Page:Seven Years in South Africa v1.djvu/136

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102
Seven Years in South Africa.

housekeeping expenses by doing laundry-work; and when they are engaged in washing linen on the banks of the river, they give a picturesque and animated character to the scene.

Even the most cursory glance is sufficient to detect the difference between the Koranna and Bechnana races; and there can be no hesitation in affirming that the representatives of the Bechuanas, the Batlapins and Barolongs, are by far the more comely, both in face and form. Varying in complexion from a dull black to a deep brown, their features, if not handsome, could hardly be called plain, whilst the yellow-brown countenances of the Korannas are literally ugly, the eyes being deeply sunk, the nose scarcely developed at all, the jawbone thick, the lips far protruding. The skull corresponds with the ignoble profile, and is small and narrow. The Koranna women, too, are especially disfigured by an awkward gait, which seems to arise from some singular formation of the lower vertebral column. Hither their cheeks or their foreheads are usually daubed with red ochre or tattooed with a labyrinth of blue lines; and I have seen many of them with both forehead and cheeks so covered with brown and black streaks that they had precisely the appearance of monkeys.

During a visit to the Koranna quarter I entered one of the huts. The scene was truly strange. In a hollow in the middle of the hut were some glowing embers; in the midst of the embers was a fleecy object, which on a second glance I perceived to be a