SEE CIVILISATION FOR FIRST TIME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 255, 28 October 1936, Page 5

SEE CIVILISATION FOR FIRST TIME

Bl MIMKN ' THROW THE BONES" IN A ( ITT Seventy of Africa’s remaining bushmen, led by Abraham, their centenarian chief, are just seeing white man's civilisation for the first time. They were collected by a scientific expedition which gathered most valuable data about them, and then brought them by lorry several hundred miles to Johannesburg where they will go to the great Empire Exhibition. The bushmen are the most primitive race m Africa. The tall skyscrapers of Johannesburg frightened them into quietneSs when they arrived. But tncy were taken to a suburban camp where they will stay until tne exhibition opens. Old Abraham "threw the bones,” found that the omens were favouiable and all was well. Mi. Donald Bain, who established a camp in the desert to assemble the bushmen, had to exercise great patience to win their confidence. Now he is looked on as their very god, their benefactor and their most trusted friend. z And now the bushmen are settling amid strange new surroundings. They have built a village of small thatched huts. Tramcars, locomotives, gold mine dumps—thousands of staring pedestrians, and traffic control —all these things impress the bushmen with the fact that civilisation in general, and Johannesburg in particular, is a place of helter-skelter and congestion where peace is hard to find. But the bushmen, who found hunting arduous in the desert, are happy. They have all the food they want.