African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

Whenever I have encountered Bushmen in this condition, they were never actually without food, but, in default of anything better, seemed to have been living for a long time past on certain kinds of berries, which were so innutritious that very large quantities had to be eaten to support life at all. The consequence was that the bellies of these slowly starving savages were always enormously distended, giving them a most grotesque though pitiable appearance.

If some large animal such as a giraffe or elephant be killed and given to a starving Bushman family they will all manage to get to the carcase, though it be miles away and they appear to be in the last stage of emaciation. Once there, it is with the men a case of "J'y suis, j'y reste," and they will not move again until every bit of the meat is eaten. The women and children have to fetch water every day, though it may be miles distant. However wasted and apparently near death Bushmen may be, once they get alongside of a dead elephant they recover flesh and regain their strength in a marvellously short space of time.

When hunting in the Linquasi district to the west of Matabeleland, in 1873, I often noticed large pieces of rhinoceros and giraffe hide which had evidently been placed by human hands high up in the branches of trees. These slabs of hide, the Bushmen told me, had belonged to animals killed by their people, and had been placed in the trees out of the reach of hyænas as a provision against starvation in times of famine.

I was once riding behind some hungry Bushmen looking for giraffe in the country between the Mababi and Botletlie rivers, when they came on a single ostrich egg lying on the ground. It was then late in September, and this egg had in all probability been laid in the previous May or June, and had lain on the ground in the broiling sun ever since.

My gaunt and hungry guides seemed greatly excited over their find, and each of them in turn held it up and shook it close to his ear. Then I saw they were going to break it, so I moved to one side, as I expected it would go off with a loud explosion. It was, however, long past that stage, all the contents of the egg having solidified into a thick brown-coloured paste at the one end. I never would have believed, if I had not experienced it, that so much smell could have been given off by so small an amount of matter. As I once heard an American lady remark of the atmosphere of a small mosque in which we had been watching some dancing Dervishes at Constantinople, it gave off "a poor odour"—one of the poorest, I think, I have ever encountered, in her sense of the word, though by many people it might have been thought too rich.

With the Bushmen, however, an egg in the hand was evidently considered to be worth more than a problematical animal in the bush, and they at once sat down, and taking turn and turn about, slowly and with evident relish licked up the fœtid contents of the treasure which fortune had thrown in their way. Up to this time we had not even seen the fresh track of a giraffe, but not long afterwards we sighted a magnificent old bull, which I managed to kill for them after a hard gallop through some very thick and thorny bush.

