BOSJESMANS, or -MEN, the name of a savage people who inhabit an extensive district in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. They are called Bosjesmans, or men of the thicket, from their lurking among the bushes, in order to shoot travellers with their poisoned arrows. The Dutch colonists, whb often suffer from the rapacity of this people, treat them with the severest retaliation. They fire at them as if they were wild beasts ; and Mr Barrow heard one of the colonists boast, that he had shot with his own hands nearly 300 Bosjesmans. Those who are taken alive, in any of their predatory excursions, remain during 'life in a state of servitude.
While the Bosjesmans are engaged in their plun dering expeditions, their haunts are in the kloofs or chasms excavated, by torrents of water, that wash down the steep sides of the high stratified mountains. A succession of caverns is thus formed, the highest of which is chosen by the Bosjesmans, as the most difficult to surprise. In one of their retreats, which was visited by Mr Barrow, he observed drawings of several animals, executed with great force and spirit, upon the smooth sides of the caverns. The materi als which were used were charcoal, pipe clay, and different kinds of ochres. A black substance, re sembling pitch, or rather Spanish liquorice, formed a thick coating upon the upper surface of the cavern. It had a bituminous smell, flamed weakly .in the can dle, gave out a thin brownish fluid, and left a black coally residuum about two•thirds of the original bulk. It is said to be deadly poison, and to be used by the Hottentots for poisoning their arrows. The Bosjes mans live together in small hordes or kraals, consist ing of a number of separate huts, each of which is made of a small grass mat, bent into a semicircular form, and fixed down between two sticks. These huts are only about three feet high, and four feet wide, and are open before, and closed behind with a second mat. The mould within the hut is excavated like an os trich's nest ; and a little grass strewed in this simple hollow, serves for the bed in which the Bosjesmans lie coiled round like some of the lower animals. In one of the kraals which Mr Barrow saw, there were 25 huts, and about 150 inhabitants.
Bigamy seems to prevail among the Bosjesmans. The elderly men have two wives, one that is young, and another that is past childbearing ; and no degree of consanguinity prevents a marriage, unless in the case of brothers and sisters, and parents and children'.
The men go completely naked, and the women have only a small belt of springbok's skin, having the fore part cut into loose threads, which, though perhaps intended for a covering, did not answer the purpose: The men had pieces of wood, or a porcupine's quill, suspended to the cartilage of the nose ; and some of the women had caps like helmets, made of ass skins; and shells, beads, or bits of copper, hanging on their necks from their curling tufts of hair. In person, the Bosjesmans are extremely diminutive. The tal lest of the men was only 4 feet 9 inches high, while the tallest woman measured only 4 feet 1 inches. Though they have a general resemblance to the Hot tentots, yet they are greatly inferior to them in per sonal appearance, and seem to be the ugliest of all the savage tribes. Their high cheek bones, flat nose, prominent chin, concave visage, and sharp rolling eyes, resemble those of the ape tribe ; and the upper eyelid is so rounded into the lower on the nasal side of the eye, that it does not form an angle. The protuberance of their bellies the projection and site , of their posteriors, and the great curvature of their spine, though characteristic, in some degree, of the whole Hottentot race, belong, in a still greater de gree, to the Bosjesmans. " If the letter S," says Mr Barrow, " be considered as one expression of the line of beauty, to which degrees of approximation are admissible, the Bosjesman women are entitled to the first rank in point of form. A section of the body, from the breast to the knee, forms really the shape of the above letter. The projection of the posterior part of the body in one subject, measured five inches and 'a half from a line touching the spine. This pro tuberance consisted of fat, and when the women walked, had the most ridiculous appearance imIgin able, every step being accompanied with a quivering and tremulous mJtion, as if two masses of jelly were attached behind." It is a woman of exactly this de scription, that has been for some time exhibiting in London under the name of the African or Hottentot Venus.