neficial, 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 f