The Washington times., 1894-03-25
BUSH-BOYS IN AFRICA.
They Sleep In Nests, Live In Sand. an
Eat Birds and Insects.

BUSH-BOYS IN AFRICA.
They Sleep In Nests, Live In Sand. and
Eat Birds and Insects.
Would you not think it funny to sleep in
nest? When tell you that there are children
in the world who really do that. who have
slept in nests ever since they were tiny babies,
so that if their mothers had ever read ''Mother
Goose" they might have sung them to sleep
with that rhyme of hers:
"Hush-a-bye, baby, upon the tree top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock"
you will think am joking; but assure you
l am telling you serious fact. Far away in
South Africa these little ones live. They are
the children of people who call themselves
'Saqua," but ''bushmen," or, in the Dutch
language, "bos-jesman" is the name white
people give them.
When these bushmen live in that part OF
their country where there are rocks they gen.
orally sleep in caves. but there are vast places
where there are only wild plains and thickets
of mimosa The bushman travels about n
great deal, and wherever he stops for a while
builds himself and his family sleeping place
in this fashion, He pulls down the branches
OF the mimosa tree, twists them together in to
the shape OF a great nest, and lines them with
hay, wool, dried leaves, feathers, and any
thing soft he can procufe. After awhile new
twigs shoot up and surround it, and there it
remains, to be used by him as long as he
chooses. Long rows Of these nests for human
beings may be found in mimosa thickets.
Here the funny little bush baby sits and peeps
out until he is able to creep. He is the ugliest
baby that any one ever say. Very thick in
body, almost square, with queer, lemon
colored face, and black wool covering
his head. which sticks out behind in the
shape of a watermelon set down upon its side,
and with no forehead to speak OF. His face
is like that ofthe blue monkey, and his eyes are
set so far in his head that you cannot see the
balls or guess their color. Besides. he Is
obliged to squeeze them shut most of the time
to keep out the sand-fies However, he can
see wonderfully well with them, and when he
is few months old he can crawl about
through the yellow sand in which his mother
lays him. And when he is year old he can
hunt for edible bulbs. which he digs out Of
the sand with his grimy little hands and de-
YOURS greedily.
Little boys who object to bathing-I never
knew a little girl who did-may envy the
bush-chidren when tell them that they are
never washed at all-no Saqua ever takes
bath-water is too scarce-but the careful
mother greases her children carefully all over
their bodies. As they grow older, the chill
dren become very thin and begin to have the
hideous figures which alternate stuf1ing and
starving give to these sayages. Their eye
sight is marvellous. With those Sits of eyes
they can see better than most of US of the
western world. As to their hearing. bush
boy guides himself entirely by his ears in the
dark The rustlinU n leaves the chirD of
birds, and the voices of insects all tell him
things that they do not tell Europeans. As
marvellous as is his sense of smell. yet he is
not disguised by the most abominable stenches,
and eats putrid meat and bad eggs of any sort
with pleasure.
When he is old enough to make his own
toilet the bush-boy Greases himself. never
rubbing of any OF the applications. but con-
tinually adding other layers. Ii is no won
der that his childhood is very short. At eight
years old he is a grown boy, at fourteen he is
| in the prime of life. AT sixteen or seventeen he
begins to wrinkle and shrivel, and when our
bows ale going to college he looks older than
many men in civilized lands do at eighty.
When he is about eight years old the boys
father begins to teach him now to hunt os-
triches and get ostrich eggs. Finding the
eggs comes first, strange to say. Several os-
triches lay their eggs in one nest, which is
hole in the sand, often OF enormous size. Os-
man approaching at ever SO great distance
they would run away, so the bushman makes
for himself q hunting dress-the skin of an
ostrich. without the legs-with which he
covers his body. He puts this en- his shoul-
ders and rubs his legs with chalk. Then he
taxes his tiny, sharp little arrows. the
tips of which are always poisoned,
and with his bow in his hand hides
himself and his son near the ostrich nest.
There he waits until sunset. when the parent
birds come home. As they approach he
selects the fattest or the one with the hand
soonest feathers and shoots. He always kills
one bird. but the rest run away. However,
this is an egg hunt, for the purpose of giving
his son his first lesson and he is quite content
with one fine bird. This secured, they collect
the eggs and take them home, and have
special feast for the boy, such as your mother
might give you when you graduate. Alter
this he sleeps long time in his mimosa nest,
and his next lesson is to hunt ostriches. for
which event his father makes him a suit like
his own, and he is obliged TO learn to run as
rapidly as that long-legged bird, which a we'll
mounted hunter finds it almost impossible to
overtake.
The bush-boy never is taught to till the
tie ground or raise cattle. He depends upon
what the wilderness offers him. eats any
beast, bird or insect that he can slay or trap
no written language, and cannot talk in the
dark with his own friends. since gesture is
necessary in order to make oneself under
stood among the members Of ono family of
Saquas.