2 of Fig. 156, and in spite of their thinness, they have likewise been bored from both sides for suspension.

Boring a hole in a stone is not one of the most easy of undertakings, and when the stone is of a diameter exceeding 11 cm., as in many of the ! kwès the difficulty is enhanced when the bore is started at each end.

In South Africa, however, one cannot but be struck by the primitiveness displayed by the makers, a primitiveness that seems to denote:

1. That they were unacquainted with the bow-drill.

2. That the method was adopted on account of the great thickness of the ! kwès.

3. That they were not inventive enough to devise a simpler method, such as punching, for thin flat surfaces.

The beads figured are diminutive tikoes. The ostrich egg-shell disks are not. For the manufacture of both, however, diminutive drills have been made.

In the perforated stones of Chile, the same system of perforation was in use, and it is, or was, followed in New Guinea.

If we continue our comparison with the ornaments of the Mousterian, Solutrian, and Magdalenian periods of Europe, we find there Bone and ivory pendants, beads, perforated shells for making necklaces or tiaras; stringed vertebræ of fish; perforated teeth of various animals intended for neck or waist wear, some of the teeth, mostly canines, bearing graved striæ, figures of barbed harpoons, fish, seals, &c.

In South Africa all the ornaments differ, with perhaps the exception of the perforated sea-shells of some o the Outeniqua Caves. The stone beads, with an unique type of perforation, are different; unheard of in the European epochs mentioned are the earthenware beads; the steatite and other stone pendants, Fig. 207, have a shape of their own, and so have the shell ornaments, with double longitudinal holes, Fig. 187; the olive-kernel-like beads with prospectively one or two holes, Fig. 206; the large flat stone-disks, Cuts 1-2, of Fig. 156, to say nothing of the egg-shell discoidal beads bored in the centre.

We have no ivory or bone pendants, no suspended teeth of wild animals, as if the hunter disdained to wear such commonplace objects.

Could it be that the neolithic South African race was so primitive that man himself did not appreciate ornaments?

CHAPTER XII.

THE ! KWE, OR PERFORATED STONE.

Better known probably than any other stone implement is the perforated stone, either quite globular or partly so, flat or subquadrate, but with the angles always rounded, which is designated here Bushman-Stone.

This implement, according to Stow, was termed 'T'koe, or Tikoe, and was used to give weight and impetus to the "Kibi" or digging. stick; it was also occasionally used as an offensive weapon or club. Miss Dora Bleek informs me, however, that the word is "! Kwe," and that it is not used by itself, but in connection with the diggingstick, thus: Kwè Ka !! Kha!! Ka the stick with the digging stone; the signs! and !! representing each a special click peculiar to the language of the "Sans." Dr. D. R. Kannemeyer corroborates this appellation, which he obtained from an old Bushman long ago, only there seems to be a transposition. Phonetically spelled it reads Ka Ka Kōwè.†

=

The characteristic of these stone implements is the manner in which the median hole is bored. The process of perforation is invariably begun on each side, or pole, the holes thus resulting being conical; they meet in the centre, and the bore is on that account never quite straight. The unfinished specimens (No. 1, of Fig. 161, Pl. XXI.), shows very clearly the process. But by making the initial perforations too large in proportion to the size of the already naturally rounded stone, it often broke in two before completion. This is a kind of fracture which is especially noticeable, and of common occurrence with the unfinished implement. A glance at Pls. XX. and XXI. and the adjoined measurements of the pieces will give a good idea of these implements and their relative size. But unlike

Thee is long and at the same time very open, hence my use of the grave, instead of the acute accent, as prescribed by the Royal Geographical Society.

the bouchers or the muller-brayers, they are found singly. I never heard of them having been discovered either together, or in a number that suggested their gradual accumulation in mountain or hill talus, or in an alluvial deposit. Not only do they differ in this respect from bouchers, but this very difference also implies a much more recent origin. They are not uncommon in, or close to, the middens, but there they are often broken; are met on the veldt, without apparent cause or reason; are occasionally ploughed out; and I make bold to assert that there is not one district of the Cape Colony where they have not been found. They are equally numerous in the Orange Free State; but seem to be scarcer in the Transvaal, and in Natal. None has to my knowledge been found in Rhodesia, probably because they have been overlooked; they occur in the Tanganyka Plateau (Pl. XXI., Fig. 158), and Professor von Lushan of the Berlin Ethnological Museum, informs me that he has several from Kilimandjaro. They have lately been found a few miles south of Khartum, and also in North Kordofan. I am informed, although I have not been able to verify my information, that they have been met with in Somaliland.

