Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/114

90 protect itself and its cattle from Bushmen and ravenous animals. For a. single family, or even two or three families together, to settle separately on the pasture of a tribe and to keep up connection with the main body was not possible. Each Hottentot community was thus compact, but limited in number to a few hundred or at most to a couple of thousand souls. It occupied a single village, or kraal as now generally termed.

From the neighbourhood of the kraal the Bushmen were cleared off as far as possible, but in many instances they still occupied the mountains and seized every opportunity to plunder cattle from the intruders and to put any stray individual of either sex to death. The feeling between the two peoples was in general one of intense animosity, though there were occasional instances of a compact between a Hottentot tribe and the Bushmen in its neighbourhood, under which the former provided food in times of great distress, and the latter acted as scouts and gave warning of any approaching danger. This was only the case, however, when the Bushmen were so reduced in number as to be incapable of carrying on war.

The great interior of the country was undisturbed by the intruders, but it did not always offer an asylum to the dispossessed people. Each little band of Bushmen had there its own hunting grounds, and resented intrusion upon them as much by individuals of kindred blood as by strangers. Then they were strongly attached to the localities in which they had lived from childhood, and in many instances preferred to die rather than abandon them. Still there were some who, under exceptional circumstances, made their wav to localities far distant from the tracts they had lost, and established themselves anew on a wild mountain or an arid plain, dispossessing previous occupants as they had themselves been dispossessed of their former abode.

Such was the manner of the occupation of the South African coast by the Hottentots, and such were the effects of the invasion upon the earlier inhabitants.

The Hottentots termed themselves Khoikhoi, men of men, as they prided themselves upon their superiority over the savage hunters, and in fact they were considerably more advanced