Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/86

62 If the stone, horn, and bone implements, the weapons of the chase, the crude musical instruments, and the shell beads already mentioned be excluded, the Bushmen had little knowledge of manufactures. They had not advanced beyond the stage of making a coarse kind of pottery, and even this was extremely limited in use. But as they were artists, occasionally they attempted to decorate a jar by making a circle of lines or notches round it, which really had a neat effect. Add to this industry the plaiting of rush mats and net bags of fibres, in which their women carried ostrich egg-shells filled with water, and the list is exhausted.

They were firm believers in charms and witchcraft, and were always in dread of violating some custom—as for instance avoiding casting a shadow upon dying game—which they believed would cause disaster. A Bushman would not make a hole in the sandy bed of a river in order to obtain water, without first offering a little piece of meat, or some larvae of ants, or an arrow if he had nothing else, to propitiate the spirit of the stream, that was imagined by him to have the figure of a man hideous in aspect, and capable of making himself visible or invisible at will. And so with every act of his life, something had to be done or avoided to avert evil, to bring game within reach of his arrows, or to make the wild plants appear.

Their reasoning power was very low. They understood the habits of wild animals better than anything else, yet they believed the different species of game could converse with each other, and that there were animals and human beings who could exchange their forms at will, for instance that there were girls who could change themselves into lions, and baboons that could put on the appearance of men. The moon, according to the ideas of some of them, was a living thing, according to the notions of others it was a piece of hide which a man threw into the sky. In the same way the stars were once human beings, or they were pieces of food hurled into the air. As well might one attempt to get reasons for their fancies from European children six or seven years of age as from Bushmen: the reflective faculties of one were as fully developed as of the other.