Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

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Bushire carries on a considerable trade, particularly with India, Java and
Arabia. Its principal imports are cotton and woollen goods, yarn, metals,
sugar, coffee, tea, spices, cashmere shawls, &c., and its principal exports
opium, wool, carpets, horses, grain, dyes and gums, tobacco, rosewater, &c.
The importance of Bushire has much increased since about 1862. It is now
not only the headquarters of the English naval squadron in the Persian
Gulf, and the land terminus of the Indo-European telegraph, but it also
forms the chief station in the Gulf of the British Indian Steam Navigation
Company, which runs its vessels weekly between Bombay and Basra. Consulates
of Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Turkey and several European
mercantile houses are established at Bushire, and [v.04 p.0871]
notwithstanding the drawbacks of bad roads to the interior, insufficient
and precarious means of transport, and want of security, the annual value
of the Bushire trade since 1890 averaged about L1,500,000 (one-third being
for exports, two-thirds for imports), and over two-thirds of this was
British. Of the 278,000 tons of shipping which entered the port in 1905,
244,000 were British.

During the war with Persia (1856-57) Bushire surrendered to a British force
and remained in British occupation for some months. At Rishire, some miles
south of Bushire and near the summer quarters of the British resident and
the British telegraph buildings, there are extensive ruins among which
bricks with cuneiform inscriptions have been found, showing that the place
was a very old Elamite settlement.

(A. H.-S.)

BUSHMEN, or BOSJESMANS, a people of South Africa, so named by the British
and Dutch colonists of the Cape. They often call themselves _Saan_ [Sing.
_Sa_], but this appears to be the Hottentot name. If they have a national
name it is _Khuai_, probably "small man," the title of one group. This
_Khuai_ has, however, been translated as the Bushman word for _tablier
egyptien_ (see below), adopted as the racial name because that malformation
is one of their physical characteristics. The Kaffirs call them Abatwa, the
Bechuana Masarwa (Maseroa). There is little reason to doubt that they
constitute the aboriginal element of the population of South Africa, and
indications of their former presence have been found as far north at least
as the Nyasa and Tanganyika basins. "It would seem," writes Sir H.H.
Johnston (_British Central Africa_, p. 52), "as if the earliest known race
of man inhabiting what is now British Central Africa was akin to the
Bushman-Hottentot type of negro. Rounded stones with a hole through the
centre, similar to those which are used by the Bushmen in the south for
weighting their digging-sticks (the _graaf stock_ of the Boers), have been
found at the south end of Lake Tanganyika." The dirty yellow colour of the
Bushmen, their slightly slanting eyes and prominent cheek-bones had induced
early anthropologists to dwell on their resemblance to the Mongolian races.
This similarity has been now recognized as quite superficial. More recently
a connexion has been traced between the Bushmen and the Pygmy peoples
inhabiting the forests of Central Africa. Though the matter cannot be
regarded as definitely settled, the latest researches rather tend to
discredit this view. In fact it would appear that the two peoples have
little in common save diminutive proportions and a nomadic and predatory
form of existence. Owing to the discovery of steatopygous figurines in
Egyptian graves, a theory has been advanced that the Egyptians of the early
dynasties were of the same primitive pygmy negroid stock as the Bushmen.
But this is highly speculative. The physical characteristics of Egyptian
skulls have nothing of the Bushman in them. Of the primitive pygmy negroid
stock the Hottentots (_q.v._), once considered the parent family, are now
regarded as an offshoot of mixed Bantu-Bushman blood from the main Bushman
race.

