Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/637

Rh is deep, but its navigation is impeded by a bar, which can only be passed by vessels drawing not more than 8 or 9 feet of water, except at spring-tides, when there is a rise of from 8 or 10 feet. Bushire carries on a considerable trade, particularly with Calcutta, Bombay, and Java. Its nil- ports are indigo, sugar, rice, spices, steel, cotton a/ id woollen goods, coffee, &amp;lt;fec. ; and its principal exports are raw silk, opium, Kerman wool, shawls, silk goods, carpets, horses, dried fruits, wine, grain, copper, turquoises, pearls, asafcetida, and gall-nuts. The climate is excessively hot, particularly in the months of June, July, and August, The water is very bad; that fit for drinking requires to be brought in goat-skins from wells, distant l- mile from the city walls. The population, is variously estimated at from 10,000 to 20,000. The importance of Bushire has much increased of late years. It is now not only the headquarters of the English naval squadron in the Persian Gulf, and the land terminus of the Indo-European line of telegraph, but it also forms the chief station in these seas of the British Indian Steam Navigation Company, which runs its vessels weekly between Bombay and Bussorah, and it is further expected that, if our Foreign Juris diction Act should be applied to Persia, an appellate court will be formed at Bushire. In the meantime several Euro pean mercantile houses have been established in the town, and there can be no doubt that if the means of communica tion with the interior were improved, trade would rapidly increase, Notwithstanding, indeed, the drawbacks of bad roads, insufficient means of transport (wheeled carriages being unknown and beasts of burthen being few and dear), want of security, and illegal exactions, the annual value of the Bushire trade is now estimated at 600,000, of which one-quarter represents the exports and three-quarters the imports, the balance of trade against Persia at this single port thus amounting to about 300,000 a year, which is met by a constant drain of the precious metals to India. During the late war with Persia (1856-57) Bushire sur rendered to a British force, and remained in our occupation for some months. The town yields a yearly revenue of about 15,000, mainly derived from customs, and is the chief place of a district, extending for 300 miles along the sea-coast from Dilem to Congoon, which is assessed in the Shirdz register at about 25,000 per annum. At Rishire, in the vicinity of Bushire, there are extensive ruins, among which bricks stamped with cuneiform legends have been found, showing that the place was a very old Elamito, settlement under the kings of Susa. It continued also to flourish under the name of Iliv-Ardeshir, during tho Sassanian period, and only fell into decay after the A rah conquest, its place as the great emporium of trado. being successively taken by Siraf (the modern Tahiri), Keis, and Ormuz. The British commercial factory was transferred from Gombroon (modern Bander Abbdss) to Bushire during the last century; but the duties of the Enquire resident at present are exclusively political.  BUSHMEN, or, so named by the British and Dutch colonists of the Cape, but calling themselves Saab or Saan, are an aboriginal race of South Africa, allied in some respects to the Hottentots, but differing from them in several essential points, and along with these having nothing whatever in common with the Kaffre or the Negro. The area in which they are found in nomadic families may be described as extending from the inner ranges of the mountains of Cape Cclony, through the central Kalahari desert to near Lake Ngami, and thence north-westward to the districts about the Ovambo River north of Darnara Land, in about 18 S. lat., or only over the most barren portions of the South African deserts, into which they have been pressed by the encroachments of the Kaffre, Hottentots, and Europeans, a few also remaining in the most inaccessible clefts of tho Drakenberg range about the sources of tho Vaal. They rank with the savages of Australia as the lowest existing typo of mankind, human nature being nowhere seen in a more destitute or degraded condition. The Bushmen with whom tho colonists of the south have come most in contact are of very small stature, of a dirty i yellow colour, and generally repulsive countenance. In j type they somewhat resemble the Mongolians ; the cheek- bores are large and prominent, the eyes deeply set and crafty in expression, the nose small and depressed ; tho hair appears in small woolly tufts with spaces between. Among 150 of their number measured by the traveller Barrow, tho tallest man was 4 feet 9 inches, the tallest wrman 4 feet 4 inches. A hollowed back and protruding slcmach, with thick hinder parts and small limbs, are frequent characteristics of their figure, but many of them are well-proportioned, all being active and capable of enduring great privations and fatigue. Northward the Bi.shmen appear to improve both in general condition and in stature. Those met with towards Lake Ngami by Dr Livingstone are described by him as differing from those of the thirsty plains of the Kalahari, being of darker colour and of good proportions ; some of those seen by the traveller Baines in this region are also noticed as being taller, some 5 feet 6 inches in height. Their clothing consists of a mantle of skins, termed a kaross ; bub they are fond of ornament, and decorate the arms and legs with beads and iron or copper rings, and the women sometimes stain their faces with red colour. For dwellings in the plains they have low huts formed of reed mats, or may simply occupy a hole in the earth ; in the mountain districts they make a shelter among the rocks by hanging mats on the windward side. They do not possess cattle, and have no animals of any sort excepting a few half-wild dogs, nor have they the smallest rudiments of agriculture. Living by hunting, they are thoroughly acquainted with the habits and movements of every kind of wild animals, following the antelope herds in their migrations. Then weapon is a small bow, strung with twisted sinew, used with arrows, which are neatly made of a reed with a barbed head of bo&amp;gt; o, sometimes tipped with a triangular piece of iron, and always coated with a gummy poisonous compound, which is variously made in different localities. The chief sources of the poison are the milky juice of the Amaryllis toxiairia, which is abundant in South Africa, or of the Euphorbia arbor escens, generally mixed with the venom of snakes or of a large black spider of the genus Mygale ; or the entrails of a very deadly caterpillar, called N gwa or Kaa, are used alone. From their use of these poisons the Bushmen are held in great dread by the neigh bouring races. A rude implement, called the graaf stock or digging-stick by the boers,- consisting of a sharpened spike of hardwood over which a stone, ground to a circular form and perforated, is passed and secured by a wedge, is used by the Bushmen in uprooting the succulent tuberous roots of the several species of creeping plants of the desert. These perforated stones have a special interest in indicating the former extension of the race of the Bushmen, since tbey are found far beyond the area now occupied by their families. There does not appear to be the least approach to any tribal unity in the wandering groups of the Bushmen; they have no chiefs, bodily strength alone forming a dis tinction among them. Their language, which exists in sever;:! dialects, is riot intelligible to the Hottentots, but has in common with it the nasal, snapping, hissing, or grunt ing sounds, only used more numerously. The Hottentot language is more agglutinative, the Bushman s more mono syllabic ; the former recognizes a gender in names, the latter does not ; the Hottentots form the plural by a suffix, 