the ground-nuts {civachis'j, commonly called ‘ monkey-
nuts, which, are excellent when roasted in the embers,
and capital assistants in warding off hunger.
On leaving Mangwendi’s we had regretfully to part
with our bearers, who had accompanied us all the
way from Kunzi’s, and engage fresh ones in their
place. One of these, to our surprise, chose to take his
wife with him, but as she had to carry her baby on
her back and food for herself and her husband, she,
poor thing, was so done up after our first day’s march
of seventeen miles, that her husband sent her back
again.
Our first camp after leaving Mangwendi’s was at a
very interesting spot—an isolated granite kopje called
Ny anger, rising about two hundred feet above the
surrounding plain. It was entirely covered with old
walls, irregular in shape, and similar to those above
mentioned, and evidently in former years a place of
great strength. It had been long abandoned, for
there were no signs of habitation thereon, and the
approaches were full of debris. To the north-east
of this kopje is a very curious grotto, or domed
cave, entirely covered with Bushman drawings. A
kudu and a buffalo are excellently drawn, almost
worthy of a Landseer, and in their drawings one can
distinctly trace three different periods of execution i
(1) Crude and now faint representations of unknown
forms of animal fife. (2) Deeper in colour, and
admirably executed, partly on the top of the latter,
are the animals of the best period of this art in red
and yellow. (3) Inartistic representations of human
beings, which evidently belong to a period of decadence
in the execution of this work.
The colours are invariably red, yellow, and black.
I am told that the two former are obtained from
certain coprolites found in these parts, which, when
broken open, have a yellow dust inside.
In this curiously decorated cave we found also
many graves formed by plastering up holes in the
rock with a hard kind of cement. We opened one of
them, and found that the corpse had been wrapped in
skins and placed here. In the centre of the cave is
a large semicircular wall, entered in the middle by a
rounded entrance; behind this is a sort of palisade of
grass matting placed against poles, to protect it from
the wind, and behind this are similar cement-covered
graves. Now the present race do not bury in this
way, but evidently come here at certain times to
keep the place in order, and doubtless venerate the