United States or Saint Pierre and Miquelon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His story went on to tell of a well-wooded oasis where the Bushmen lived, with water and game in plenty. "All this is probably true," said the lieutenant, "but his brain must have been somewhat turned, for he declared that in this oasis the Bushmen's children made playthings of big rough diamonds the size of walnuts!"
"Is the boa constrictor found in this part of Africa?" "Not so far south as we now are, but it is a few degrees more to the northward. I have never seen it, but I believe there is no doubt of its existence." "The South American Indians have a very subtile poison with which they kill their game. Are you aware, Swinton, of its nature? Is it like the Bushmen's poison?"
Graphic representations made for the encouragement of fertility as on the walls of Bushmen's rock-dwellings or the ceilings of the caverns of Altamira became the nurse of pictorial Art; observations of plants or of the weather or the stars, carried on by tribal medicine-men for purposes of witchcraft or prophecy, supplied some of the material of Science; and humanity emerged by faltering and hesitating steps on the borderland of those finer perceptions and reasonings which are supposed to be characteristic of Civilization.
Almost on his toes did he tread the wild bushmen's trails, tense with apprehension of the lurking death he know infested such paths, his ears cocked alertly for jungle sounds, his eyes following his ears to discern what made the sounds. No more doughty nor daring was Columbus, venturing all that he was to the unknown, than was Jerry in venturing this jungle-darkness of black Malaita.
Although he no longer had the physical endurance of youth, his thinking was as original and clear as it had always been. It was due to his thinking that he found his tribe stronger than when he had first come to rule it. In his small way he had been a Melanesian Napoleon. As a warrior, the play of his mind had enabled him to beat back the bushmen's boundaries.
"Is the boa constrictor found in this part of Africa?" "Not so far south as we now are, but it is a few degrees more to the northward. I have never seen it, but I believe there is no doubt of its existence." "The South American Indians have a very subtle poison with which they kill their game. Are you aware, Swinton, of its nature? Is it like the Bushmen's poison?"
"It won't do," growled the hunter in a stern soliloquy as he stopped a moment to tighten his belt. "Well, well, I little thought, Van Dyk, that you'd be brought to such a miserable fix as this, in such a stupid way too. But he mustn't be left to the Bushmen's tender mercies."
And there were wild reports afloat of resistance brooding in Queensland and of excited meetings in the bush and of troops being sent to disperse the bushmen's camps. Why did they endure these things, Nellie thought, watching and waiting, as impotent to aid them as she was to save the baby dying now beside her. Day by day she expected Ned.
He has many other things rifles and revolvers, the handle of a china cup, and an excellent collection of bushmen's heads. But more precious than the entire collection is another head, perfectly dried and cured, with sandy hair and a yellowish beard, which is kept wrapped in the finest of fibre lava-lavas.
It was at this stage that the man decided to be alive, and, taking up his gun, shot the crow. There may be some exaggeration in the bushmen's tales of the crow's cunning, but there is quite enough of ascertained fact to show that the bird is as devilish in its ingenuity as in its cruelty. In most parts of Australia there is a reward paid for every dead crow brought into the police offices.
Word Of The Day