The effect of native music on an European ear has already been mentioned on [page 264]. Dr. Lichtenstein, himself a good musician, corroborates Burchell’s account, and speaks no less highly, though in more technical and scientific language, of that music, and the peculiar scale on which it is formed.
“We were by degrees so accustomed to the monotonous sound that our sleep was never disturbed by it; nay, it rather lulled us to sleep. Heard at a distance, there is nothing unpleasant in it, but something plaintive and soothing. Although no more than six tones can be produced from it, which do not besides belong to our gamut, but form intervals quite foreign to it, yet the kind of vocal sound of these tones, the uncommon nature of the rhythm, and even the oddness, I may say wildness, of the harmony, give to this music a charm peculiar to itself. I venture to make use of the term ‘harmony,’ for so it may indeed be called, since, although the intervals be not the same as ours, they stand in a proportion perfectly regular and intelligible, as well as pleasing to the ear.
“Between the principal tones and the octave lie only three intervals; the first is at least somewhat deeper than our great third; the second lies in the middle, between the little and the great fifth; and the third between the great sixth and the little seventh; so that a person might imagine he hears the modulation first in the smallest seventh accord. Yet everyone lies higher in proportion to the principal tone; the ear feels less the desire of breaking off in the pure triple sound; it is even more satisfied without it. Practised players continue to draw out the second, sometimes even the third, interval, in the higher octave. Still these high tones are somewhat broken, and seldom pure octaves of the corresponding deep tones. Melodies, properly speaking, are never to be heard; it is only a change of the same tones long protracted, the principal tone being struck before every one. It deserves to be remarked, that the intervals in question do not properly belong to the instrument; they are, in truth, the psalmodial music of the African savages.”
There is nothing more easy than to theorize, and nothing more difficult than to make the theory “hold water,” as the saying is. I knew a learned philologist, who elaborated a theory on the structure of language, and illustrated it by careful watching of his successive children, and noting the mode in which they struggled through their infantile lispings into expression. First came inarticulate sounds, which none but the mother could understand, analogous to the cries of the lower animals, and employed because the yet undeveloped mind had not advanced beyond the animal stage of existence. Then came onomatopœia, or imitative sounds, and so, by regular degrees, through substantives, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, the powers of language were systematically developed. This theory answered very well with the first two children, but broke down utterly with the third, whose first utterance was, “Don’t tease, go away.”
So has it been with the Bosjesman race; and, while they have been described as the most degraded of the great human family, signs have been discovered which show that they have some knowledge of the rudiments of art. I allude here to the celebrated Bosjesman paintings which are scattered through the country, mostly in caves and on rocks near water springs, and which are often as well drawn as those produced so plentifully by the American Indians. They almost invariably represent figures of men and beasts, and in many cases the drawing is sufficiently good to enable the spectator to identity the particular animals which the native artist has intended to delineate.
The following account of some of these drawings is taken from the notes of Mr. Christie, which he has liberally placed at my disposal:—
“I cannot add much to what is written of them, except to allude to what are termed Bushman paintings, found in caverns and on flat stone surfaces near some of their permanent water supplies. I have only met with two instances of the former paintings, and they were in a cave in the side of a krantz, in the north part of the Zwart Ruggens. I came upon them while hunting koodoos. One side of the cavern was covered with outlines of animals. Only the upper part was distinguishable, and evidently represented the wildebeest, or gnoo, the koodoo, quagga, &c. The figures were very rudely drawn, and the colors used were dull-red and black, and perhaps white; the latter may possibly have been a stalactite deposition from water.
“The other instance was near an outspan place on the Karroo road to Graff Reinet, known as Pickle Fountain, where there is a permanent spring of fresh water, near the course of an ancient stream now dry. On a flat piece of sandstone which had once formed part of the bank of the stream were the remains of a drawing, which may have been the outline of a man with a bow and arrow, and a dog, but it was so weather-worn that little more could be made out than the fact of its being a drawing. The colors used, as in the cave, were red and black. At the time of my seeing the drawings, I had with me a Bushman, named Booy (who was born near what is marked in the map as the Commissioner’s Salt Pan), but he could give me no information on the subject of the paintings, and I am rather inclined to think that they are the work of one of the Hottentot tribes now extinct.
“My Bushman was a very shrewd fellow, but, although I had been at that time for some years among the natives, I had not become aware of the poverty of their intellect. I had shown them drawings numberless times, had described them, and listened to their remarks, but had not then discovered that even the most intelligent had no idea of a picture beyond a simple outline. They cannot understand the possibility of perspective, nor how a curved surface can be shown on a flat sheet of paper.”
Together with this account, Mr. Christie transmitted a copy of a similar drawing found in a cavern in the George district. The color used in the drawings is red, upon a yellow ground—the latter tint being that of the stone on which they were delineated. The subject of the drawing is rather obscure. The figures are evidently intended to represent men, but they are unarmed, and present the peculiarity of wearing headdresses, such as are not used by any of the tribes with whom the Bosjesmans could have come in contact. They might have often seen the Kaffirs, with their war ornaments of feathers, and the Hottentots with their rude skin caps, but no South African tribe wears a headdress which could in any way be identified with these. Partly on this account, and partly because the figures are not armed with bows and arrows, as is usual in figures that are intended to represent Bosjesmans, Mr. Christie is of opinion that many years ago a boat’s crew may have landed on the coast, and that the Bosjesmans who saw them recorded the fact by this rock-picture.