CHAPTER IX.

The Waggons are condemned.—Messengers to the Cape.—The Kaoko.—History of Damara-land.—Ghou Damup Genealogies.—Start for Elephant Fountain.—Excessive Drought.—Engage Eybrett.—Sell my Cart and Mules.—Travel from Eikhams.—Shooting Giraffes in the Dusk.—Elephant Fountain.—Numerous Pitfalls.—Plundering Expeditions.—The Kubabees reach ’Ngami.—Trouble of taking Observations.—Leave Waggon and ride to the East.—Engage Saul.—Hans and a Lion.—We enter the Bushman Tract.—Rhinoceros Skulls.—Hear of the Kubabees Hottentots.—Start for ’Tounobis.—Shoot a White Rhinoceros.—Reach ’Tounobis.—Elephant in a Pitfall.—Prepare for Sport.—Night-Watching for Game.—Rhinoceros Veal.—Opera-glasses.—Herd of Elephants.—Fights and Frolics.—Bulk of the Rhinoceros.—A Picturesque Finale.—Spring Hares.—Remarks on my Route.—Unicorns and Cockatrices.—Bushmen Springes.—Setting Guns at Night.—Description of Plate.—Poisoned Arrows.

During my absence some little news had been received from Europe, for an Englishman had arrived by ship and settled near Walfisch Bay, to try his hand at cattle-trading; and one newspaper had been received through his means. Of my own family I heard no tidings, and of course had been unable to receive any since I had left England, a year and four months previous to this time.

The missionaries receive their communications once in every two years, unless, by some chance accident, a post can be dispatched by ship from Cape Town. They tried to establish sets of messengers from Rehoboth to the Orange River, but the road is so long and difficult that the plan had to be abandoned. One of these messengers murdered his comrade, and said that he had been eaten by a lion; at another time the letters were spoilt by the rains: on every occasion there was some delay or accident.

I was delighted to find that the Hottentots had remained very peaceable, only those under Cornelius having done any mischief to the Damaras during my absence. Confidence was being restored, and troops of Damaras were gathered about the watering-places and pasturages of the Swakop, which had long been abandoned on account of their dangerous proximity to Jonker.

Now, as regards my own plans, the waggons were pronounced scarcely fit for an overland journey to the Cape. The tires of the wheels were worn out; the mended axletree was of doubtful wood; and the waggons were altogether become rickety. On the other hand, the missionaries expected a vessel some time not earlier than December, and we were now at the beginning of August. If, then, I returned by the ship, I should have August, September, October, and half November, to do what I liked in, and leaving Barmen not later than the end of the first fortnight in November, I could easily push down to the bay in time to join the vessel.

As a way of ridding myself of the waggons and all my remaining properties, I should arrange with Hans to act as agent for me to convert them into oxen, and drive them for sale down to the colony, by which means I should recover some part of their value.

Then in order to occupy the fifteen weeks that I had to spare, I intended to make a quick journey to the eastward, both for the purpose of seeing something of the Hottentots, and also to find out whether, as I had at first been assured was the case, the Karrikarri Desert was interposed as an impracticable barrier between the sea-coast countries and Lake ’Ngami.

I divided my party into two: one waggon went down with Hans to the bay, to bring back all the articles of exchange that I had left there; and the other waggon, together with all my ride-oxen, went with me by Jonker’s village on my road to the east.

To make matters more secure, I dispatched messengers to the Orange River, in obtaining whom Swartboy very kindly assisted me; and among my letters, I wrote one to the agent of the missionaries in Cape Town, offering to bear a certain part of the expense of the vessel, on condition that it was dispatched not earlier than the 1st of December, or later than the last of January. We then busied ourselves for a week in packing, and in repairs, and in enjoying Mr. Hahn’s kind hospitality.

Mr. Hahn had made an excursion to Omaruru during my absence, in company with Katjimaha’s sons. It is a spring, situated in the neighbourhood of extensive pasturage, a very important place to the Damaras, and about four and a half days’ travel from Barmen, being a little way beyond Erongo,—the Ghou Damup mountain that I have already mentioned. Omaruru is a rendezvous for the caravans that travel between the Damaras and the sea-side Ovampo; and immediately north of it begins a broad barren tract called the Kaoko, which those caravans have to cross, and which, though now very thinly inhabited, appears to have been the original home of the Damara nation.

I heard of the safety of three of my mules who had travelled down to Scheppmansdorf and taken up their quarters there; they grazed, strayed, and slept just where they pleased, for the Hottentots could not manage them. They were five in number when they ran away from me at Schmelen’s Hope, but two of them must have been killed on the road by lions; they certainly did not die of starvation, for the other three arrived at Scheppmansdorf very plump and in good condition.

I ought to mention that the horse distemper does not appear to exist at Scheppmansdorf: five or six horses have at different times been kept there, but none have suffered from the disease.

I had much satisfaction in comparing the results of my inquiries with those of Mr. Hahn, with regard to the earlier history of Damara-land. It appears undoubted that seventy years ago not a single Damara existed in the parts where I had been travelling, but that they all lived in the Kaoko, while tribes of Bushmen and Ghou Damup possessed the entire country between the Orange River and the Ovampo, excepting only the Kaoko on the north-west, and the central Karrikarri desert on the east.

The Ghou Damup, though treated kindly by the Bushmen, were always considered as inferiors, and the two races never intermarried. The Ghou Damup lived then, as they do now, about the hills, and the Bushmen on the plains. I saw an old Damara, and an old Ghou Damup who remembered this state of things, and several who were born just after it was put an end to; among these was Katjimaha himself who looks about sixty-five years old.

