Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/122

98 Their usual method of preparing meat for food was to cut it in long narrow strips, which were laid upon embers and heated through rather than cooked, then one end was taken into the mouth, and a piece was cut off with a knife or an assagai close to the lips. The intestines of animals, after hardly any cleansing, were consumed in the same manner. Sometimes, however, flesh was boiled in earthenware pots, though it was not much relished in that way.

Salt was not used to flavour food or to preserve flesh or fish, though the Hottentots relished it by itself just as Europeans do sugar. They obtained it without difficulty from the numerous saltpans in the country. They rolled their meat when grilled in the ashes of wood, which European travellers who have tried it assert to be a fairly good substitute for salt.

In addition to milk and the flesh of oxen and sheep, of which they rejected no part except the gall, the food of the Hottentots consisted of the flesh of birds and wild animals of every kind, great and small, obtained in the chase, locusts, tortoises, and various descriptions of wild plants and fruits. A variety of articles of diet consumed at the same time, such as civilised people consider necessary for their comfort, is not by any means essential to the enjoyment of barbarians. The Hottentots often lived for months together upon milk alone, without ever becoming weary of it. When flesh was to be had, it was consumed without any accompaniment. Agriculture, even in its simplest forms, was unknown to them, so that they had neither grain of any kind to make bread with nor garden produce.

Like the Bushmen, they knew how to make an intoxicating drink of honey, of which large quantities were to be had in the season of flowers, and this they used to excess while it lasted. Like those savages also they were acquainted with that powerful intoxicant dacha or wild hemp, and whenever it was procurable they smoked it with a pipe made of the horn of an antelope. That its effects were pernicious was recognised by themselves, still they could not refrain from