between the relative purity
and morality of the RELIGION and the savagery of the myths of the
Andamanese, that, in the first edition of this work, I insisted that
the "spiritual god" of the faith must have been "borrowed from the same
quarter as the stone house" in which he is mythically said to live. But
later and wider study, and fresh information from various quarters, have
convinced me that the relative purity of Andamanese religion, with its
ethical sanction of conduct, may well be, and probably is, a natural
unborrowed development. It is easy for MYTH to borrow the notion of a
stone house from our recent settlement at Port Blair. But it would not
be easy for RELIGION to borrow many new ideas from an alien creed, in
a very few years, while the noted ferocity of the islanders towards
strangers, and the inaccessibility of their abode, makes earlier
borrowing, on a large scale at least, highly improbable. The Andamanese
god, Puluga, is "like fire" but invisible, unborn and immortal, knowing
and punishing or rewarding, men's deeds, even "the thoughts of their
hearts". But when once mythical fancy plays round him, and stories are
told about him, he is credited with a wife who is an eel or a shrimp,
just as Zeus made love as an ant or a cuckoo. Puluga was the maker of
men; no particular myth as to how he made them is given. They tried to
kill him, after the deluge (of which a grotesque myth is told), but
he replied that he was "as hard as wood". His legend is in the usual
mythical contradiction with the higher elements in his religion.

(1) Journ. Anthrop. Soc., vol. xii. p. 157 et seq.

Leaving the Andaman islanders, but still studying races in the lowest
degree of civilisation, we come to the Bushmen of South Africa. This
very curious and interesting people, far inferior in material equipment
to the Hottentots, is sometimes regarded as a branch of that race.(1)
The Hottentots call themselves "Khoi-khoi," the Bushmen they style "Sa".
The poor Sa lead the life of pariahs, and are hated and chased by all
other natives of South Africa. They are hunters and diggers for roots,
while the Hottentots, perhaps their kinsmen, are cattle-breeders.(2)
Being so ill-nourished, the Bushmen are very small, but sturdy. They
dwell in, or rather wander through, countries which have been touched
by some ancient civilisation, as is proved by the mysterious mines
and roads of Mashonaland. It is singular that the Bushmen possess a
tradi