But if the Hottentot be a bad servant, and if, notwithstanding the well-meant but misdirected efforts of missionaries, whose zeal might find better employment at home, he still continues an idle, besotted, and filthy savage, there yet is to be found, in his immediate vicinity, a still more degraded and untractable race. These are the Boschjesmen, or Bushmen, of whom specimens have been exhibited in England. In their own land they live in a state of barbarism, without clothes, often without huts, growing no corn or vegetables, and subsisting upon such animals as they can kill with their arrows--also upon locusts. "In the year 1844 or 1845, a traveller in their country came upon whole kraals, (or villages,) which appeared at first to be deserted; but he found, on searching, that 'most of the inhabitants were still there--dead! There were great quantities of dead locusts in their huts, and the supposition was, that they had died from eating them, either from some poison contained in them, or from a surfeit." They are fierce and cruel, and as mischievous as monkeys, to which they bear a strong resemblance. On the first journey that he made in a waggon, Mr Cole had as "leader"--the name given to the boy who leads the two front oxen of the span--a Bushman lad, about four feet high, the most hideous monster, according to the description given of him, that ever walked on two legs. The expression of his countenance was diabolical, his disposition equally so. The lash was the only argument he understood; and even to that, owing to the extraordinary toughness of his hide, he was long callous. "On one occasion the waggon came to the brow of a hill, when it was the leader's duty to stop the oxen, and see that the wheel was well locked. It may readily be imagined that a waggon which requires twelve oxen to draw it on level ground, could not be held back at all by _two_ oxen, in its descent of a steep hill, unless with the wheel locked. My interesting Bushman, however, whom I had not yet offended in any manner, no sooner found himself at the top of the hill, than he let go the oxen with a yell and a whoop, which set them off at a gallop down the precipitous steep. The waggon flew from side to side of the road, destined, apparently, to be smashed to atoms every moment, together with myself, its luckless occupant. I was dashed about, almost unconscious of what could be the cause, so suddenly had we started on our mad career. Heaven only knows how I escaped destruction, but we positively reached the bottom of the hill uninjured.