He had no idea of his own age, but must have been well over ninety; but he was still alert, keen-eyed, and full of intelligence. But Bushman chief as he had been, old Gert was not a Bushman born. Son of a Boer father and a Hottentot mother, and born in the Kenhardt district, he had, whilst still a youth, wandered with other hunters into the Kalahari in search of ostrich feathers and skins, and there, joining a Bushman tribe, had eventually become their chief--apparently by the simple process of eliminating all his rivals by means of the flint-lock, with which he had been an unerring shot, and against which the poisoned arrows of the little Bush folk had very little chance. Not that he despised the arrows altogether, but learned to shoot well with them, and had many a tale to tell of the myriad head of game that the little flint-pointed darts had brought down for him. He told me of the poisons the Bushmen used, poisons so virulent that a scratch from an arrow dipped in either of them meant death to man or beast within a few minutes. The huge “baviaan” spider provided one of these. Caught at a certain season, these venomous insects were pounded between stones, and the resultant paste exposed to the light of the moon for several nights before it was fit for the arrow-tips. Another favourite poison was made from the viscid juice of the _Candelabra euphorbia_, and this also was prepared with certain rites and observances in which the moon again figured. Both these poisons were so rapid in effect that the Bushmen, shooting at game with their arrows thus poisoned, made little effort to do more than pierce the animal’s skin, nor troubled to pursue their quarry, leisurely following the spoor in the certainty that the wounded animal would be found dead at no great distance. Peculiarly enough, these poisons, though so virulent, had no ill effect upon the flesh of the animal slain. These arrow’s were never used for war. For this the favourite poison was obtained from certain portions of a putrefying corpse, and, according to Old Gert, a man wounded with a war-shaft poisoned with this awful venom died horribly of lock-jaw almost immediately. Even when iron was obtainable, it was rarely used for arrow-heads, the Bushmen preferring those of flint, agate, or bone, as the poisons were not so effective on the iron barbs.