Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 January 1879 — Bushmen. [ARTICLE]

Bushmen.

Their speech is a series of clicks, interspersed here and there by a harshsounding and utterly unintelligible guttural. In default of better food, the Bushmen will eat snakes and other reptiles, and they make a kind of bread of dried locusts, pounding them between stones, and kneading into cakes the mealy substance thus produced. Although these diminutive savages present one of the lowest forms of humakity—the South American Brotocudo being, perhaps, yet a degree nearer to the animal type—they are possessed of a good deal of cunning, and even bravery of a certain sort. Thus, they will not only stalk game of the smaller kinds, but even tne lion itself, keeping carefully to leeward, so that their scent shall be unperceived, and, creeping upon their bellies to within a few yards of him, when they will let fly one of their tiny poisoned arrows, and the doom of the king of beasts is sealed In hunting the ostrich, they contrive to get sufficiently near it under cover of a screen made of the skin and feathers of tbo same bird, which they advanco by degrees, moving the head or neck cleverly, in imitation of one of them feeding. The Bushmen are a very revengeful little people, and think nothing of ham-stringing a whole herd of cattle in retaliation for a real or imaginary grievance, and on account of their deadly, although insignificant-looking weapons, the Boors are much afraid <3 them, and shoot them dovyn like dogs when they get the opportunity. And yet it seems a 3 if it ought not to be so absolutely impossible to civilize these strange creatures, who are clearly not devoid of intelligence, their cave dwellings being constantly found adorned with spirited drawings of the animals of the Veldt, traced with some kinds of colored clays and pigments that seem to defy the effects of time.— Spectator.