The Damaras at that time made a sweeping invasion eastwards, right across the country, to the very neighbourhood of Lake ’Ngami, and attacked the Mationa (as they call the people who live there).

Subsequently the Mationa retaliated and invaded the land as far as Barmen on one occasion, and on a second attack passed up the Omoramba as far as Omanbondè. The last Mationa invasion took place about twenty-two years ago. The result of all this fighting was that the Bushmen tribes have been exterminated or driven out of the whole pasture country between Barmen and Okamabuti (the place where the waggon broke down), and the Damaras inhabit it in their stead. Eastwards, they are now separated from the Mationa by only a broad strip of barren country. The Ghou Damup live in large communities about a mountainous district on the lower part of the Omoramba, where they appear to be by no means an impoverished nation, but agriculturists and traders with the Ovampo and other nations to the north. My own belief is, that very long ago the Ghou Damup were the aborigines not only of the present Damara-land but also of the whole country to the south of it half way down to the Orange River, and that they are of a race in every respect kindred to the Ovampo. The Bushmen appear to have invaded and thoroughly conquered the Ghou Damup, for they not only exist as the superior caste of the two, but have also taught them their language, to the entire exclusion of whatever other one they may at some former period have possessed. Those Ghou Damup that I saw have no tradition of any other language than that they used; but the tribes who live on the lower parts of the Omoramba were described as speaking several languages; and some of these were said to be ignorant of Hottentot.

All these bits of information were derived from very many sources; some I received from persons in Damara-land, some from Ghou Damup among the Namaquas, and the rest from Bushmen who lived far to the east of them. The Ghou Damup are abused and tyrannised over by everybody, but servitude has become their nature, and the very name of Ghou which they themselves adopt and use is far from complimentary. Like many other Hottentot names it is not translatable to ears polite. The missionaries for delicacy’s sake call them “Hill” Damaras, because they live on the hills.

A standing joke against the Ghou Damup is, that they trace their descent from the monkey tribe. An old man amongst them gave me the following history of his family; he worded it very neatly:—“My great uncle was a baboon, and lived on excellent terms with the rest of the family, but the following occurrence caused his separation from it. My grandfather had been gambling, and lost all the ornaments, &c., that he had on his person, but wishing to continue the game, requested his brother the baboon to go to my great grandfather, the famous Hadji-Aybib, and beg enough beads from him to form another stake. My great uncle the baboon went, but passing a Hottentot werft by the way, in which were many fierce dogs, before unknown in the country, he became so alarmed at their barking and snapping at him that he ran to the hills, and never dared face man again. Why should not we and the baboons be brothers?” said the old gentleman. “Everybody persecutes us alike. We both live on the hills, eat the same roots, and ‘crow’ for them with our hands in the same manner!” Hadji-Aybib, my friend’s great grandfather, married a Bushwoman for his second wife, who annoyed her step sons by her hauteur, and twitted them on account of their vulgar habits and low connections. Influenced by her, Hadji-Aybib cruelly treated his Damup progeny, and they on their part earnestly longed for his death. One day he was missing, rumour gave out that he was killed, and the sons gave way to the greatest paroxysms of merriment, during which they behaved in such an unseemly manner before the eyes of their fine lady Hottentot connections that on Hadji-Aybib’s return,—for he was not killed after all,—they were obliged, from absolute shame, to hide themselves away from his presence, and fled to the hills, bearing with them the reproachful name of Ghou Damup.

_August 13th._—Our party separated, one detachment _en route_ to the bay, and Andersson, Timboo, John Morta, Phlebus, and myself, travelling towards Lake ’Ngami. I took only five or six of the most active Damaras with me, and appointed the neighbourhood of Jonker’s werft as a place of rendezvous for both parties at the beginning of November.

The dryness of the country was now really alarming; all the watering-places that remained were crowded with cattle, and every blade of grass within miles of them was being eaten off. Over a great part of Damara-land rain had not fallen more than ten times during the whole rainy season; and a mortality from actual starvation had already begun among the cattle, and the year will probably be remembered and named by the Damaras as that of the great drought.

It was therefore no easy matter for me to travel about; but I had one advantage on my side, which was, that on the road, when far away from watering-places and the grazing limits of the cattle by them, I often found grass, and there I outspanned to sleep, and let the oxen feed, then travelling on in the morning I came to the next watering-place at the middle of the day, when the cattle of the natives were all sent off to the fields, and the wells were disengaged. I thus ensured an evening’s meal to the oxen, and also one in the early morning, if they chose to eat it, and water in the middle of the day, but no more.

On the road to Jonker we found hardly any grass, and I do not know how I should have been able to keep my cattle at his place, if it were not that a valley was left unoccupied, owing to a superstitious feeling arising from a cattle-watcher having been lately murdered there by the Damaras. Jonker received me very kindly, and I expressed to him how glad I was to hear of the excellent manner in which he had kept order among his people during my absence. He had, I knew, been put to very great trouble in doing so, as the disposition to pillage is general among the Hottentots, and requires a far more despotic ruler to repress than Jonker or anybody else in this republican part of the world is allowed to be.

I found a man settled here who was of great use to me, and whom I engaged; he was white, and born in the Cape; spoke English and Dutch perfectly, and was brought by the missionaries here as half-carpenter, half-schoolmaster. He, however, did not suit them, and had for a long time been dismissed their service; I found him installed as Jonker’s prime minister. He spoke Hottentot very fairly, and had a winning manner about him that vastly smoothed down the minor difficulties of my way; and though he was always getting himself and us into scrapes, yet he had a marvellous faculty of creeping out of them again. Eybrett, for that was his name, undertook to guide me to Elephant Fountain, a deserted station on the northern frontier of Amiral’s tribe. No waggon had passed that road for years, and the way led along a country which was rarely travelled over, owing to its being a border district between the Damaras and Namaquas.

