Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/78

54 matter. But as the various crude unpolished implements found in all parts of South Africa were in use by the Bushmen when white men first came in contact with those savages, there can be no doubt that they fashioned them.

In many other parts of the world perforated stones are plentiful, but most of them differ in some respects from those drilled by the Bushmen, which were all of one type. In the Antiquarian Museum at Edinburgh there is a very fine collection of such stones found in Scotland. There are small ones evidently used in comparatively recent times as weights for nets and in spinning, there are enormously large ones also of not very ancient manufacture, and there are many of the usual size of the Bushman implement. Some are elegantly ornamented, showing the use of tools of metal. Others have holes the same size throughout, leading to a similar conclusion. Those that have holes narrowing from both sides towards the centre, like all the Bushman stones, are usually flat at top and bottom, not globular in form. The Bushman for some unknown reason preferred an approximate sphere, thus any observant eye with a series of each in view would at once detect that they were made by different classes of workmen.

People in a low condition of society do not use clothing for purposes of modesty, but to protect themselves against inclement weather. And as the Bushmen were hardly affected by any degree of either heat or cold that is experienced in South Africa, whether on the plains in midsummer or on the mountains in midwinter, the raiment of the males was usually scanty, and in the chase was thrown entirely aside. At the best it consisted merely of the skin of an animal wrapped round the person. Adult females wore a little apron, and fastened a skin over their shoulders. Both sexes used belts, which in times of scarcity they tightened to assuage the pangs of hunger, and on festive occasions they rubbed their bodies with grease and coloured clays or soot, sometimes powdered with aromatic plants such as buchu, which made them even more ugly than they were by nature.

When the men expected to meet an enemy, they fastened their arrows in an erect position round their heads, in order to appear as formidable as possible. But they never exposed