Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/40

16 guests and himself was to get one of his Bushman herdsmen to dance or caper before them, with a promise of a big glass of brandy or a long piece of roll tobacco, of both of which every individual of his race was immoderately fond, if he did it well. On being told to dance springbok, he would bound into the air again and again with as much ease apparently as one of those animals, without quivering his body or seemingly bending his limbs. Then he would be told to dance baboon, when at once every joint of his body was in motion. The agility of the little imp, the elasticity of his limbs, the wonderful contortions that he was capable of displaying, gave as much delight to the South African farmer as a similar performance by another individual of the same race gave to Pharaoh, lord of Egypt, so many thousand years ago.

Statuettes of Bushmen, with the steatopygous protuberances well marked, have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, a conclusive proof that individuals of that race were known to the artists.

The historian Herodotus, writing about 440 before Christ, mentions the pygmies, but they were then, no longer to be found in the valley of the Nile below Senaar, nor had they been seen there probably for a very long time. Evidently more stalwart people had occupied the valley, and the little hunters had either been exterminated or compelled to retire from the field. They were reported to be south of the desert, and though Herodotus never saw one, he obtained information that enabled him to give a most graphic description of them. He described them as dwellers in caves or caverns, as eating serpents, lizards, and other reptiles, as being the fleetest of foot of any people he had ever heard of, and whose language was like the squeaking of bats. It would