Elephant Fountain and the country immediately adjacent had been the Ultima Thule of missionaries and traders, but the Oerlams, under Amiral, had recently extended themselves about forty miles further to the east, and on their late shooting excursions had reached a point considerably more distant. I was assured that the appearance of the land would be found to alter considerably, the thorns and rugged hills of Damara-land giving place to broad plains, and grass, and timber trees. Beyond was the desert which had hitherto been considered quite impassable, except for men on foot, after the rainy season, and which therefore barred out the lands of the west coast from those of Central Africa.

It was principally with a view to try if this desert were really impassable that I proposed now to travel, and my object was to strike upon some road that led from the colony up to Lake ’Ngami. The Lake itself I was indifferent about reaching, for it is of no great size, and might prove a very unhealthy place for us, who had been accustomed so long to the pure air of a high plateau. It was two years since its discovery, and there was every reason to suppose that it was by this time perfectly well known. Lastly, I should never get on amongst the blacks there without an interpreter, being, as they are, deadly enemies to the Damaras, from whose side I should have come. I also looked forward with much pleasure to a little sport, for game had been so scarce in Damara-land that it made shooting a real toil.

I sold my cart and harness which were lying at Otjimbinguè, and the three mules which were at Scheppmansdorf, to Jonker; he gave me twenty oxen and forty milch goats for them; but all my efforts to buy horses were unavailing. He, however, gave me a mount to Rehoboth, where I went to induce Swartboy to meet Jonker and Cornelius, and settle many matters that were in dispute between them, and also to overawe Cornelius and keep him in better order, for he had lately been stealing a great deal of Damara cattle.

My Hottentot interpreters now were Eybrett and Phlebus; but Eybrett was an educated man, and could interpret from English to Hottentot at once, so that I generally employed him. He was an excellent interpreter into Dutch when he chose to take pains.

We had between us a motley command of languages; for including those of Europe, one or other of the party could converse fluently in nine different languages—English, French, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Hottentot, Damara, and Movisa; besides having some acquaintance with German, Arabic, Caffre, and a smattering of Ovampo.

It will be tedious to describe my journey now as minutely as I did that in Damara-land, for it was much the same thing over again—uncertainty of the way and want of water; but we had become far quicker and more self-confident in emergencies, and were altogether a very active and efficient body of men. Among my Damaras I had two of the smartest men and best runners that could be found in the country; all of them, indeed, were picked men, and they had become much attached to us, and worked very well, and willingly.

In a few hours from Eikhams we had emerged from the valley of the Swakop on to the high plateau. Thence we followed the Quieep River easterly: this we left for the Noosop, crossing a broad plain, and having some shooting; we then followed the Noosop, and game began to appear in abundance. We passed one great herd of springboks that were migrating; they eat up the grass almost as locusts would on their way. It was by no means so numerous a herd as is often seen in Bechuana country; but the tufts of white hair on the backs of the males were as thickly scattered over the country as daisies on a lawn. We never had to kill oxen,—only sheep now and then, for the sake of the fat; for all the game was very dry; and where you have no vegetables, fat becomes an essential element of food.

It was a great drawback to us that elands were hardly ever seen in this country: they are the staple food of sportsmen in Bechuana-land, and are very fat.

We discovered how to shoot giraffes on foot from Andersson having gone successfully after a herd in the dusk of the evening, when we found that they allowed him to stalk close up to them. They see very indistinctly in the dark. He shot at two, who did not run far when wounded, but seemed bewildered. He fired all his bullets away at them, and brought one to a stand-still, and the other to a slow walk; but they would not fall. He could only find one pebble in the sandy soil to fire out of the gun, instead of a bullet, and that seemed to have no effect upon the animal: he then thought of hamstringing them; but though he nicked the skin of one deeply, yet as he struck out both with his horns and heels when he did so, it was too dangerous to continue the attempt. In despair, he took his rifle-barrel (which was a common thick thing) from the stock, and kept flinging it at the giraffe’s head like a knob-kerrie, and at length the beast dropped. In the morning the other one had walked away; and though he was tracked a couple of miles, yet he could not be found. We jerked the giraffe, that is, cut the flesh that we did not eat into strips, and dried them in the sun. The skin was of great service to us, as our shoes were worn out, and wanted new soles. It is strange to see in how small a compass the meat of the whole animal packs up when it is dried.

Something was shot every day till we came to Kurrikoop, and there we slept out by the water. A buffalo, a gnu, five zebras, two hartebeests, and three roebucks were “bagged” in two nights. The natives of the place had a grand feast: and so had we.

At Elephant Fountain we found Amiral, and about forty men, who had just arrived there, _en route_ for a shooting excursion to the east. They take their waggons with them for some days, and then make an encampment, whence they journey short distances on ride-oxen, and shoot what they can, bringing the meat back jerked to the waggon. It was delightful to hear people talk familiarly of the rhinoceros as an everyday kind of game, and we longed for a raid upon them. I had not yet seen a single rhinoceros. One was shot by Andersson and Hans when they went down to the bay, but I was not then present. On the last shooting excursion Amiral’s men had “bagged” forty of them.

