Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/110

86 down the coast, and probably were already far beyond the latitude they were in. Northward their way was blocked by the enemy they were endeavouring to escape from. Their choice of a route was thus limited, and even in the country apparently open to them, it was only to the south-west that they could proceed in safety. In migrations such as this, the line of least resistance is of course followed, but in the present instance that had to be determined by more than the usual considerations. It was not only the absence of enemies more powerful than themselves, and the physical features of the country to be traversed, its mountains and rivers, that the Hottentot fugitives had to take into account. The question was complicated to them by the existence of the tsetse fly in a broad belt of land to the south, which barred their retreat with cattle in that direction. That insect alone, whose sting is fatal to domestic animals, would have prevented them from crossing the Zambesi until they had travelled very far to the westward. The Bushmen could not oppose them with any chance of success, or they could not have journeyed with their women and children, much less have driven their flocks and herds, through the country, for no right is recognised by savages and barbarians but the right of the strong, even as men observe it to be among the lower animals.

Naturally, all details of the long journey have been lost, the only circumstance preserved by tradition being the point from which it commenced. That it must have been very slow after the danger of immediate pursuit was over, seems certain, however. Cows and sheep cannot be transferred hastily from one kind of pasture to another without heavy loss, and there could have been no motive for hurrying on when only Bushmen were in the neighbourhood. Probably many years were spent at each favourable halting place, though the design of a continued advance, once initiated, was never entirely lost sight of.

At length the shore of the Atlantic was reached, and then the wave of migration turned to the south. In some parts of this course, after the twentieth parallel of latitude is passed, the pasture is better at a distance inland than on the margin of the sea. The rainfall along the coast, owing to the prevailing