It seems probable that the Bushmen must be regarded as having extended
considerably to the north of the area occupied by them within the memory of
white men. Evidence has been produced of the presence of a belated
Hottentot or Hottentot-Bushman group as far north as the district between
Kilimanjaro and Victoria Nyanza. They were probably driven south by the
Bantu tribes, who eventually outflanked them and confined them to the less
fertile tracts of country. Before the arrival of Europeans in South Africa
the Bushman race appears to have been, what it so essentially is to-day, a
nomadic race living in widely scattered groups. The area in which the
Bushmen are now found sporadically may be defined as extending from the
inner ranges of the mountains of Cape Colony, through the central Kalahari
desert to near Lake Ngami, and thence north-westward to the districts about
the Ovambo river north of Damaraland. In short, they have been driven by
European and Kaffir encroachments into the most barren regions of South
Africa. A few remain in the more inaccessible parts of the Drakensberg
range about the sources of the Vaal. Only in one or two districts are they
found in large numbers, chiefly in Great Bushman Land towards the Orange
river. A regularly planned and wholesale destruction of the Bushmen on the
borders of Cape Colony in the earlier years of European occupation reduced
their numbers to a great extent; but this cruel hunting of the Bushmen has
ceased. In retaliation the Bushmen were long the scourge of the farms on
the outer borders of the colony, making raids on the cattle and driving
them off in large numbers. On the western side of the deserts they are
generally at enmity with the Koranna Hottentots, but on the eastern border
of the Kalahari they have to some extent fraternized with the earliest
Bechuana migrants. Their language, which exists in several dialects, has in
common with Hottentot, but to a greater degree, the peculiar sounds known
as "clicks." The Hottentot language is more agglutinative, the Bushman more
monosyllabic; the former recognizes a gender in names, the latter does not;
the Hottentots form the plural by a suffix, the Bushmen by repetition of
the name; the former count up to twenty, the latter can only number two,
all above that being "many." F.C.Selous records that Koranna Hottentots
were able to converse fluently with the Bushmen of Bechuanaland.

The most striking feature of the Bushman's physique is shortness of
stature. Gustav Fritsch in 1863-1866 found the average height of six grown
men to be 4 ft. 9 in. Earlier, but less trustworthy, measurements make them
still shorter. Among 150 measured by Sir John Barrow during the first
British occupation of Cape Colony the tallest man was 4 ft. 9 in., the
tallest woman 4 ft. 4 in. The Bushmen living in Bechuanaland measured by
Selous in the last quarter of the 19th century were, however, found to be
of nearly average height. Few persons were below 5 ft.; 5 ft. 4 in. was
common, and individuals of even 6 ft. were not unknown. No great difference
in height appears to exist between men and women. Fritsch's average from
five Bushman women was one-sixth of an inch more than for the men. The
Bushmen, as already stated, are of a dirty yellow colour, and of generally
unattractive countenance. The skull is long and low, the cheek-bones large
and prominent. The eyes are deeply set and crafty in expression. The nose
is small and depressed, the mouth wide with moderately everted lips, and
the jaws project. The teeth are not like badly cut ivory, as in Bantu, but
regular and of a mother-of-pearl appearance. In general build the Bushman
is slim and lean almost to emaciation. Even the children show little of the
round outlines of youth. The amount of fat under the skin in both sexes is
remarkably small; hence the skin is as dry as leather and falls into strong
folds around the stomach and at the joints. The fetor of the skin, so
characteristic of the negro, is not found in the Bushman. The hair is weak
in growth, in age it becomes grey, but baldness is rare. Bushmen have
little body-hair and that of a weak stubbly nature, and none of the fine
down usual on most skins. On the face there is usually only a scanty
moustache. A hollowed back and protruding stomach are frequent
characteristics of their figure, but many of them are well proportioned,
all being active and capable of enduring great privations and fatigue.
Considerable steatopygy often exists among the women, who share with the
Hottentot women the extraordinary prolongation of the nymphae which is
often called "the Hottentot apron" or _tablier_. Northward the Bushmen
appear to improve both in general condition and in stature, probably owing
to a tinge of Bantu blood. The Bushman's clothing is scanty: a triangular
piece of skin, passed between the legs and fastened round the waist with a
string, is often all that is worn. Many men, however, and nearly all the
women, wear the _kaross_, a kind of pelisse of skins sewn together, which
is used at night as a wrap. The bodies of both sexes are smeared with a
native ointment, _buchu_, which, aided by accretions of dust and dirt, soon
forms a coating like a rind. Men and women often wear sandals of hide or
plaited bast. They are fond of ornament, and decorate the arms, neck and
legs with beads, iron or copper rings, teeth, hoofs, horns and shells,
while they stick feathers or hares' tails in the hair. The women sometimes
stain their faces with red pigment. They carry tobacco in goats' horns or
in the shell of a land tortoise, while boxes of ointment [v.04 p.0872] or
amulets are hung round neck or waist. A jackal's tail mounted on a stick
serves the double purpose of fan and handkerchief. For dwellings in the
plains they have low huts formed of reed mats, or occupy a hole in the
earth; in the mountain districts they make a shelter among the rocks by
hanging mats on the windward side. Of household utensils they have none,
except ostrich eggs, in which they carry water, and occasionally rough
pots. For cooking his food the Bushman needs nothing but fire, which he
obtains by rubbing hard and soft wood together.

