from the stem. The natives strike the ground on the circumference of the circle with stones, till, by hearing a difference of sound, they know the water-bearing tuber to be beneath. They then dig down a foot or so, and find it.
But the most surprising plant of the Desert is the "Kengwe or Keme" ('Cucumis caffer'), the watermelon. In years when more than the usual quantity of rain falls, vast tracts of the country are literally covered with these melons; this was the case annually when the fall of rain was greater than it is now, and the Bakwains sent trading parties every year to the lake. It happens commonly once every ten or eleven years, and for the last three times its occurrence has coincided with an extraordinarily wet season. Then animals of every sort and name, including man, rejoice in the rich supply. The elephant, true lord of the forest, revels in this fruit, and so do the different species of rhinoceros, although naturally so diverse in their choice of pasture. The various kinds of antelopes feed on them with equal avidity, and lions, hyaenas, jackals, and mice, all seem to know and appreciate the common blessing. These melons are not, however, all of them eatable; some are sweet, and others so bitter that the whole are named by the Boers the "bitter watermelon". The natives select them by striking one melon after another with a hatchet, and applying the tongue to the gashes. They thus readily distinguish between the bitter and sweet. The bitter are deleterious, but the sweet are quite wholesome. This peculiarity of one species of plant bearing both sweet and bitter fruits occurs also in a red, eatable cucumber, often met with in the country. It is about four inches long, and about an inch and a half in diameter. It is of a bright scarlet color when ripe. Many are bitter, others quite sweet. Even melons in a garden may be made bitter by a few bitter kengwe in the vicinity. The bees convey the pollen from one to the other.
The human inhabitants of this tract of country consist of Bushmen and Bakalahari. The former are probably the aborigines of the southern portion of the continent, the latter the remnants of the first emigration of Bechuanas. The Bushmen live in the Desert from choice, the Bakalahari from compulsion, and both possess an intense love of liberty. The Bushmen are exceptions in language, race, habits, and appearance. They are the only real nomads in the country; they never cultivate the soil, nor rear any domestic animal save wretched dogs. They are so intimately acquainted with the habits of the game that they follow them in their migrations, and prey upon them from place to place, and thus prove as complete a check upon their inordinate increase as the other carnivora. The chief subsistence of the Bushmen is the flesh of game, but that is eked out by what the women collect of roots and beans, and fruits of the Desert. Those who inhabit the hot sandy plains of the Desert possess generally thin, wiry forms, capable of great exertion and of severe privations. Many are of low stature, though not dwarfish; the specimens brought to Europe have been selected, like costermongers' dogs, on account of their extreme ugliness; consequently, English ideas of the whole tribe are formed in the same way as if the ugliest specimens of the English were exhibited in Africa as characteristic of the entire British nation. That they are like baboons is in some degree true, just as these and other simiae are in some points frightfully human.
The Bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest of the Bechuana tribes, and they are said to have possessed enormous herds of the large horned cattle mentioned by Bruce, until they were despoiled of them and driven into the Desert by a fresh migration of their own nation. Living ever since on the same plains with the Bushmen, subjected to the same influences of climate, enduring the same thirst, and subsisting on similar food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account for difference in races. The Bakalahari retain in undying vigor the Bechuana love for agriculture and domestic animals. They hoe their gardens annually, 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 wells with a bit of ostrich egg-shell, 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 supplies of spears, knives, tobacco, and dogs, in exchange for the skins of the animals they may kill. These are small carnivora of the feline species, including two species of jackal, the dark and the golden; the former, "motlose" ('Megalotis capensis' or 'Cape fennec'), has the warmest fur the country yields; the latter, "pukuye" ('Canis mesomelas' and 'C. 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' ('steinbuck') skins are got too, besides those of lions, leopards, panthers, and hyaenas. During the time I was in the Bechuana country, between twenty and thirty thousand skins were made up into karosses; part of them were worn by the inhabitants, and part sold to traders: many, I believe, find their way to China. The Bakwains 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 going among the Bakalahari of another tribe, and compelling them to deliver up the skins which they may be keeping for their friends. They are a timid race, and in bodily development often resemble the aborigines of Australia. They have thin legs and arms, and large, protruding abdomens, caused by the coarse, indigestible food they eat. Their children'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 Bushmen, they are fain to change their manners to fawning sycophancy; they know that, if the request for tobacco is refused, these free sons of the Desert may settle the point as to its possession by a poisoned arrow.
The dread of visits from Bechuanas of strange tribes causes the Bakalahari to choose their residences far from water; and they not unfrequently hide their supplies by filling the pits with sand and making a fire over the spot. When they wish to draw water for use, the women come with twenty or thirty of their water-vessels in a bag or net on their backs. These water-vessels consist of ostrich egg-shells, with a hole in the end of each, such as would admit one's finger. The women tie a bunch of grass to one end of a reed about two feet long, and insert it in a hole dug as deep as the arm will reach; then ram down the wet sand firmly round it. Applying the mouth to the free end of the reed, they form a vacuum in the grass beneath, in which the water collects, and in a short time rises into the mouth. An egg-shell is placed on the ground alongside the reed, some inches below the mouth of the sucker. A straw guides the water into the hole of the vessel, as she draws mouthful after mouthful from below. The water is made to pass along the outside, not through the straw. If any one will attempt to squirt water into a bottle placed some distance below his mouth, he will soon perceive the wisdom of the Bushwoman's contrivance for giving the stream direction by means of a straw. The whole stock of water is thus passed through the woman's mouth as a pump, and, when taken home, is carefully buried. I have come into villages where, had we acted a domineering part, and rummaged every hut, we should have found nothing; but by sitting down quietly, and waiting with patience until the villagers were led to form a favorable opinion of us, a woman would bring out a shellful of the precious fluid from I know not where.
The so-called Desert, it may be observed, is by no means a useless tract of country. Besides supporting multitudes of both small and large animals, it sends something to the market of the world, and has proved a refuge to many a fugitive tribe—to the Bakalahari first, and to the other Bechuanas in turn—as their lands were overrun by the tribe of true Caffres, called Matebele. The Bakwains, the Bangwaketze, and the Bamangwato all fled thither; and the Matebele marauders, who came from the well-watered east, perished by hundreds in their attempts to follow them. One of the Bangwaketze chiefs, more wily than the rest, sent false guides to lead them on a track where, for hundreds of miles, not a drop of water could be found, and they perished in consequence. Many Bakwains perished too. Their old men, who could have told us ancient stories, perished in these flights. An intelligent Mokwain related to me how the Bushmen effectually balked a party of his tribe which lighted on their village in a state of burning thirst. Believing, as he said, that nothing human could subsist without water, they demanded some, but were coolly told by these Bushmen
