e 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
t