Similar implements, perforated in the same manner, are known in Europe, and in South America, Figs. 159 and 160 of Pl. XXI., represent an example from the Atacama Desert in Chile. I am not aware that they are found in Australia, and their absence there coincides singularly enough with that of the bouchers of the Chellean-Mousterian type. But there is no corollary with the bouchers in point of antiquity. The European examples are unmistakably neolithic, and not only so, but, unlike the "pygmies," it is not possible to claim for them an early neolithic age; they have been found in sepultures associated with polished, as well as dressed, stone-axes.

The general acceptance of the use to which these perforated stones were put is that they were intended to give weight to the digging-stick, and there can be no doubt that even after the arrival of the Colonists they still served that purpose.

This is proved by the heart-rending account of Sparrman, travelling at the time (1775) in what is now the Uniondale district of Cape Colony :

"We saw, moreover, as we rode along (especially in Lange Kloof), numbers of fugitive Hottentots of both sexes, who were not longer pursued, partly on account of their age and infirmities, and partly because it was not worth any Colonist's while to lay hold on them, as they would be liable to be demanded back by their former

masters. One of these that I passed on the road, a very old man, died (as I was told) the day after of weakness and fatigue. Most of these fugitives carried a thick, stout staff, generally headed with a heavy gritstone of 2 lbs. weight or more, rounded off, and with a hole bored through the middle of it, in order to increase the force of the stick for the purpose of digging up roots and bulbs out of the ground; and at the same time for piercing the hard clay hillocks, which are formed to the height of 3 or 4 feet, by a kind of ants (Termes), a species of insect of which the Boshiesmen's food in a great measure consists. It gave me no small pain to see the poor old fugitives frequently wasting the remains of their strength on these hardened hillocks in vain, some other animals, that feed on ants, having worked their way into them, and consumed all their provisions beforehand."

Burchell adds his testimony:

"We were visited by two natives, whose kraal, they said, was at some distance eastward, and who being out in search of wild roots happened to observe our track, and had discovered us by following it. One of them wore on the side of his head, as an ornament, and tied close to the hair, a circular plate of shining brass 3 inches in diameter. The other carried, what my Hottentots called a 'graafstok' (a digging-stick) to which there was affixed a heavy stone to increase its force in picking up bulbous roots. The stone, which was 5 inches in diameter, had been cut or ground, very regularly, to a round form, and perforated with a hole large enough to receive the stick and a wedge by which it was fixed in its place."

Livingstone, in his last journal, but quoting from memory, as is plainly discernible by the figure given, states: "In 1841 I saw a Bushwoman in the Cape Colony with a round stone and a hole through it; on being asked, she showed me how it was used by inserting the top of a digging-stick into it and digging a root. The stone was to give the stick weight."

In addition to this written evidence I endeavoured to find other testimony with the result that a Mr. Turner, from near Griqua Town, remembered very well Bushmen and Korannas using the "kwè." The stone was fastened at the lower part of the stick.

Mr. Bodenstein-at whose place Dr. A. W. Rogers, Director of the Cape Geological Survey, found a very large perforated stone made of steatite (an unusual occurrence), but cleft in the centre-

* The Termes workers are, possibly on account of their colour, called still "Bushman's Rice," in Dutch, "Rijs miere."

saw the "Vaalpense,'

stick.

66

use the stone fixed at the top end of the

Men, women, and children all dug with it." I succeeded in procuring the photograph here produced of what

But

these people are so eager to say, "Yah, baas," i.e., to assent to

66

The Vaalpense," so-called by the Dutch, would seem to be not Bush people, but very degraded Bechuanas, belonging therefore to the Bantu-speaking race which we call generally Kaffir.