Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/87

Rh Drs. Bleek and Lloyd obtained from several individuals prayers to the moon and stars, but everything connected with their religion—that is their dread of something outside of and more powerful than themselves—was vague and uncertain. They could give no explanation whatever about it, and they did not all hold the same opinions on the subject. Some of them spoke indeed of a powerful being termed 'Kaang or 'Cagn, but when questioned about him, their replies showed that they held him to be a man like themselves, though possessing charms of great power. Many are supposed to have had a vague belief in immortality, because they buried a dead man's weapons with him and laid the corpse with its face towards the rising sun, and their custom of cutting off a joint of the little finger was imagined to be due to a belief that by doing so they would secure an abundance of food in the future life; but probably very few of them ever gave a thought to such a matter. The wants of the present were sufficient to occupy their attention.

They buried their dead in shallow graves, over which they piled stones to prevent wild animals scraping the bodies up. In a cavity scooped out of the western wall of the grave the corpse was placed on its side, bent in a curve such as when sleeping it formed in life, with its face turned towards the east. The bones were not broken, as by some Bantu, and as well as can be ascertained, all adult human bodies were interred. It is remarkable that the Bushmen should have performed the labour of making graves and raising cairns over them, when the Hottentots, who were so much superior to them in civilisation, looked for an anteater's den or some natural cavity in which to lay their dead, and many tribes of Bantu, so much higher still, did not bury the corpses of common people at all, but left them exposed in solitary places to be devoured by beasts of prey.

It is difficult to conceive of a human being in a more degraded condition than that of a Bushman. In some