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Updated: June 27, 2025
When shot through the spine, it was capable of lifting itself up about five feet high, and opened its mouth in a threatening manner, but the poor thing was more inclined to crawl away. The flesh is much relished by the Bakalahari and Bushmen. They carry away each his portion, like logs of wood, over their shoulders.
The Bakalahari are traditionally reported to be the oldest of the Bechuana tribes, and they are said to have possessed enormous herds of the large horned cattle mentioned by Bruce, until they were despoiled of them and driven into the Desert by a fresh migration of their own nation.
Living ever since on the same plains with the Bushmen, subjected to the same influences of climate, enduring the same thirst, and subsisting on similar food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account for difference in races. The Bakalahari retain in undying vigor the Bechuana love for agriculture and domestic animals.
The Bakalahari take advantage of this feeling, and burn off large patches of grass, not only to attract the game by the new crop when it comes up, but also to form bare spots for the springbuck to range over. It is not the springbuck alone that manifests this feeling.
There is a peculiar glare of bright sunlight from a cloudless sky over the whole scene; and one clump of trees and bushes, with open spaces between, looks so exactly like another, that if you leave the wells, and walk a quarter of a mile in any direction, it is difficult to return. Oswell and Murray went out on one occasion to get an eland, and were accompanied by one of the Bakalahari.
The Bakalahari, or western branch of the Bechuana family, consists of Barolong, Bahurutse, Bakuena, Bangwaketse, Bakaa, Bamangwato, Bakurutse, Batauana, Bamatlaro, and Batlapi. Among the last the success of missionaries has been greatest.
The inhabitants, Bushmen and Bakalahari, prey on the game and on the countless rodentia and small species of the feline race which subsist on these. In general, the soil is light-colored soft sand, nearly pure silica. The beds of the ancient rivers contain much alluvial soil; and as that is baked hard by the burning sun, rain-water stands in pools in some of them for several months in the year.
Their food is tender grass and a plant named thotona, and they frequently resort to heaps of ashes and places containing efflorescence of the nitrates for the salts these contain. Inquiries among the Bushmen and Bakalahari, who are intimately acquainted with the habits of the game, lead to the belief that many diseases prevail among wild animals.
They possess no cattle, and, if they did, the nearest chief would immediately rob them. All parts of the country abounded with pitfalls made by these and others of the Bakalahari. Many of these had been dug expressly for the giraffe, and were generally three feet wide, and ten long; their depth was from nine to ten feet.
In these sucking-places the Bakalahari get their supplies; and as they are generally in the hollows of ancient river-beds, they are probably the deposits from rains gravitating thither; in some cases they may be the actual fountains, which, though formerly supplying the river's flow, now no longer rise to the surface.
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