Elephant Fountain is a rather copious spring on the side of a black thorny hill, above a narrow river-bed. Herds of animals come here to drink; and the ground at the principal place is bored full of pitfalls. By arranging the bushes in different ways, different sets of paths and pitfalls can be used at pleasure, and the animals are unscared by the smell of the blood of their companions, who may have been caught and slaughtered the preceding evening. No less than thirty-four zebras were entrapped in one night. We could not of course shoot here, as it might frighten the game away, and there was no great temptation, as only zebras and roebucks came to drink. There were a great many lions about, some of whom had lately taken two men, who had sat up watching for game; but none troubled us. In the day-time, while we were waiting for Amiral, a few animals were shot, and jerked as food for the party that was to stay with the waggon, for I intended to let it stop here, and to ride on with Andersson, Eybrett, and Timboo, leaving John Morta and Phlebus behind.

Elephant Fountain acquired its name from the enormous number of tusks that were found in the water of this place. When the Hottentots settled there, the pool into which the water runs was overgrown with reeds, and harboured lions and hyenas, and all kinds of wild beasts. So the reeds were burnt down, and the pool cleared out: it was not at all a large one, perhaps twenty-five paces across; but in the mud at the bottom of it they found quantities of elephants’ bones and tusks, so that a trader bought enough ivory to fill more than one, and I think two waggons with it. Elephants were then numerous at the place, but they have now quitted it.

A very fatal intermittent fever occurs here, and has depopulated the place more than once; it breaks out in April, and rages for two or three months. It does not extend to the west of the place; I cannot say whether or no it does to the east. Amiral told me that the Mationa, or Bechuanas, as he called them, occasionally visited him; but that, having no interpreter, he could not converse with them. One large party of chiefs had just left Wesley Vale. He said that the Bushmen had always told him that the desert to the east was impassable; but that from time to time they had found springs in their hunting excursions; and that very likely there was a way across it, if the Bushmen would only choose to point it out. It seemed that the desert was bare sand opposite to Wesley Vale, four days south of Elephant Fountain, but covered with grass at this latitude. I therefore had good reason to hope that we should turn its flank. Last year a large party of Kubabees Hottentots (who live a few days east of Bethany) rode up to the north, passing alongside of Amiral’s country; but far to the east of it, they came to a place called “Tounobis,” whence they made plundering excursions on all sides: some against the Damaras, and some against the Mationa, who lived on Lake ’Ngami itself. A nephew of Amiral’s, who could write Dutch, was in the expedition, and sent Amiral a letter about it. He described the boats that were there, and said much about the alligators, who killed very many of their dogs. The Hottentots made a most murderous excursion, having fallen upon a village that was situated on the river, connected with the west of the lake, and cut every person’s throat they could lay hands on. They then robbed the huts and decamped with their booty. Carosses, made of skins that were unknown to them, were amongst the plunder. The lake itself they did not dare to go to; a hill or mountain was pointed out to them, at the foot of which not only the lake, but a large werft of natives were; and these they did not venture to approach. I was told that I should probably see the Bushmen, who guided them. Amiral was very anxious to lay hold of these Bushmen, and require them not to guide strangers, as the harm which the Kubabees Hottentots had done would probably be retaliated on his head.

It was most likely on a visit of expostulation, or as spies, that the Mationa chiefs had been to Wesley Vale; but as no interpreter could be found, the interview ended in nothing but an exchange of presents. I heard that there was a woman born among the Mationa, but now naturalised in Amiral’s tribe; and I sent messengers long distances to try and bring her, but she was not to be found—only her two half-caste children, who knew nothing but Hottentot.

The country appeared to have become quite devoid of all landmarks, only a few rising heads and long undulating ridges being visible, which I could make no use of in triangulating. I had brought my triangulations to within eleven hours of Elephant Fountain, and, indeed, with a slight gap, to Elephant Fountain itself; but here it seemed that they must cease, so I took a great number of lunars, to fix as accurately as I could the position of the place. I had done the same at Okamabuti, which was the northern limit, or near to it, of my network of triangles; that of Walfisch Bay was given by Captain Owen’s survey, and I had taken many sets at Barmen, as a check upon the whole. These were all observed with a large sextant, for which I had contrived a stand; but in travelling on ox-back I was obliged to leave this behind, as being much too cumbrous to carry, and packed a small but excellent circle among plenty of stockings, &c., in a fishing-basket, which I made a man strap on his back. With this circle I had already taken sets for longitude at Ondonga, and I proposed now doing the same at the most eastern point I should arrive at, filling up the intermediate places by a careful dead reckoning, checked by latitudes. I had so few subjects of interest in the journey, that taking sets of observations, which would be a great nuisance to a person under any other circumstances, was to me a source of occupation and a great pleasure, and I slaved at it. It requires some care to “pit” one observation against another, so as to eliminate the error of a doubtful instrument.

The packing and unpacking is troublesome, and an instrument cannot be left for a moment unguarded, or the goats will butt at it, the sheep and dogs run over it, or the oxen brush against it; and it is cold work, having to leave the fire, that its glare may be avoided, and to wait for the culminating of one star after another.

We were detained longer than we ought to have been at Elephant Fountain, by a break-down of Amiral’s waggon, just as he was starting, but, as it was a light vehicle and the roads were level, a piece of green wood was made into an axletree, and we were ready to proceed in two days. Our dates were, left Jonker, August 30th; arrived at Elephant Fountain, September 14th; proceeded, September 19th.

Hardly a Hottentot lived at Elephant Fountain, but there were large werfts of Berg Damaras there, who of course belonged to Amiral. I therefore felt no fear whatever at leaving my two men, for there is security of life in the country of the Hottentots, and we parted in high spirits for a six weeks’ tour, my time being limited by the expected arrival of the ship at Walfisch Bay, from which I was now distant 156 hours (390 miles), or, with a single span of oxen, at least a month’s journey off.

