The Hottentot men carry about their necks a small leather bag con taining their tobacco, money, and an amulet; the women, a larger one for provisions, tinder-boxes, tobacco, etc. As long as the national character was undisturbed, the women also wore a leather cap pointed at the top, while the men had a flat cap, which they used only in bad weather. They wear leather sandals only on long marches. They grease them selves, as well as their skins and dresses, with tallow, which they often color black with soot. The Bushmen color it yellow with ochre.
The Hottentot women often paint their faces red in grotesque designs. As they never wash themselves, but, on the contrary, always grease them selves anew, and often mix dust or dried dung with the tallow, their exterior is very repulsive, the body often being covered with a thick crust of dirt, infecting the air to a great distance. They also grease the hair in a similar manner, put on an odoriferous powder made of the buchu-plant, a species of Diosma, and decorate the end of each lock with something glittering.
are very much given to finery: chains, feathers, pieces of skin of captured animals—in former times the bladder—are worn in the hair (fi/. 82, 51; chains about the neck and bosom and ear-rings are common; also rings of ivory, copper, and brass on the upper arm (p/. 84, figs. 4, 5, 6)—the arm-rings, however, being orna ments of the men only; and the Hottentot women protect and decorate their legs from the knees to the ankles with rings of sheep-skin put closely. together. One tribe of the Bushmen wear pieces of wood in the cartilage of the nose. The Hau-Koin have the same attire as the Namaqua. Of course at present the natives, where they associate with the Europeans, give a more or less European shape to their garments (fi/. 82, figs. 1-4), which are mostly made of leather.
kirri, a short, thick staff of oak-wood saturated with fat and used in close combat, and the rackum, a stick about three feet long pointed at the top and used for throwing, were the inseparable companions of the Hottentots. For blowing the nose and wiping off the perspiration they use, according to Kolbe, a piece of wood one foot long to which the soft tail of an animal is attached. Their with double-edged iron points, whose wooden shaft is from six to eight feet long and pointed at its end—are weapons of more importance than the and rackunz.
They poison the iron points, and also the barbed iron points of the cane shafted arrows with which they shoot far and surely from large bows three feet long and made of iron or wood, with bowstrings of the entrails of animals. The poison is obtained from plants or from the poison-glands of snakes. The quiver is a hollow piece of wood. Most of the I Iotten tots no longer use these weapons, as they are supplied with European fire arms, but they are still employed by the Hau-Koin, and the Bushmen use the bow and poisoned arrows so much that the surrounding l3antn nations, who greatly fear the arrows, call them bow-shooters—Abatua, Baroa.
house-building is simple; the huts are oval or oven shaped, and are constructed by driving into the ground both ends of long, flexible poles, or else by tying the poles together at the top. This frame, which is strengthened by firm joists, is thickly covered with mats or skins. The doors are only three feet high, so that the people must crawl through them; and when inside they cannot stand up, as the structures, though fourteen feet long and twelve feet broad, are scarcely five feet high. These huts form a closed circle, and their villages are therefore called kraal (a Dutch word meaning "circle"). The Hau-Koin build in a sim ilar manner, but cover the huts with shrubbery. It is said that some Hottentots formerly built square huts of clay.
The Bushmen usually live in caves, holes in the ground, huts of shrub bery, sheds, etc., but they also sometimes erect square huts with plaited walls. Kolbe often saw Hottentot villages consisting of from eighty to one hundred houses. The interior of the huts is unclean and full of ver min. The Koi-Koin sleep in recesses in the ground, and have the fire place in the centre. The fire is kindled by the friction of pieces of wood, and the usual fuel is dried cow-dung.
make the skins soft and fit for use as garments by repeated greasing and hard beating; their needles are hones, sinews their thread, and they plait mats and ropes nicely and closely; they manufac ture their ivory and metal rings, for they are acquainted with a rude manner of smelting and working iron. They also form and burn earthen pots (from the earth of ant-nests); and they have baskets, wooden vessels which they make hollow by means of fire, spoons, etc.