The African Review (September 17 1898)

The African Review (September 17 1898)

Newspaper Clippings and Pamphlets

newspaper pages, scrapbook

September 17 1898

Lucy Lloyd (scrapbook of clippings ), scrapbook (Lucy Lloyd's ), George Leith (article in "The African Review" ), stone implements (used by Stormberg Bushmen ), Daniel Kannemeyer (in George Leith's article about the Bushmen )

"Primitive man in South Africa." This long article from "The African Review" is made up of extracts selected from George Leith's paper (given in Bristol for the British Association) of the same name. It has been illustrated with photos of a "pure-bred Bushman" (one male and one female) that he provided for the article (taken by a Mr Murray). Leith's paper focuses on the shale implements used by the Bushmen, which he first came across in the Stormberg with a palaeontologist, Dr Daniel Kannemeyer, who took him to see defaced Bushman paintings on a rock overhang near Burghersdorp on the Northern slope. There Leith found mainly shale implements belonging to the former Bushman inhabitants that inspired his continued interest. With Kannemeyer he visited numerous other caves in the Stormberg and found similar implements, discarded as if the occupants had just left to escape their pursuers. Leith realised how they were on the "hot spoor of a vanished race", one linking the present with the dim past, and that they had just missed observing the Bushmen in their native environment. Leith goes on to describe in detail the experience of visiting one of the many such abandoned "haunts" in the future and the kinds of objects he found there. He then casually mentions his meeting with a Dutch farmer, former member of the Commando that exterminated the last Stormberg Bushmen. This individual described the thick felt clothing worn when "attacking the Bushman in his home" due to the efficacy of the poison arrows they used. Leith spends some time describing different typically Neolithic stone implements such as scrapers and arrow-tips (mostly not stone), as well as grinding stones, pounding stones, knife-shaped implements and everything else necessary for "a well-appointed Bushman household". He intersperses discussion of stone axes with comments on the clash of different groups in the veld - such as the Hottentots and the Bushmen - and theorises about the "last remnants of the Paleolithic race" being makers of these tools. Later, Leith resumed his collecting of stone tools in Pretoria and surrounding Transvaal. The pages are numbered 443 and 444 in the top right- and top left-hand corners.