or BUSHIMEN, a race of Hottentots who inhabit the sides and valleys of the Snowberg, or Snowy Mountains, which form the northern boundary of the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. They are rude and savage in the extreme, and, perhaps beyond any other race in existence, deformed and miserable. Their persons present a caricature of that hideous form which characterizes the Hottentot: the hollow back, the large belly, and protruding posterior, causing them to exhibit nearly the shape of the latter S. Destitute of cultivation, and being allowed to occupy only the most dreary and barren tracts, they find the utmost difficulty in procuring a scanty supply of the most wretched aliments. Wild animals pursued across rugged rocks, roots dug from the earth, and the larvae of ants and insects, form their only regular resources. To this indeed they add frequent predatory excursions in order to carry off the cattle from the store-farms in the plains below; but this involves them in a severe and unequal contest, since their arrows, though tipped with deadly poison, and shot with surprising dexterity, are not a match for the fire-arms of the colonists. They are hunted down like wild beasts, and wherever they appear, are shot without the smallest scruple. Mr Barrow met with a young man who had made a journey along part of their territory, and who being asked if he had seen any of them, replied with an air of disappointment, that he had shot only four. From their mode of life, they derive the power of enduring fasting for an extraordinary length of time; though, when they have succeeded in carrying off a sheep or other animal, they devour the flesh without intermission, till it is entirely consumed. Yet they display nothing of that sluggish and gloomy deportment which characterizes the servile Hottentot. They bound with wonderful agility from rock to rock, either in flight or in chase of their prey; and on certain festive occasions, they give way even to an extravagant gaiety; dancing whole days and nights without intermission, especially by moonlight. Even the pictures of animals which they delineate on the rocks are not altogether destitute of spirit or resemblance.