, that is, intended to record particular events, differ greatly in aim and style.

Many are obviously caricatures, roughly but spiritedly drawn in black paint. Fights and hunts are very numerous, while there are also drawings of figures and even incidents amongst white people as well as native tribes. Actual portraiture is even suggested, and great care is bestowed on the feathers, beads, tassels, and other adornments of the head-dress. Mr. Mark Hutchinson goes so far as to assert that in the

higher class of drawings perspective and foreshortening are correctly rendered.1

Dr. Schulz, who has reproduced a considerable number of the paintings, tells us that many of a brownish red colour, depicting scenes from their daily life, are found on the exposed face of the sandstone rocks which project from the frowning heights of the Drakenberg and neighbouring mountains, forming the rockshelters formerly inhabited by the Bushmen. "Not the least interesting feature of these paintings is that they have existed exposed to the inclemencies of the South African climate through a range of at least fifty years, and yet are only slightly injured, more by the weathering of the rock than by the fading of the pigment."

"2

But this æsthetic feeling is not the only proof of the remarkable intelligence of the Bushman people, one of whom is mentioned by Sir H. H. Johnston, who, besides his own language, was familiar with Bantu, Dutch, English, and Portuguese.

They have also an extremely rich oral folk

1 Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1882, p. 464.

2 Op. cit., p. 186.

lore literature, comprising myths, legends, fables, and especially animal stories, in which the hare, mantis, crocodile, tortoise, ichneumon, jackal, and even the moon, are each made to speak with its own proper click. 'Among the

Bushman sounds," writes Dr. Bleek, "which are hereby affected and often entirely commuted, are principally the clicks. These are either converted into other consonants, as in the language of the tortoise; or into palatals and compounds, dentals and sibilants, as in the language of the ichneumon; or into clicks otherwise unheard in Bushman, as in the language of the jackal. The moon, and it seems also the hare and the anteater, substitute a most unpronounceable click in place of all others, excepting the lip click. Another animal, the blue crane, differs in its speech from the ordinary Bushman mainly by the insertion of a tt at the end of the first syllable of almost every word." A great quantity of this Bushman literature, collected by Dr. Bleek, is preserved in manuscript form in Sir George Grey's library at Cape Town.

1

Surprise has often been expressed at such 1 Report, May 1875.

SO

proofs of mental ability, which seems strangely at variance with the low physical qualities, and especially the debased social condition, of the Bushman race. It would almost seem as if in their present southern domain their normal development had been arrested by untoward circumstances, an uncongenial environment, and above all the advent of other and stronger peoples, by whom they have for generations been oppressed, enslaved, and hunted down like wild beasts. But when we are told that they dig with their nails underground dwellings, from which they are called "Earthmen," exaggeration may be suspected. At least, such descriptions are more applicable to the Vaalpens, with whom they are often confounded.

At present, very few Bushmen are left in the Boer States, while those of Bechuanaland are rising in the social scale since the extension of the British protectorate north to the Zambesi. Their state of servitude to the Bamangwato and other Bechuana peoples has been abolished, and all are now treated as human beings, with equal rights before the law. The Rev. J. Mackenzie, who has done so much to promote