African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

The first Bushmen I ever saw were met with on the banks of the Orange river on January 4, 1872, in the country then occupied by the Korana chief Klas Lucas and his people.

In my diary of that date I made the following notes of this experience:—

"January 4, 1872.—Whilst poking about along the river, looking for guinea-fowls, I came upon a Bushman's lair amongst the trees by the water's edge. A few boughs woven together and forming a sort of canopy was all they had in the way of a habitation; the only weapons they possessed were rude-looking bows and neatly made poisoned arrows, some about two and a half feet in length, fashioned from reeds, whilst others were only a foot long. Their language seemed even fuller of clicks and clucks than the Korana, and altogether to a casual observer they appeared to be very few steps removed from the brute creation. The following day three more Bushmen came to the waggon begging for tobacco; they were taller and better looking than those I had first seen."

During the following month (February 1872) I met with a good many more Bushmen, and hunted with them in the Southern Kalahari to the west of the Scurfde Berg. At that time these people had no firearms of any kind, but they all carried small toy-like bows and bark quivers containing poisoned arrows.

During the twenty years succeeding my first meeting with Bushmen on the banks of the Orange river, I met with scattered communities of this primitive race throughout every portion of the interior of the country, where Bantu tribes had not been able to establish themselves owing to the aridity of the soil and the scarcity of water in sufficient quantities to satisfy the needs of a settled population possessed of large herds of cattle, sheep, and goats.

Thus at least nineteen-twentieths of the whole of the enormous area of country included in the Bechwanaland Protectorate are entirely uninhabited except by the descendants of the aboriginal Bushmen, the more civilised Bantu living crowded together in a few large towns. Khama's old town of Shoshong, which was abandoned more than twenty years ago, was said to contain 20,000 inhabitants, practically his whole tribe.

In the last Annual Report of the Transvaal Native Affairs Department, it is stated that the Bushmen living in the valley of the Limpopo in the Northern Transvaal are known as Maseroa, and are distinct from the ordinary South African Bushmen.

All the Bushmen I have seen, whether those living on or near the Orange river, or along the eastern border of the Kalahari, or throughout the Bechwanaland Protectorate, from the Chobi river to Lake N'gami and the Botletlie, and from thence to the Limpopo, appeared to me to be very much the same in appearance and absolutely identical in their ways of life and the fashion of their dress and weapons. Here and there no doubt there has been a certain admixture of Bantu blood amongst them; but seeing how little they vary as a rule both in appearance and in habits and manner of life in widely separated areas, I think that for the most part they must be a pure and distinct race throughout the greater part of the countries they inhabit.

The name given by Khama's people to the Bushmen living in the country ruled over by that chief, which is spelt "Maseroa" in the Report above referred to, is pronounced—at least so it always seemed to me—Ma-sarr-wa (with the "r" very much rolled), and the singular—the word signifying "a Bushman"—ought, I should think, to be Li-sar-wa.

The name "Vaalpens," often applied by the Boers to Bushmen, signifies "grey belly," and has been given to them because, having no huts, but sleeping as they do in the open, they often lie so close to the fire on cold nights that they blister themselves on their shins and abdomens. The skin thus burnt peels off and is replaced by new skin of a lighter colour than that of the rest of the body. Bushmen may often be seen with their legs and bellies covered with such unsightly scars, and it is such blistered patches of skin on their abdomens which has earned them the name of "Vaalpens," or "grey belly."