We rode over to ’Twas in eleven hours, following the track of Amiral’s waggon, and there we found a large werft. I engaged a Dutchman, by name Saul, whom I found there. He was to take two or three pack-oxen, and to pack them himself, and to help my party in everything. He was a well-known shot, spoke Hottentot perfectly, and was just the man I wanted.

It seemed to me that, small as Amiral’s tribe was, it was infinitely the most civilised of all I had seen, and seemed possessed of more resources by far than either Swartboy’s or Cornelius’. I mean that, with the usual articles of exchange, whatever was wanted, might be found and bought there with far more facility than elsewhere. The others keep no “stock in hand” of anything, but scramble on from hand to mouth. If you want a pair of leather trousers made, the goat must be killed and the skin dressed, for nobody cares to keep a spare piece of leather. In the same way with carosses, each man has his own sleeping things, but no overplus by him to sell. Every Hottentot has his ride-ox, which he will not dream of parting with until he has broken in another one to take its place, and there is a want of _capital_ everywhere, so that although a traveller may be abundantly supplied with articles of exchange, and the natives around him by no means badly off, yet it does not at all follow that he will find anybody to barter with him as he journeys through their country.

_September 24th._—We left ’Twas on our shooting excursion. I took no dogs: mine were useless curs for anything else but night-watching; and under the guidance of Saul we travelled five hours and a half, passing a succession of little springs on our way. Early the next morning we went three hours to the place of rendezvous, and Amiral came shortly afterwards: numbers of other Hottentots soon dropped in, and we had a very merry evening, telling tales, and talking about the habits of animals. Of course we had lion and elephant stories in abundance. I was curious to know what animals here were the most fatal to man, and we counted over all the deaths that we could think of. Buffaloes (though not common here) killed the most, then rhinoceroses, and lastly, lions. Areep, the predecessor of Cornelius, as chief of his tribe, was killed by a black rhinoceros. It is curious how many people are wounded by lions, though not killed. A very active Damara, who was some time with me in Damara-land, but who stayed behind as I journeyed up the country, was in a dreadfully mangled state when I returned. He had found a lion in the act of striking down his ox, and rushed at him with his assegai: he gave him a wound that must have proved mortal, for the assegai went far into his side; but the lion turned upon him, and seizing him, bit one elbow-joint quite through, and continued worrying him until some other Damaras ran up and killed the animal. My servant, Hans, had a very narrow escape some time since. He was riding old Frieschland (the most useful ox I had, but now worn out by the Ondonga journey) along the Swakop, when he saw something dusky by the side of a camelthorn tree, two hundred yards off. This was a lion, that rose and walked towards him: Hans had his gun in his gun-bag by the side of his saddle, and rode on, for there is no use in provoking hostilities single-handed with a lion, unless some object has to be gained by it, as every sportsman at last acknowledges. The coolest hand and the best shot are never safe, for a bullet, however well aimed, is not certain to put the animal _hors de combat_. After the lion had walked some twenty or thirty yards, Frieschland, the ox, either saw or smelt him, and became furious. Hans had enough to do to keep his seat; for a powerful long-horned ox tossing his head about and plunging wildly is a most awkward hack for the best of jockeys. The lion galloped up. He and Hans were side by side. The lion made his spring, and one heavy paw came on the nape of the ox’s neck, and rolled him over; the other clutched at Hans’ arm, and tore the sleeve of his shirt to ribbons, but did not wound him, and there they all three lay. Hans, though he was thrown upon his gun, contrived to wriggle it out, the lion snarling and clutching at him all the time; but for all that, he put both bullets into the beast’s body, who dropped, then turned round, and limped bleeding away into the recesses of a broad thick cover; and of course Hans, shaken as he was, let him go. There were no dogs to follow him, so he was allowed to die in peace; and subsequently his spoor was taken up, and his remains found.

Probably many more people are killed by lions than one hears of, for the most frequent victims are paupers who scatter themselves about the country, squatting on the ground and crowing pig-nuts; they become so absorbed in their occupation that a lion could easily crouch behind and spring upon them. Numbers of people are reported to be missing in Damara-land, but no one cares to search out their fate. I made a list once of the people I had met with who had been wounded by lions, but I have lost it. It was a very long one. The wounds were always bad ones to heal. They frequently became almost well, and then broke out afresh.

_26th._—We were now fairly _en route_, and had entered the Bushman country; we travelled along the brow of a long ridge that rose insensibly to perhaps 1000 feet above a wide plain, which stretched far away to the east, and was covered with timber trees;—this was the margin of the great desert. I was told that we should continue journeying along this ridge till we reached the furthest point that Amiral’s men had yet travelled to, and thence our course would, if we intended to go to ’Tounobis, lie across this plain.

The news of our shooting expedition had spread far and wide, and Damaras flocked like crows from all quarters to share in the food. The place where we slept on the 26th was a charming spot, among blackthorn trees, lighted up by fires in all directions, round each of which were grouped parties of our guests. We steadily rode on, keeping ahead of Amiral’s party, and on the evening of the second day we arrived at the first great shooting-place. It was a picturesque gorge in the ridge which led down to the plain, and in which was a succession of small springs. Rhinoceros skulls were lying in every direction, but strangely enough only one spoor could be seen. The whole of that night did Saul and I watch without seeing anything but a jackal. It was very disappointing, but the animals clearly were not there. We therefore pushed on. Saul had told us that the rhinoceroses would begin trooping in at night-fall, and that we should continue firing at them till day-break, and I had believed him. Forty were killed here about a month since; I could not doubt it, for I counted in a small space upwards of twenty heads; but I suppose that a vast number were also wounded, and that the whole game was fairly scared from the place. Amiral’s men were hard up for food; each man came on his ride-ox, and carried nothing with him.

