PAINTINGS AND CHIPPINGS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13652, 22 July 1908, Page 7

PAINTINGS AND CHIPPINGS.

RECORDS OF HUNTERS. By permission of the Council of the Anthropological Institute, an exhibition was held in the library at 3 Hanover Square, London, composed of one hundred facsimiles of Bushman painting,:, aiul cliippings copied from tile caves ujid rocks in the Cape" and Orange River Colonic and Basutolalid, by Mies Helen Tongue. The Bushmen, who are. supposed to have been the first inhabitants of fc-oulh Africa, have been gradually exterminated in vans with Hottentota, Kaffirs, and white men, though a few etill survive in the Kalahari detert. They were wholly a, race of huntels, living in caves or bush hutb; and they used as clothes the skins of the animals they killed with their weapons, which they mads of wood tipped with stone. They neither kept cattle, filled the ground, nor -vorksil in iron.

The drawings by them, which they coloured with iron oxides, or villi oeliKS, mixed with fat, are found on the vails of rock shelters or caves, generally in sands'.one districts. No c-:hcr .South African natives have been known to do similar artistic work.

The dates of the. works v;jy. The latest paintings ill ('ape t i.lony are estimated to be .-bout a ceu'.ury old, though in Brsutoland it is thought that there may be sorie Uone at n still later date. In m:.--,- v'»"-s where they are found there aro several layers of paintings one above the other. The ones beneath make an iridescent background to the latter ones. The undermost are supposed to be about 500 years, old. A mans work was allowed to remain as long as he was personally remembered. When no one remained alive who had known him -his work was painted over. • The copies in the exhibition correspond exactly in size with the originals, being, in fact, careful tracings from them, and the colours of - the figures and tackgrounds have been reproduced as nearly as possible. The subjects of both tbs paintings and the "cliippings" relate always to hunting and animals, and disclose a remarkable knovledge of the habits and characters of the various animals they represent. That the Bushmen must also have practised considerable cunning is shown by their knowledge of the attitudes of repose of such beasts as bucks and elands, which, could only have been obtained by approaching them closely -without disturbing them. Demonstrating the existence of an imaginative side t° the Bushman's nature, there were two tracings—one of a drawing—" Transformation of a man into a frog," illustrating one of their folk tales, and another a "Ghost."