They are filthy in their habits, and
"washing the body is a proceeding unknown to them." When the French
anatomist Cuvier examined a Bushman woman, he was reminded of an ape
by her head, her ears, her movements, and her way of pouting the lips.
The language of the Bushmen has often been likened to the chattering
of monkeys. According to Bleek, who has collected their tales, their
language is of the lowest known type. Lichtenstein (II., 42) found the
Bushman women like the men, "ugly in the extreme," adding that "they
understand each other more by their gestures than by their speaking."
"No one has a name peculiar to himself." Others have described them as
having protuberant stomachs, prominent posteriors, hollowed-out backs,
and "few ideas but those of vengeance and eating." They have only two
numerals, everything beyond two being "much," and except in those
directions where the struggle for life has sharpened their wits, their
intellectual faculties in general are on a level with their
mathematics. Their childish ignorance is illustrated by a question
which some of them seriously asked Chapman (I., 83) one day--whether
his big wagons were not the mothers of the little ones with slender
tires.
How well their minds are otherwise adapted for such an
intellectualized, refined, and esthetic feeling as love, may also be
inferred from the following observations.
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