On the 28th we arrived at the furthest place the Namaquas had explored to. We saw about a dozen fresh spoors of elephants, and a few of rhinoceroses. I tried all I could to make the people encamp out of ear-shot of the water but they would not. No elephants came that night, but a rhinoceros, a lion, a hyena, and a gnu were “bagged.” The Damaras were only allowed the carrion, as Amiral’s suite of forty men all had to be fed: these poor people were in a sad state; they searched for pieces of old rhinoceros hide, the skin of animals that had been slaughtered here before, and which had dried in the sun before wild beasts had had time to devour it. This cooked in the fire and beaten with stones to make it soft enough to chew is not at all bad, and I have often eaten it; but there was not enough of it to feed the whole crew of Damaras, neither were there pig-nuts here for them to crow, and they were, consequently, in great distress.

Several Bushmen came to us here, of the tribe that lived at ’Tounobis; the Namaquas can hardly understand them; they laugh excessively at the odd double way in which they pronounce their clicks. One man, the son of the chief whose name means “Buffalo,” was much the most intelligible, and I engaged him at once as guide. He told us all about the Kubabees Hottentots, how they came, and where they went, whom they killed, and whom they robbed, and gave us every particular. All the Bushmen were well acquainted with the great waters to the north-east (the lake ’Ngami and its rivers), and described the boats on them, and mimicked the alligators and hippopotami. They had heard also of the Soun Damup, that tribe of Ghou Damup that live in an independent state along the lower part of the Omoramba, and pointed out the direction of their country. They knew of waggons having gone to Lake ’Ngami, and said that they had some things which were given to them by the people who travelled in them, whom they particularly described. They however protested that the country was, in this peculiarly dry season, impassable beyond ’Tounobis.

How far this place was we could not well make out, but it certainly was a long journey without water; tired and footsore as the oxen were, I was determined however to attempt it. The Bushmen declared that the game was all scared away from where we were; but that we should see immense quantities at ’Tounobis. One informant asserted that the buffaloes were so thick upon the ground that we should have great difficulty in driving the waggons through them. But they all agreed that near ’Tounobis it would be dangerous to travel at night, as the wild animals would certainly charge us and our oxen when we met them on the way.

We started for ’Tounobis on the afternoon of Oct. 1st with Amiral and half of his men; after about three hours we came to a little well that the Hottentots who were before us had just drank dry, and, going on, to our delight saw two huge white rhinoceroses, three or four hundred yards on one side of us. They are indeed immense creatures, so far longer than the black ones, and their horns so much larger. The rhinoceros now in the Regent’s Park Gardens is a black rhinoceros; it is much the most vicious of the two kinds, but nothing like the size of the other. We all tumbled off our oxen, some twenty of us (the others had returned to Amiral’s waggons), and ran helter-skelter through the bushes, each his own way, till we were pretty near them, and then, as one trotted up to see what was the matter, a volley was blazed into him, that bowled him over like a hare. The other one took a sweep and escaped unshot. The rapidity with which the slaughtered one was cut up was perfectly astonishing. I minuted the whole occurrence; it only took twenty minutes, and we were in our saddles again thirty-five minutes after we had left them. It must be recollected that three-penny pocket-knives are not the best of instruments to make an impression on rhinoceros hide. There is no knife so good as a common butcher’s knife; as a general rule, soft steel, or even iron, is far better than hard steel, because you can sharpen the first on any bit of stone, and the metal does not splinter when it comes against a bone.

We followed an elephant path, which went as straight as a Roman road. I took its direction several times with an azimuth compass, and it did not vary four degrees. We travelled till past nine, having been on the move for six and a quarter hours.

The next day, starting very early, poor Timmerman and Frieschland both knocked up; they had never recovered the Ondonga journey: we drove them as far as we could, but it was no use, and as we of course could not wait in the middle of the plain without water, we had to leave the poor creatures to their fate.

This day we managed eleven hours’ actual travelling, and could have easily pushed on again at midnight, but the Bushmen begged us not, as we were coming to where the rhinoceroses were very numerous, and assured us that if we started in the morning we should arrive at ’Tounobis before the heat of the day. This we did; we passed along a labyrinth of wild beasts’ paths, put up one rhinoceros, and, after four hours, a valley in front where smoke rose among the trees announced that we had arrived at ’Tounobis. We hurried to the water to look for spoors, and now we were, without any doubt, in a game-country. The river-bed was trodden like the ground in a cattle fair by animals of all descriptions. The water lay in pools among rocks, and there were evident marks of where the water had stood at the preceding evening, and the depth to which it had been drunk out by the animals during the night; by the sides of these holes were the circular walls of loose stones, two or three feet high, that the Kubabees Hottentots had built up as screens, from behind which to shoot.

A little way off were crowds of Bushmen; we went to them, and found them clustered round one of a series of deep uncovered wells, about twelve feet across and eight or ten deep, and very close together, into which an elephant had been pushed the preceding night by his comrades, as they had scrambled in droves to drink, and there he lay, just killed, and great pieces of flesh were being cut off and hauled up from his carcase.

