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 in their persons present a caricature of that form which characterizes the Hottentot, the hollow back, protruding belly, and large buttocks. Destitute of cultivation, and inhabiting the most desolate tracts, they procure with difficulty even a scanty supply of the most wretched aliments. Wild animals, roots, and the larvae of ants and insects, form their usual resources. To this, indeed, they add frequent predatory excursions to the store-farms in the plains; but this involves them in a severe and unequal contest, since their arrows, though tipped with deadly poison, and shot with surprising dexterity, are no match for the fire-arms of the colonists. The cruelty with which they have been pursued by the colonists still renders them extremely shy of strangers. 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. Judging from the accounts of travellers who have been among them, and from the individuals of their race exhibited in this country, they appear to be by no means unsusceptible of civilization. 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 to an extravagant gaiety, dancing whole days and nights, especially by moonlight. Even the pictures of animals which they delineate on the rocks are not altogether destitute of spirit or resemblance. See Burckell's Travels.