lls
of a Bushman who thought his god would consider him a "clever fellow"
because he had murdered a man, two women, and two children. When
fathers and mothers become too old to be of any use, or to take care
of themselves, they are abandoned in the desert to be devoured alive
by wild beasts. "I have often reasoned with the natives on this cruel
practice," says the missionary Moffat (99); "in reply to which, they
would only laugh." "It appears an awful exhibition of human
depravity," he adds, "when children compel their parents to perish for
want, or to be devoured by beasts of prey in a desert, _from no other
motive but sheer laziness._" Kicherer says there are a few cases of
"natural affection" sufficient to raise these creatures to "a level
with the brute creation," Moffat, too, refers to exceptional cases of
kindness, but the only instance he gives (112) describes their terror
on finding he had drunk some water poisoned by them, and their
gladness when he escaped--which terror and gladness were, however,
very probably inspired not by sympathy but by the idea of punishment
at causing the death of a white man. Chapman himself, the chosen
champion of the Bushmen, relates (I., 67) how, having heard of Bushmen
rescuing and carrying home some Makalolos whom they had found dying of
thirst in the desert, he believed it at first; but he adds:

"Had I at that time possessed a sufficient knowledge of
native character, I should not have been so credulous
as to have listened to this report, for the idea of
Bushmen carrying human beings whom they had found half
dead out of a desert implies an act of charity quite
inconsistent with their natural disposition and
habits."

Barrow declares (269) that if Bushmen come across a Hottentot guarding
his master's cattle,

"not contented with putting him to immediate death,
they torture him by every means of cruelty that their
invention can frame, as drawing out his bowels, tearing
off his nails, scalping, and other acts equally
savage."

They sometimes bury a victim up to the neck in the ground and thus
leave him to be pecked to death by crows.

"LOVE IN ALL THEIR MARRIAGES"

And yet--I say it once more--we are asked to believe there is "love in
all the marriages" of these fiendish creatures--beings who, as
Kicherer says, live in holes or caves, where they "lie close together
like pigs in a sty" and of whom Moffat declar