Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/39

Rh the puny remnant that was forced into the depths of the forest where they could not be pursued. Just so, at a later date, they were exterminated or absorbed all the way down to the Zambesi, except possibly a very few who made their escape across that river.

Of their existence far north in the continent there is ample proof, but only after other races had settled along the Mediterranean shore and peopled the valley of the Nile as far up as Abyssinia. As they could not have migrated there after the arrival of those races, they must have preceded them as inhabitants. There are references to them in the earliest histories that were written, though the dates were modern compared with the memorials of their existence that their stone implements supply in the southern part of the continent. The first of these in order of time shows us a long-established kingdom of Egypt, with a people far advanced in civilisation, and a form of hieroglyphic writing in extensive use. Nubia too had then a settled population. Many inscriptions in hieroglyphic characters have been translated into English, and among them is more than one record of expeditions being sent southward to obtain Bushmen or pygmies to amuse the king by dancing before him.

Thus one official in the time of the fifth dynasty has placed his services on record. He states among other notable occurrences that he was sent to the land of ghosts, that is to the unknown country beyond the farthest part explored, to bring back a pygmy for the purpose indicated, and that he went by the way of Nubia to Punt, where he managed to secure one. How realistic this appears to South Africans who can remember the habits of the people living on the inland plateau in the middle of the nineteenth century. One of the commonest ways of many a farmer there to amuse his