Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/128



of the smallest and weakest clans of Hottentots who had lost their cattle in war or by disease, or who were the poorest members of tribes suffering from want, and had to abandon the communities to which they belonged and seek for means of existence elsewhere, lived chiefly upon the produce of the sea. They adopted from necessity the same means of obtaining a scanty supply of food as the earlier inhabitants who raised such enormous shell mounds as the one recently removed at East London had resorted to. They had neither boats nor hooks, but they managed to catch fish by throwing light assagais with lines attached to them from rocks standing out in deep water, and by making weirs in favourable situations along the shore enclosing considerable spaces which were left nearly dry at low tide. Shellfish also formed a portion of their food, and occasionally a dead whale would drift ashore and furnish them with a feast. Further, they gathered all the edible plants in their neighbourhood, and captured as many wild animals as they could. Shell and ash heaps made by these people bearing signs of being quite modern, that is dating back only two or three hundred years, are found in several places along the coast from Walfish Bay to Natal.

The heaps contain ordinary Hottentot implements, in rare instances human skeletons, and bones of animals obtained in the chase, always broken in order that the marrow might be extracted. The perforated stone weights for digging-sticks found in them are usually of the shape of compressed spheres, nearly resembling in form those of Scotland referred to on a previous page. There is a good collection of specimens of various shapes