The uncivilized races of men in all countries of the world; vol. 1 of 2 / Being a comprehensive account of their manners and customs, and of their physical, social, mental, moral and religious characteristics

by J. G. Wood

However, they soon had their revenge. One dark evening the young men were amusing themselves with setting fire to some dried reeds a few hundred yards from the camp. While they were enjoying the waves of fire as they rolled along, driven by the wind, the Hottentots stole behind the reeds, and with the shell of an ostrich egg imitated the roar of an approaching lion so accurately, that the young men began to shout in order to drive the lion away, and at last ran to the camp screaming with terror. Of course the songs that were sung in the camp that night were full of reference to Bosjesmans and lions.

(1.) CARD PLAYING.
(See [page 236].)

(2.) SHOOTING CATTLE.
(See [page 254].)

The Hottentot has a constitutional inability to compute time. A traveller can never discover the age of a Hottentot, partly because the man himself has not the least notion of his age, or indeed of annual computation at all, and partly because a Hottentot looks as old at thirty-five as at sixty-five. He can calculate the time of day by the position of the sun with regard to the meridian, but his memory will not serve him so far as to enable him to compute annual time by the height of the sun above the horizon. As is the case with most savage races, his unit of time is the new moon, and he makes all his reckonings of time to consist of so many moons. An amusing instance of this deficiency is given by Dr. Lichtenstein, in his “Travels in South Africa”:—

“A Hottentot, in particular, engaged our attention by the simplicity with which he told his story. After he had harangued for a long time in broken Dutch, we collected so much as that he agreed with a colonist to serve him for a certain time, at fixed wages, as herdsman, but before the time expired they had parted by mutual agreement. The dispute was how much of the time remained; consequently, how much wages the master had a right to deduct from the sum which was to have been paid for the whole time.

“To illustrate this matter, the Hottentot gave us the following account:—‘My Baas,’ said he, ‘will have it that I was to serve so long’ (and here he stretched out his left arm and hand, and laid the little finger of his right hand directly under the arm); ‘but I say that I only agreed to serve so long,’ and here he laid his right hand upon the joint of the left. Apparently, he meant by this to signify that the proportion of the time he had served with that he had agreed to serve was the same as the proportion of what he pointed out of the arm to the whole length of it. At the same time he showed us a small square stick, in which, at every full moon, he had made a little notch, with a double one at the full moon when he quitted the colonist’s service. As the latter was present, and several of the colonists and Hottentots, who attended as auditors, could ascertain exactly the time of entering on the service, the conclusion was, as is very commonly the case, that both the master and the servant were somewhat in the wrong; that the one reckoned too much of the time expired, the other too little; and that, according to the Hottentot’s mode of measuring, the time expired came to about the knuckle.

“The Hottentots understand no other mode of measuring time but by lunar months and days; they have no idea of the division of the day into hours. If a man asks a Hottentot how far it is to such a place, he either makes no answer, or points to a certain spot in the heavens, and says, ‘The sun will be there when you get to it.’”