Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/126

102 useless against large game. The assagai of the Hottentot was a light javelin, which could be hurled with precision to a distance of thirty or forty metres. The knobkerie, or clubbed stick, was almost as formidable a weapon. It was rather stouter than an ordinary walking cane, and had a round head six or eight centimetres in diameter. Boys were trained to throw this with so accurate an aim as to hit a bird on the wing at twenty or thirty metres distance. It was projected in such a manner as to bring the heavy knob into contact with the object aimed at, and antelopes as large as goats had their legs broken or were killed outright with it.

The Hottentots were acquainted with the art of smelting iron, but were too indolent to turn their knowledge to much account. Only a few assagai and arrow heads were made of that metal. Horn and bone were ready at hand, were easily worked, and were commonly used to point weapons. Stone was also employed by some of the tribes for this purpose, but not to any great extent, though weights for digging sticks were formed of it by them as by the Bushmen. Masses of almost solid copper were obtained in Namaqualand, and this metal was spread over the neighbouring country by means of barter and war, but was not used for any other purpose than that of making ornaments for the person.

At different places occupied by the Hottentots along the coast a very few polished stone implements have been found. They consist of arrow heads whose points have been ground, and disks like quoits with sharp edges, which are supposed to have been held in the hand and used in combat. No European has ever seen a Hottentot in possession of such implements, or ever heard them spoken of, and any remarks concerning them can only be founded on conjecture. But few as is the number of such ground stones as yet discovered, they are evidence that individuals, if not tribes, were in the neolithic stage of progress, though iron was in use at the same period.

The Hottentots manufactured earthenware pots for cooking purposes, which, though in general clumsily shaped and