Several Bushmen and their families kept with me during my stay in these parts, and were of great assistance in fetching water, cutting up the flesh to make biltong by drying it in the sun, and bringing in the game when shot. Some of the Bushmen and women were well-made, the old ones poor specimens of humanity. One girl was a perfect model, with rounded, well-formed limbs, and in good condition from living on the game the men killed with their bows and arrows. These people were quite black and small, a different type altogether from the Bushmen of the south. They were of the same family as those who occupy a great portion of the Kalahara desert, of which this forms the eastern part. Their language is also different; they are called Mesere Bushmen from their small size; that word signifies woman. They were perfectly naked, the weather never being cold, at this time the thermometer being 102 degrees in the shade. Their long rough grass huts being a broken bough or a few sticks stuck up and long grass thrown over. They have a very ingenious method of taking game by pitfalls. They dig four or five pits eight feet deep, ten long and four wide, fifty or sixty and sometimes 100 feet from each other, not in a straight line, but so placed that when they make a fence from one to the other it would form the letter V; at the point would be the pit, and no hedge, so that an animal wanting to pass through would walk down to the opening, and as the pit would be beautifully covered over with small sticks and grass, made a very inviting road to walk over. It was at one of these openings I had a very narrow escape of my life. Returning to my camp after a long day out after game, I came upon this fence, seeming an opening, and not having seen any before, I was going through, my dog in front, when I saw him disappear all at once, howling as dogs will howl when hurt or frightened. Dismounting, I pulled away some of the sticks to make the hole larger, and found one of these pits, with a large sharp-pointed pole stuck upright in the centre, and there was the dog at the bottom in a great state of mind; but how to get him out was a puzzle. As there were several long straight branches that formed the hedge, I got sufficient to put in that I might go down to take hold of the dog's neck and lift him out, which took me an hour to perform. I took care to give these hedges a wide berth when I saw any afterwards. If a giraffe or elephant fell in he would be impaled and unable to move. Smaller game like my dog are caught alive. If I and my horse had gone in, he would have been impaled, and I should have been probably killed.