Bushmen do not possess cattle, and have no domestic animals except a few
half-wild dogs, nor have they the smallest rudiments of agriculture. Living
by hunting, they are thoroughly acquainted with the habits and movements of
every kind of wild animal, following the antelope herds in their
migrations. Their weapon is a bow made of a stout bough bent into a sharp
curve. It is strung with twisted sinew. The arrow, which is neatly made of
a reed, the thickness of a finger, is bound with thread to prevent
splitting, and notched at the end for the string. At the point is a head of
bone, or stone with a quill barb; iron arrow-blades obtained from the Bantu
are also found. The arrow is usually 2 to 3 ft. long. The distance at which
the Bushman can be sure of hitting is not great, about twenty paces. The
arrows are always coated with a gummy poisonous compound which kills even
the largest animal in a few hours. The preparation is something of a
mystery, but its main ingredients appear to be the milky juice of the
_Amaryllis toxicaria_, which is abundant in South Africa, or of the
_Euphorbia arborescens_, generally mixed with the venom of snakes or of a
large black spider of the genus _Mygale_; or the entrails of a very deadly
caterpillar, called N'gwa or 'Kaa, are used alone. One authority states
that the Bushmen of the western Kalahari use the juice of a chrysalis which
they scrape out of the ground. From their use of these poisons the Bushmen
are held in great dread by the neighbouring races. They carry, too, a club
some 20 in. long with a knob as big as a man's fist. Assegais and knives
are rare. No Bushman tribe south of Lake Ngami is said to carry spears. A
rude implement, called by the Boers _graaf stock_ or digging stick,
consisting of a sharpened spike of hard wood over which a stone, ground to
a circular form and perforated, is passed and secured by a wedge, forms
part of the Bushman equipment. This is used by the women for uprooting the
succulent tuberous roots of the several species of creeping plants of the
desert, and in digging pitfalls. These perforated stones have a special
interest in indicating the former extension of the Bushmen, since they are
found, as has been said, far beyond the area now occupied by them. The
Bushmen are famous as hunters, and actually run down many kinds of game.
Living a life of periodical starvation, they spend days at a time in search
of food, upon which when found they feed so gluttonously that it is said
five of them will eat a whole zebra in a few hours. They eat practically
anything. The meat is but half cooked, and game is often not completely
drawn. The Bushman eats raw such insects as lice and ants, the eggs of the
latter being regarded as a great delicacy. In hard times they eat lizards,
snakes, frogs, worms and caterpillars. Honey they relish, and for
vegetables devour bulbs and roots. Like the Hottentot, the Bushman is a
great smoker.

The disposition of the Bushman has been much maligned; the cruelty which
has been attributed to him is the natural result of equal brutalities
practiced upon him by the other natives and the early European settlers. He
is a passionate lover of freedom, and, like many other primitive people,
lives only for the moment. Unlike the Hottentot he has never willingly
become a slave, and will fight to the last for his personal liberty. He has
been described as the "anarchist of South Africa." Still, when he becomes a
servant, he is usually trustworthy. His courage is remarkable, and Fritsch
was told by residents who were well qualified to speak that supported by a
dozen Bushmen they would not be afraid of a hundred Kaffirs. The terror
inspired by the Bushmen has indeed had an effect in the deforestation of
parts of Cape Colony, for the colonists, to guard against stealthy attacks,
cut down all the bush far round their holdings. Mission-work among the
Bushmen has been singularly unsuccessful. But in spite of his savage
nature, the Bushman is intelligent. He is quick-witted, and has the gift of
imitating extraordinarily well the cries of bird and beast. He is musical,
too, and makes a rough instrument out of a gourd and one or more strings.
He is fond of dancing; besides the ordinary dances are the special dances
at certain stages of the moon, &c. One of the most interesting facts about
the Bushman is his possession of a remarkable delight in graphic
illustration; the rocks of the mountains of Cape Colony and of the
Drakensberg and the walls of caves anciently inhabited by them have many
examples of Bushman drawings of men, women, children and animals
characteristically sketched. Their designs are partly painted on rock, with
four colours, white, black, red and yellow ochre, partly engraved in soft
sandstone, partly chiselled in hard stone. Rings, crosses and other signs
drawn in blue pigment on some of the rocks, and believed to be one or two
centuries old, have given rise to the erroneous speculation that these may
be remains of a hieroglyphic writing. A discovery of drawings of men and
women with antelope heads was made in the recesses of the Drakensberg in
1873 (J.M. Orpen in _Cape Monthly Magazine_, July 1874). A few years later
Selous discovered similar rock-paintings in Mashonaland and Manicaland.

