The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-04
NAKEESA THE BUSHW0MAN
4 TALE OF 4 MASARWA's LOPE
 AND LIFE.

Comes to the Relief of starving Body and Soul.
 Nakeesa, the Bushwoman, awoke just as dawn crept upon the silent veldt. race of wild hunters who roam the wa terless, illimitable deserts of the North Kalahari. subsisting sometimes on game, at other times upon roots, rep tiles and berries.
 It is needless to say that Nakeesa lay roofless. A little screen of branch es, interwoven with friendly bush, sheltered her, and her sleeping hus- band, and her child, from the chill south wind that just now began to move through the desert. It was June -midwinter-and the night had been chill even to frostlness; so cold that Nakeesa had lain almost in the fire through the long hours. Her short hartebeest-skin cloak, and the tiny skin petticoat about her loins, only half pro- tected her gaunt, three-quarter starved frame. The baby had nestled in the warmest corner of her cloak, as near to the fire as might be without burning So close had Nakeesa lain to the pleas ant warmth that the shins of her poor bony legs were burnt raw as they had been for weeks past. Her man, Sinik- we, lay scorched in exactly the same way.
 You may never, indeed, see a Masar- wa Bushman or woman who does not show marks of fire-burn upon the neth- CT limbs. Among the old people, if you look close enough, you may see that their wrinlSled breasts and bellies are scorched and raw also.
 Naseeka sat up, pushed half burned stick or two into the smouldering fire, and looked about her. Sinikwe lay still asleep, there was no need to wake him, and indeed he would resent such interference. She looked about her in a dull, rather hopeless way. There was mo food in the camp--if camp it could be called. Sinikwe had shot or snared no meat of late. Drought lay upon the desert, and game was scarce. In a lit- tie while she must be digging for roots in the hard sunbaked soil, and her babe would be crying at her lean starved breast. All day yesterday had she been sucking water from a moist hole in the ground, and discharging it from her mouth into ostrich shells and cala- bash-a sufficiently fatiguing operation dn thirsty soil. But these things alone hardly troubled Nakeesa. They were natural incidents of Bushman life, and scarce needed regrets. Something deeper and more bitter lay within her soul-something that even her cowed, submissive nature constantly rebelled against.
 Twelve months since, Nakeesa's fath- CT had handed her over to Sinikwe, who, for the consideration of two solid brass cartridge-cases (articles much prized by Masarwas as snuff-boxes) and the half of slain eland, had bought her as wife Now Nakeesa had no great ad- miration for Sinikwe. He was a good hunter, it is true: all Masarwas are But he was lazy and not very amiable; he was ugly even for a Bushman; and she had had another youth in her eye. Kwaneet, the pleasant merry Kwaneet, who had shown her several little kind nesses at Makwa Pool, and had present.
 
 their respective families squatted near the water, was the man of her secret choice.
 Kwaneet, too, knew this, and was anxious to link his fortunes with Ma keesa's; but, most unfortunately, Sinik- we had acquired the coveted cartridge cases from an English hunter, and had secured his wife. Kwaneet it is true, eil 1,o1 Iai al nd had offered to do so; but though like Slnikwe, he carried at his neck, as eve ry decent Masarwa should his own well-polished brass cartridge-case, 8 snuff box, he had not two spare ones to offer Nakeesa's father--and so he had lost Nakeesa, and Sinikwe had taken gler.
 Nakeesa's eyes, as she squatted over the fire this morning, ranged over typi- cal Kalahari scenery. In front of her Jay an open grassy clearing, yellow with sun-parched winter grass. This and other glades in the vicinity Sinik- we meant to set fire to in a day or two, in order to renew the vegetation, as the first rains came on, and so attract the game. Beyond the clearing, and upon the left hand and right, stretched the pleasant open 1OreSL or the QeSerC- groves of giraffe acacia kameel doorn), through which still wander freely in these painless waterless solitudes the tall giraffe, the portly eland, the bril- liant red harte-beest, and the noble emsbok--prototype of the fabled uni corn.
 This Kalahari forest scenery, flat though it be, is very beautiful, resem- bling closely some English deer-park or the natural woodland of some wild Sur rey common.
 The deep red glow of sunrise was now apparent through the trees to the east ward, long streamers of rose-pink flew upwards in the pale sky: roller or two. brilliant in gorgeous coloring of metal lie mauves and violets, purples, blues and greens, began to cry amid the for est, and to flash hither and thither across the clearing. Dainty steinboks and timid duykers (small antelopes, quite independent of water, to be found all over the desert) rose stiff from their cold night touches, shook themselves and began to feed.
 Suddenly movement to the right at- tracts Nakeesa's attention. She looks again, and an involuntary click of sur prise and pleasure rises to her tongue.