Lesotho -- Social life and customs; Sotho (African people)
In addition to the above, Basutoland also boasts of some very good coal,
both in the north and in the Mohale's Hoek district in the south; but,
though these mines have been worked to a certain extent for local
consumption, the chiefs have now put a stop to further workings. The
native brass and iron, too, is fairly good, and there is excellent clay
for pottery purposes.
Beyond Chief Khabo's village, in the Leribe district, there is a cave on
the sides of which a salty deposit is formed, which, in former days, the
buck came to lick, and which the goats and sheep greatly appreciate now.
Inside the cave are some Bushman paintings of the usual type, while
outside, near the entrance, are some traps made by the Bushmen to catch
buck. These traps are circular depressions in the ground, about ten feet
in diameter. One wonders how such tiny people could have made them.
Originally they were of considerable depth, and were covered over with
bushes. The victims caught in these traps were chiefly eland,
hartebeeste, and springbok. There are Bushman caves in various parts of
Basutoland, especially in the Quthing district, but in most of them the
paintings have become rather indistinct, and in some cases have been
almost entirely obliterated by mischievous little herd boys. The scenes,
as a rule, represent extremely minute Bushmen hunting and capturing
gigantic elands. Occasionally a fight is depicted, in which huge Kaffir
warriors are fleeing in confusion before their triumphant pixie-like
foes.
There are now only about half-a-dozen survivors of the Bushman race in
Basutoland, and they no longer live by themselves, but with the Basuto,
who treat them kindly and quite as members of their own families, though
the term "Bushman," or, as it is in Sesuto, "Baroa" (literally the
yellow people), is still one of contempt.
They are funny little stunted creatures, very yellow in colour, with
high cheek-bones, small bright eyes, and a meagre quantity of hair on
their heads, each woolly curl being quite separate and apart from the
next, with the scalp plainly visible all round.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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