Little is known of the family life of the Bushmen. Marriage is a matter
merely of offer and acceptance ratified by a feast. Among some tribes the
youth must prove himself an expert hunter. Nothing is known of the laws of
inheritance. The avoidance of parents-in-law, so marked among Kaffirs, is
found among Bushmen. Murder, adultery, rape and robbery are offences
against their code of morals. As among other African tribes the social
position of the women is low. They are beasts of burden, carrying the
children and the family property on the journeys, and doing all the work at
the halting-place. It is their duty also to keep the encampment supplied
with water, no matter how far it has to be carried. The Bushman mother is
devoted to her children, who, though suckled for a long time, yet are fed
within the first few days after birth upon chewed roots and meat, and
taught to chew tobacco at a very early age. The child's head is often
protected from the sun by a plaited shade of ostrich feathers. There is
practically no tribal organization. Individual families at times join
together and appoint a chief, but the arrangement is never more than
temporary. The Bushmen have no concrete idea of a God, but believe in evil
spirits and supernatural interference with man's life. All Bushmen carry
amulets, and there are indications of totemism in their refusal to eat
certain foods. Thus one group will not eat goat's flesh, though the animal
is the commonest in their district. Others reverence antelopes or even the
caterpillar N'gwa. The Bushman cuts off the joints of the fingers as a sign
of mourning and sometimes, it seems, as an act of repentance. Traces of a
belief in continued existence after death are seen in the cairns of stone
thrown on the graves of chiefs. Evil spirits are supposed to hide beneath
these sepulchral mounds, and the Bushman thinks that if he does not throw
his stone on the mounds the spirits will twist his neck. The whole family
deserts the place where any one has died, after raising a pile of stones.
The corpse's head is anointed, then it is smoke-dried and laid in the grave
at full length, stones or earth being piled on it. There is a Bushman
belief that the sun will rise later if the dead are not buried with their
faces to the east. Weapons and other Bushman treasures are buried with the
dead, and the hut materials are burnt in the grave.

The Bushmen have many animal myths, and a rich store of beast legends. The
most prominent of the animal mythological figures is that of the mantis,
around which a great cycle of myths has been formed. He and his wife have
many names. Their adopted daughter is the porcupine. In the family history
an ichneumon, an elephant, a monkey and an eland all figure. The Bushmen
have also solar and lunar myths, and observe and name the stars. Canopus
alone has five names. Some of the constellations have figurative names.
Thus they call Orion's Belt "three she-tortoises hanging on a stick," and
Castor and [v.04 p.0873] Pollux "the cow-elands." The planets, too, have
their names and myths, and some idea of the astonishing wealth of this
Bushman folklore and oral literature may be formed from the fact that the
materials collected by Bleek and preserved in Sir George Grey's library at
Cape Town form eighty-four stout MS. volumes of 3600 pages. They comprise
myths, fables, legends and even poetry, with tales about the sun and moon,
the stars, the crocodile and other animals; legends of peoples who dwelt in
the land before the Bushmen arrived from the north; songs, charms, and even
prayers, or at least incantations; histories, adventures of men and
animals; tribal customs, traditions, superstitions and genealogies. A most
curious feature in Bushman folklore is the occurrence of the speeches of
various animals, into which the relater of the legend introduces particular
"clicks," supposed to be characteristic of the animals in whose mouths they
are placed.

See G.W. Stow, _The Native Races of South Africa_ (London, 1905); Mark
Hutchinson, "Bushman Drawings," in _Jour. Anthrop. Instit._, 1882, p. 464;
Sir H.H. Johnston, _Jour. Anthrop. Inst._, 1883, p. 463; Dr H. Welcker,
_Archiv f. Anthrop._ xvi.; G. Bertin, "The Bushmen and their Language,"
_Jour. R. Asial. Soc._ xviii. part i.; Gustav Fritsch, _Die Eingeborenen
Suedafrikas_ (Breslau, 1872); W.H.I. Bleek, _Bushman Folklore_ (1875);
J.L.P. Erasmus, _The Wild Bushman_, MS. note (1899); F.C. Selous, _African
Nature Notes and Reminiscences_ (1908), chap. xx.; S. Passarge, _Die
Buschmanner der Kalahari_ (Berlin, 1907).

