Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/76

52 substance to come in contact with any part of their bodies. The poisons were obtained from snakes, some kinds of caterpillars, and different shrubs.

With the flora in his neighbourhood the Bushman was much better acquainted than Europeans who are not botanists in general are. He knew the qualities of every plant, could at once select those that were edible and reject those that were noxious, and could even make use of those with medicinal properties in case of illness. In this branch of knowledge he had been educated by his mother, when as a little child he went with her daily to seek for food.

The Bushmen used stone flakes for various purposes, but took no trouble to polish them or give them a neat appearance. Many implements were commonly made of horn or bone. There was a stone implement, however, upon which a large amount of care and labour was bestowed in general use among these people when Europeans first became acquainted with them, though it was unknown in very remote times. It was a little spherical boulder, from nine to fourteen centimetres or 3½ to 5½ inches in diameter, such as may be picked up in abundance in many parts of the country, through the centre of which the Bushman drilled a hole large enough to receive a digging-stick, to which it gave weight. With the tools at his disposal, this must have required much time and patience, so that in his eyes a stone when drilled undoubtedly had a very high value. On it he depended for food in seasons of drought, when all the game had fled from his part of the country. Drilled stones of smaller size have occasionally been found in places once the favourite abodes of Bushmen, but from which those savages have long since disappeared. None not large enough to give weight to a digging-stick have been seen in use by any European who has put his observations on record, but from Bushman paintings it is known that moderately sized ones were employed as heads of fighting sticks, and it is conjectured that the very small ones were intended as amulets.

It is not safe, however, for a European to make any surmise regarding the use of a stone implement which he has never seen used, because he cannot analyse the working of the mind of