All this was delightful, and we off-packed our lean oxen in the highest spirits about a quarter of a mile from the water, in the midst of a thick grove of trees. Amiral encamped near us; we made a kraal and settled down for at least a week’s pleasuring. As soon as the elephant was disposed of, I collected all the chief Bushmen in a ring, and gave them tobacco and so forth, and began asking them about the country further on ahead. One of my men came to say that he had just found a Bushman cooking with a large iron pot; this was a sure sign of the neighbourhood of civilised man. The Bushman said that it was given to them by people from a waggon some distance to the east, and who had gone to the lake during the previous rainy season. The man who had guided the Kubabees Hottentots lived here—Toes-u-wap was his melodious name. He and the other Bushman wore great numbers of elephant hair necklaces, with three or four beads strung on each of them; they are, as I now find, worked after the manner that the English ladies call “tatting.” Old Buffaloe’s son and Toes-u-wap were the only two who could understand much of the language of the Hottentots; they interpreted for us to the other Bushmen as well as they could, but our conversation was far from fluent. Several of these Bushmen knew the Mationa language, and as I had a little MS. Sichuana dictionary with me, I asked the Sichuana names for sixty words; of these about twenty were identical with those in my dictionary, twenty were somewhat like them, and the other twenty I could not find. I presume, therefore, that their language is Sichuana, or a dialect of it. The Bushmen were unanimous in saying that our next stage to the east was longer than the one we had just travelled. The season was so excessively dry that all the wells were exhausted. The Kubabees Hottentots had passed by this place in the dry season, but it was subsequent to an ordinarily rainy summer, and they left ’Tounobis in the afternoon, travelled all night, and next midday drank water with reeds, after their manner, from a place where the sand was damp; on the ensuing day they came to a Bushman werft, and so on every day till the fifth, when they reached a Mationa cattle-post; they call it Eisis in Hottentot, Chuèsa in Mationa language; from there the hills that border the great water (river or lake I am not sure which) can be seen. There is said to be much game there.

We had great difficulty in making the Bushmen distinguish between the lake and the rivers; they called the whole water-country by one name—Tl’ Annee. However, I will not enter at length into these details, as more accurate information will certainly be received before long from the whites, or whiter races, who are now steadily pushing northwards.

We repaired the circular walls of loose stones that were to form our shooting-screens. The lower they are the better, generally speaking, as being less likely to attract attention; but when it can be managed, a wall about two feet nine inches high is much the most convenient to shoot over, as a man’s position is not cramped when he kneels down and fires from behind one of these: they ought to be six or seven feet across. A hole in the ground is sometimes made instead of a wall; but generally speaking, the neighbourhood of large watering-places in these parts is a mass of limestone rock, into which one cannot dig.

It is one of the most strangely exciting positions that a sportsman can find himself in, to lie behind one of these screens or holes by the side of a path leading to a watering-place so thronged with game as ’Tounobis. Herds of gnus glide along the neighbouring paths in almost endless files: here standing out in bold relief against the sky, there a moving line, just visible in the deep shades; and all as noiseless as a dream. Now and then a slight pattering over the stones makes you start; it jars painfully on the strained ear, and a troop of zebras pass frolicking by. All at once you observe, twenty or thirty yards off, two huge ears pricked up high above the brushwood; another few seconds, and a sharp solid horn indicates the cautious and noiseless approach of the great rhinoceros. Then the rifle or gun is poked slowly over the wall, which has before been covered with a plaid, or something soft, to muffle all grating sounds; and you keep a sharp and anxious look-out through some cranny in your screen. The beast moves nearer and nearer; you crouch close up under the wall, lest he should see over it and perceive you. Nearer, nearer still; yet somehow his shape is indistinct, and perhaps his position unfavourable to warrant a shot. Another moment, and he is within ten yards, and walking steadily on. There lies a stone, on which you had laid your caross and other things, when making ready to enter your shooting-screen; the beast has come to it, he sniffs the taint of them, tosses his head up wind, and turns his huge bulk full broadside on to you. Not a second is to be lost. Bang! and the bullet lies well home under his shoulder. Then follows a plunge and a rush, and the animal charges madly about, making wide sweeps to right and left with his huge horn, as you crouch down still and almost breathless, and with every nerve on the stretch. He is off; you hear his deep blowing in the calm night; now his gallop ceases. The occasional rattling of a stone alone indicates that he is yet a-foot; for a moment all is still, and then a scarcely audible “sough” informs you that the great beast has sunk to the ground, and that his pains of death are over.

The animals are picked up in the morning; but it is not very easy to find them. Spooring is, in most cases, quite out of the question, on account of the numberless tracks. The Bushmen jerked every particle of the meat of all the animals that we killed, excepting that which we used ourselves. I like rhinoceros flesh more than that of any other wild animal. A young calf, rolled up in a piece of spare hide, and baked in the earth is excellent. I hardly know which part of the little animal is the best, the skin or the flesh.

The Hottentots shot away a great many bullets at rhinoceroses, and did, I dare say, a great deal of mischief; for they lie six or seven together in each shooting-screen, and blaze volleys at long distances—often thirty or forty yards—at the rhinoceros. The consequence is that they “bag” but very few, compared to the number that they fire at; the others most likely linger on for a few days, and then lie down and die elsewhere. One night Andersson and myself were lying out together when a rhinoceros came, that I fired at. Something smaller was following at its heels; but we could not see what, on account of the shade of the dark bushes. It was a brilliant moonlight; and we were foolish enough to leave our screen, and poke about after the animal, which luckily we never found. In the early morning Andersson went to look for the game that had been shot; and first followed the spoor of the rhinoceros we had been seeking. He soon found the animal lying dead among the bushes; and he walked carelessly up, with rifle over his shoulder, when as he was just upon the animal, a full-grown calf rushed out from behind its dead mother right at him. He had a very narrow escape, for the creature brushed by him in the narrow pathway: he was about as large as an ox, and his spoor was half size. Had we come upon them the preceding night, we should have run some risk. On one occasion a rhinoceros that he fired at, brushed down the stones of one side of his shooting-place.