When I met with the first Bushmen I ever saw on the banks of the Orange river, in 1872, I was a very young man, and regarding them with some repugnance, wrote in my diary that they appeared to be very few steps removed from the brute creation. That was a very foolish and ignorant remark to make, and I have since found out that though Bushmen may possibly be to-day in the same backward state of material development and knowledge as once were the palæolithic ancestors of the most highly cultured European races in prehistoric times, yet fundamentally there is very little difference between the natures of primitive and civilised men, so that it is quite possible for a member of one of the more cultured races to live for a time quite happily and contentedly amongst beings who are often described as degraded savages, and from whom he is separated by thousands of years in all that is implied by the word "civilisation." I have hunted a great deal with Bushmen, and during 1884 I lived amongst these people continuously for several months together. On many and many a night I have slept in their encampments without even any Kafir attendants, and though I was entirely in their power, I always felt perfectly safe amongst them. As most of the men spoke Sechwana, I was able to converse with them, and found them very intelligent companions, full of knowledge concerning the habits of all the wild animals inhabiting the country in which they lived. I found the Bushmen very good-tempered people, and they are undoubtedly the best of all the natives of South Africa to have with one when in pursuit of game, as they are such wonderful trackers, and so intimately acquainted with the habits of every kind of wild animal. To be seen at their best they must be hungry, but not starving. They will then be capable of marvellous feats of endurance. I have known a Bushman run on elephant spoor in front of my horse for five hours, only very occasionally slowing down to a walk for a few minutes. He ran till it got dark, and as we had neither blankets nor food, which had been left with the Kafirs far behind, we lit a big fire, beside which we sat all night, not daring to lie down and sleep, for fear lest lions should kill my horse, which we had to watch whilst it fed round near the fire. When we took up the elephant tracks again the next morning, we had been twenty-four hours without food, and it was late in the afternoon before we were making a meal off elephant's heart. During the two days this Bushman must have walked and run for at least eighty miles without food or sleep, and he never showed the least sign of exhaustion. Living as they do in families or small communities, Bushmen have not developed any warlike qualities, and I cannot imagine any of them I have known being anxious "to seek the bubble glory at the cannon's mouth"; but for all that they are certainly more courageous with dangerous game than the generality of Kafirs. A friend of mine was once out looking for game on horseback, accompanied by a single Bushman. The Bushman, who was walking in front of the horse, suddenly spied a lion lying flat on the ground watching them, and less than fifty yards away. Raising his left hand as a sign to my friend to stop, he pointed at the crouching animal with his spear, at the same time retiring slowly backwards until he stood beside the horse. "Tauw ki-o" ("There is a lion"), he quietly said; but my friend for the life of him could not see it. The Bushman then again advanced, and taking the horse by the bridle, led it a few paces forwards, when his master at last saw the lion, and firing from the saddle, disabled it with the first shot, and finished it with a second. It was a fine big animal, but without much mane. My friend said it was the lion's eyes that he first saw, and then the twitching of its tail. He was very much pleased with the coolness and staunchness of the Bushman, quite a young man. Oh, if I had only had that Bushman for a gun-carrier on a certain day in 1877, when the most magnificently maned lion I ever saw in my life suddenly showed himself within twenty yards of me, and the wretched Makalaka who was carrying my rifle and was just behind me, instead of putting it into my outstretched hand, turned and ran off with it! Had I killed that lion, its skin would have been my trophy of trophies, but—kismet! it was not to be.

In 1874, 1877, and again in 1879, during which years I shot a great number of buffaloes along the Chobi river, and followed many of them into very thick cover after having wounded them, I always employed Bushmen to act as my gun-carriers, and better men for such work it would have been impossible to find, for not only were they always cool and self-possessed in any emergency, but the quickness of their eyesight, and their intimate knowledge of the animals we were pursuing, gave them a great advantage over the staunchest of gun-carriers drawn from any Kafir tribe.

Although the wives and children of Bushmen lead very hard lives, especially when food is scarce, and have always to keep the encampment supplied with water no matter how far it has to be carried, I have never seen them ill-treated, and I have seen both the men and the women show affection for their children. In fact, the Bushmen of South Africa, although they have never advanced beyond the primitive stage of culture attained to by their distant ancestors at a very remote period of the worlds history, are ethically much the same on the average as the members of all other races of mankind, which shows how little the fundamental nature of man has changed throughout the ages, and during the evolution and destruction of many civilisations. I have known Bushmen to be very grasping and avaricious, and to show an utter want of sympathy or kindness towards a fellow-man in distress; but has civilisation eliminated such defects of character in all members of the most highly cultured societies? Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, are crimes against the Bushman's code of morals, just as they are with more civilised peoples, and they are probably less frequently practised amongst primitive than amongst civilised races. A Bushman will resent an injury and be grateful for a kindness just like an Englishman, a Hindu, or a Red Indian. Whenever I was told, as I often was in South Africa, that all natives were black brutes who could not understand kindness and were incapable of gratitude, I always knew that the masterful gentleman or fair lady who was speaking to me had no kindness in their own natures, and that never in all their lives had they given any native the slightest reason to be grateful to them.

The Bushmen are the only really primitive race in South Africa, but, rude and uncultured though they may be, I cannot look upon them as degraded savages, but rather as a race whose development was arrested long ago, by the circumstances of their surroundings; but whose members, nevertheless, are beings whose human hearts can be touched and whose sympathies can be aroused by the kindness of another human being, however widely separated the latter may be from themselves in race and degree of culture. Well and truly has it been said by one of England's most illustrious sons, "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."