Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/123

Rh making use of it. A few puffs of the smoke produced great exhilaration and pleasant sensations, which were shortly followed by stupor. It was fortunate for them that they were too careless to preserve a quantity of it for use at a future time, or it would have destroyed them altogether, so that as far as the use of dacha was concerned, it was well that they lived only for the day, and thought not of the morrow.

When they rose in the morning and the cows and ewes were milked and driven out to pasture they partook of food, after which they usually laid down again for an hour or two, as their ideal of happiness was a state of repose. If they had only a sufficient number of cattle to provide them with milk to live upon, there was nothing to impel them to labour, and no reason why they should exert themselves. The hours passed by in idleness, and at sunset the principal meal of the day was taken, when the men ate first and the women and children afterwards. The men were prohibited by custom from the use of several articles of diet, for instance, they would not eat hares' flesh or drink sheep's milk, but the women and children—including the boys before being initiated into the state of manhood—could use both. On the other hand the men were at liberty to eat moles, which the women were not. They could give no reasons for these restrictions of diet to the different sexes, except that the custom had come down to them from their forefathers.

Their women were more fully clothed than those of the Bushmen, but the men were usually satisfied with very little covering, and had no sense of shame in appearing altogether naked. The dress of both sexes was made of skins, commonly prepared with the hair on. When removed from the animal, the skin was stretched out and cleansed with scrapers of any fleshy matter adhering to it, was then dried, and was afterwards rubbed with grease and worked between the hands till it became soft and pliable. The ordinary costume of a man was merely a piece of jackal skin suspended in front and a little slip of prepared hide behind. In cold weather he wrapped himself in a kaross or mantle of furs sewed