Lichtenstein points out that
while necessity has given them acute sight and hearing,
"they might almost be supposed to have neither taste, smell,
nor feeling; no disgust is ever evinced by them at even the
most nauseous kind of food, nor do they appear to have any
feeling of even the most striking changes in the temperature
of the atmosphere."
"No meat," says Chapman (I., 57), "in whatever state of decomposition,
is ever discarded by Bushmen." They dispute carrion with wolves and
vultures. Rabbits they eat skins and all, and their menu is varied by
all sorts of loathsome reptiles and insects.
No other savages, says Lichtenstein, betray "so high a degree of
brutal ferocity" as the Bushmen. They "kill their own children without
remorse." The missionary Moffat says (57) that "when a mother dies
whose infant is not able to shift for itself, it is, without any
ceremony, buried alive with the corpse of its mother." Kicherer,
another missionary, says
"there are instances of parents throwing their tender
offspring to the hungry lion, who stands roaring before
their cavern, refusing to depart till some peace-offering be
made to him."
He adds that after a quarrel between husband and wife the one beaten
is apt to take revenge by killing their child; and that, on various
occasions, parents smother their children, cast them away in the
desert, or bury them alive without remorse.
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