Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/102

78 took some care of their offspring, those of the Katia were Bushmen, who cared nothing at all for the children or their mothers. In their habits they are even more degraded than ordinary Bushmen, perhaps from being regarded and treated as outcasts by each of the races from which they sprang. Those along the Nosop hardly knew the use of water, for there was none in that locality, and depended entirely upon wild melons for the means of quenching thirst. Their food consisted of bulbs and roots containing little nourishment, with rarely flesh of any animal, it mattered not of what kind or whether fresh or putrid. It causes no surprise to learn that they were almost inconceivably stupid, living in such