G. Weitzecker (a) gives a report of a large painting, in a cave at Thaba Phatsoua district of Léribé, here presented as Fig. 142, containing eighteen characters, with the addition of eight boys’ heads. It represents the flight of Bushman women before some Zulu Kaffirs (Matebele). The description, translated, is as follows:
Fig. 142.—Petroglyph in Léribé, South Africa.
As usual, the Bushmen are represented as dwarfs and painted in bright color as contrasted with the Kaffirs, who are painted large and of dark color. The scene is full of life, a true artistic conception, and in the details there are many important things to be noted. For this reason I add a sketch of it, with the figures numbered, in order to be able to send you some brief annotations.
I will premise that as far as the women are concerned, in the small figures, no mistaken notion should be entertained in regard to the anterior appendages which catch, or rather strike, the eye in some of them. There is question simply of the pudendal coverings of the Bushman women, consisting of a strip of skin, and flapping in the wind.
a seems to represent a woman in an advanced interesting condition, who in her headlong flight has lost even her mantle. She holds in her hand a mogope (disproportionate); that is to say, a gourd dipper, such as are found, I believe, among all the south African tribes.
b. This figure, besides the mogope which she holds in her left hand, carries away in her flight, steadying it on her head with her right hand, a nkho (sesuto), a baked earthenware vessel, in which drinks are kept, and of which the ethnographic museum now contains some specimens. This woman, too, has lost all her clothing except the pudendal covering, and she looks pregnant. The attitudes of flight, while maintaining equilibrium, I deem very fine.
c, f, g, h, l, m, and perhaps j. Women carrying their babies on their backs, as is the practice of the natives, in the so-called thari; that is, a sheepskin so prepared that they can fasten it to their bodies and hold it secure, even while bent to the ground or running.
l and m. Women with twins. It may be worthy of note that the painter has placed them last, hampered as they are with a double weight.
c. Apparently a woman who has fallen in her flight. Figures e and i represent men, who by their stature might be thought to be Bushmen, as also by their color, which, so far as I remember, is not the same as that of the men coming up after them, being rather similar to that of the women. In that case e would stoop to raise the woman c who has fallen, and i would point the way to the others. Otherwise, if there is question of Matebeles, which is rendered plausible by the fact that n (which evidently represents an enemy) is not larger in stature than those two, then e would stoop to snatch the baby of the fallen woman, and i would strive to catch up with the two women g and h, who flee before it.