BUSHNELL, HORACE (1802-1876), American theologian, was born in the village
of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 14th of April 1802.
He graduated at Yale in 1827, was associate editor of the New York _Journal
of Commerce_ in 1828-1829, and in 1829 became a tutor at Yale. Here he at
first took up the study of law, but in 1831 he entered the theological
department of Yale College, and in 1833 was ordained pastor of the North
Congregational church in Hartford, Conn., where he remained until 1859,
when on account of long-continued ill-health he resigned his pastorate.
Thereafter he had no settled charge, but, until his death at Hartford on
the 17th of February 1876, he occasionally preached and was diligently
employed as an author. While in California in 1856, for the restoration of
his health, he took an active interest in the organization, at Oakland, of
the college of California (chartered in 1855 and merged in the university
of California in 1869), the presidency of which he declined. As a preacher,
Dr Bushnell was a man of remarkable power. Not a dramatic orator, he was in
high degree original, thoughtful and impressive in the pulpit. His
theological position may be said to have been one of qualified revolt
against the Calvinistic orthodoxy of his day. He criticized prevailing
conceptions of the Trinity, the atonement, conversion, and the relations of
the natural and the supernatural. Above all, he broke with the prevalent
view which regarded theology as essentially intellectual in its appeal and
demonstrable by processes of exact logical deduction. To his thinking its
proper basis is to be found in the feelings and intuitions of man's
spiritual nature. He had a vast influence upon theology in America, an
influence not so much, possibly, in the direction of the modification of
specific doctrines as in "the impulse and tendency and general spirit which
he imparted to theological thought." Dr Munger's estimate may be accepted,
with reservations, as the true one: "He was a theologian as Copernicus was
an astronomer; he changed the point of view, and thus not only changed
everything, but pointed the way toward unity in theological thought. He was
not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that
thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully with ever
growing knowledge. Other thinkers were moving in the same direction; he led
the movement in New England, and wrought out a great deliverance. It was a
work of superb courage. Hardly a theologian in his denomination stood by
him, and nearly all pronounced against him." Four of his books were of
particular importance: _Christian Nurture_ (1847), in which he virtually
opposed revivalism and "effectively turned the current of Christian thought
toward the young"; _Nature and the Supernatural_ (1858), in which he
discussed miracles and endeavoured to "lift the natural into the
supernatural" by emphasizing the super-naturalness of man; _The Vicarious
Sacrifice_ (1866), in which he contended for what has come to be known as
the "moral view" of the atonement in distinction from the "governmental"
and the "penal" or "satisfaction" theories; and _God in Christ_ (1849)
(with an introductory "Dissertation on Language as related to Thought"), in
which he expressed, it was charged, heretical views as to the Trinity,
holding, among other things, that the Godhead is "instrumentally
three--three simply as related to our finite apprehension, and the
communication of God's incommunicable nature." Attempts, indeed, were made
to bring him to trial, but they were unsuccessful, and in 1852 his church
unanimously withdrew from the local "consociation," thus removing any
possibility of further action against him. To his critics Bushnell formally
replied by writing _Christ in Theology_ (1851), in which he employs the
important argument that spiritual facts can be expressed only in
approximate and poetical language, and concludes that an adequate dogmatic
theology cannot exist. That he did not deny the divinity of Christ he
proved in _The Character of Jesus, forbidding his possible Classification
with Men_ (1861). He also published _Sermons for the New Life_ (1858);
_Christ and his Salvation_ (1864); _Work and Play_ (1864); _Moral Uses of
Dark Things_ (1868); _Women's Suffrage, the Reform against Nature_ (1869);
_Sermons on Living Subjects_ (1872); and _Forgiveness and Law_ (1874). Dr
Bushnell was greatly interested in the civic interests of Hartford, and was
the chief agent in procuring the establishment of the public park named in
his honour by that city.

An edition of his works, in eleven volumes, appeared in 1876-1881; and a
further volume, gathered from his unpublished papers, as _The Spirit in
Man: Sermons and Selections_, in 1903. New editions of his _Nature and the
Supernatural, Sermons for the New Life_, and _Work and Play_, were
published the same year. A full bibliography, by Henry Barrett Learned, is
appended to his _Spirit in Man_. Consult Mrs M.B. Cheneys _Life and Letters
of Horace Bushnell_ (New York, 1880; new edition, 1903), and Dr Theodore T.
Mungers _Horace Bushnell, Preacher and Theologian_ (Boston, 1899); also a
series of papers in the _Minutes of the General Association of Connecticut_
(_Bushnell Centenary_) (Hartford, 1902).

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