The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-04

good feet from the base of her hoofs 10 the tip of her false horns, as she stands there, and you may search all Africa ay, all the world-for a more wonder ful, more beautiful picture of real life in it's most primeval form,
 There Is no air of wind blowing from the Masarwas towards the giraffe; the breeze trends rather the other way, and they are safe from betrayal by that foe, They are concealed from sight by the screen of bush beneath which they crouch, and a few handfuls of sand, past by Sinikwe upon the smouldering fire, silently destroys that evidence of human life,
 In another minute the great creature swings her head round, satisfied that her fellows are near, and stalks slowly on She is but sixty yards away now, and, passing another group of trees and some bush, emerges upon the open glade. Before she has reached the fur ther side, the rest of the troop are to be seen following in her wake. There are six of them in all mighty dark chest nut bull nineteen feet tall, three more cows, and two calves. The beautiful giants pace like strange automatons across the clearing, with that gliding deceptive walking pace of theirs, and join the leader at a great spreading acacia, from which they all begin to pluck, with upstretched necks and pre- hensile tongues, the dark green foliage.
 Sinikwe's eyes had greedily follow ed the great COW in all her movements. That is the quarry he means to strike for. Luckily he had smeared his tiny bone-tipped reed arrows with fresh poi son taken from the entrails of the Ngwa caterpillar yesterday. He now picks up his bow and culver, slings the latter across his back, and steals away by a circuitous route to intercept l the troop. It is three hours before he gets his shot. At length, after infinite patience and manoeuvring, he has wormed himself into patch of thick bush, by which as he had reckoned, the great COW would pass. Stopping on one knee, he harbors there, motionless as some bizarre figure of bronze; the COW glides past like some great desert ghost; Sinikwe let's fly his arrow deep into the thinnest part of the tough hide, under the hinder part of the belly; the startled creature flies crashing through the forest, and the Masarwa knows that with her death is now only question of hours. It may be day or two days, CT even three, but the poison already at work is fresh and at it's deadliest; the arrowhead went home, and the COW is his.
 He returns to Nakeesa, gives her the news, and sends her into the grass veldt to dig up roots, while he himself pre- pares to make snuff Taking her babe on her back, neatly slung in her skin coat Nakeesa hies her to a likely spot. She takes also with her an empty tor toise shell in which to bring home tb" bulbs, and disappointed stick gar nished at the top with a circular piece of soft stone. With this last implement she can the more easily crow up their dinner.
 Out there in the hot sun Nakeesa pa- tiently digs and digs, slowly accumula- ting the dish of roots. The red sandy soil is now burning hot to the touch; there is no inch of shade from the scorching sun, and she has not tasted food or water for twenty hours. These | things trouble the Bushwoman not at all; they have always been a part of her existence, and she cannot imagine 8 world without toll and heat, hunger and thirst. Just now, too, she is some what comforted at the thought of a mighty feast of meat in the not distant l future Sinikwe is lazy, and time after 1 time neglects to hunt game when Kwa- neet-Kwaneet is often in her mind would have brought in good store of flesh, But Sinikwe, to give him his due, is as good a hunter and spoorer as any l in the wide Kalahari, if the game is 1 nigh and not far to seek. She knows that the giraffe is as good as dead, that soon, for few brief days, she may rev. el in gross plenty, and u at her babe will be less petulant again. In two hours Nakeesa has filled the tortoise shell and returns to her man.
 Sinikwe, meanwhile, has been having an easy time, preparing a fresh supply of snuff against his coming spooring. op- erations and the feast that is to follow. Out of the dead fire he has extracted some ash from a particular sort of bush which he put in last night This he works down to the finest possible con- sistency. Taking from leather pouch tiny piece of tobacco-the precious gift of Lake trader--he cuts off a piece, and in turn reduces that to fine dust by means of flat stones. Then, carefully mingling the ashes and the to+ bacco dust, and again grinding them down together, his snuff is made. With this prized commodity he can refresh his jaded senses upon a difficult spoor, titillate his nerves after a big gorge of flesh, and purchase he pleased glances of his wife, when in his bounty he shall deign to bestoW d pinch or two upon her. Besides his snuff-making an ope- ration demanding the gravest care, Sin ikwe has sharpened I'D the blade of his only spear, at once his weapon of de- fence, carver and skinning knife to the haft of which he has fastened his skin cloak and a small calabash of water, in preparation for the journey before him. He has sharpened, too, his primitive hatchet, used for chopping bones and extracting marrow. That hatchet-the | head of iron, the haft of rhinoceros horn | -is Sinikwe's most treasured possession | His father acquired 1t long since, at in- finite cost of feathers and ivory, from the Bechuana who fashioned it.
 1 Presently Nakeesa comes in, and the l roots-curious little smooth bulbs, sweet and nutty to the taste-are divided, | three-fourths to Sinikwe, one-fourth to Nakeesa. These bulbs are bestowed in