If I were to travel again on a shooting-tour, I should certainly take a large opera-glass with me. It is one of the most perfect of night-glasses, besides being the most useful of telescopes. I should think it would put a man’s sight in the dusk on a par with that of wild beasts generally; and it is so portable and manageable an instrument, that I should never lie out watching for animals without one.

Since my return to England I have often amused myself at night in trying their powers, which certainly are marvellous. At sea they are coming into general use, and more than one naval officer of considerable experience, in chasing slavers, has assured me of their great superiority over the ordinary cumbrous night telescope. Talking of these things, I may add, that a powerfully magnifying telescope is of very little use in tropical Africa; the air is always seething and waving from the heat, so that images are seldom sufficiently distinct to be worth magnifying.

I generally used the “direct” telescope of my sextant for day purposes; it is in fact a small single opera-glass, and I liked it very much.

Elephant shooting was out of the question at ’Tounobis for men in our position, without horses and without dogs. The river-bed is perfectly bare, and very light in colour, from the quantity of slabs of limestone. I should be extremely sorry to be chased by any animal over it. The Hottentots made such a noise that the elephants only came down twice whilst I was there; the first time we ran up to them and fired among their legs; there were fourteen in the herd, fine fellows, standing in a row fronting us in the open moonshine. None of us dared go nearer than sixty yards; we there had the shelter of a low slab in the limestone, but beyond the ground was quite flat. I should think the legs were the best part to fire at in these cases, because if the bullet strikes the bone it is sure to break it, and an elephant on three legs is like a waggon on three wheels, quite brought to a stand-still; and, again, if the bone be missed, the wound, if any, is only a flesh wound, and does not kill the animal. Our shots produced no effect, except some very angry trumpeting from the elephants, who first faced us and then decamped. The second time we let them alone, and a young bull fell into one of the wells, which we shot. I think I would have given anything for horses at ’Tounobis. I should have enjoyed myself amazingly if I had had them.

There were no lions whatever there; they and rhinoceroses do not hit it off together, and are seldom found in numbers at the same place. A rhinoceros is a sulky morose brute, and it is very ridiculous to watch a sedate herd of gnus bullied by one of them. He runs among them and pokes about with his horn, while they scamper and scurry away from him in great alarm. He surely must often kill them.

For my own taste, I should like to spend nights perched up in some tree with a powerful night glass watching these night frolics and attacks. I really do not much care about shooting the animals, though it makes a consummation to the night work, as the death of the fox does to a fox hunt, but it is the least pleasurable part of the whole. Great fun seems to go on among the different animals; jackals are always seen and are always amusing; their impudence is intolerable; they know that you do not want to shoot them, and will often sit in front of your screen and stare you in the face. Sometimes, whilst straining your eyes at the dimly seen bushes about you, the branched stem of one gradually forms itself into the graceful head of some small antelope. The change is like that of a dissolving view, the object had been under your notice for a minute, yet you could not tell when it ceased to be a bush and became an animal. The young rhinoceroses must be much chased by the hyenas and wild dogs, for you never find one, either young or old, whose ears do not show marks of having been sadly bitten.

I do not think an elephant gives anything like the idea of bulk and power that the white rhinoceros does. An elephant is so short, and so high upon his legs, that he looks what jockeys would call “weedy” in comparison to the low and solid rhinoceros. The largest of these that we shot was eighteen feet long and six high; the head and neck forming, I should say, a third of the entire length. If a creature of this size be imagined against the wall of a room, an idea may be formed of his immense size. Their rush is wonderfully quick; they seem to me to get up their speed much quicker than a horse or any other animal I know. I really think that if a rhinoceros and horse caught sight of one another at the same instant, when not more than ten yards apart, the beast would catch the steed. Their movements are amazingly rapid when they receive a bullet.

_Oct. 7th._ I had a most picturesque finale to a rhinoceros hunt. The Bushmen came to tell me that a black rhinoceros was lying wounded under some trees, about an hour off, and very savage, so I went to him and put him up with a bullet as he lay twenty-five yards from me. After the scrimmage which ensued, I ran after him, he going a lame trot and I as hard as I could pelt, putting three or four bullets into him at long distances, and loading as I ran. At length we came to the edge of an open flat that was about 200 hundred yards across. At the further side of that was a mound, on the top of which stood a fine overshadowing tree, and in the middle of the flat was a scraggy rotten stump, and two or three dead branches. The rhinoceros went across this, climbed the mound, and stood at bay under the tree. I did not much like crossing the open flat, but I thought I could certainly run two yards to his three, which would take me back in safety among the bushes, so I went my best pace to the middle of the flat, keeping the dead branches between me and him; they were a mere nothing, but a rhinoceros’ sight is never keen, and his eyes were, I dare say, dim from his wounds. As soon as I came to the tree, I dropped down on my knee, steadied my shaking hand against one bough, for I had run very far and was exhausted, and, resting the muzzle of my heavy rifle in the fork of another, took a quick shot and gave the beast a smart sharp sounding blow with a well-placed bullet. He did not start nor flinch, but slowly raised his head, and then dropping it down, poured volumes of crimson blood from his mouth. He did this again and again; at length he staggered a very little, then he put his fore legs out and apart from each other, and so stood for some seconds, when he slowly sunk to the ground upon his broad chest and died. I sketched the scene from memory when I returned, regretting that I had not had a pencil with me at the time to do it more justice, for the dying beast with the branched tree above him was quite a study for an artist. Having shot animals till we were tired, a pleasant moonlight evening was spent on much smaller game—the spring-hare, as the Dutch call it. It is a creature about two feet long, shaped like a kangaroo in body and tail, but with a different head; it burrows and lives in holes all day, but at night frisks about and grazes.

We and the Bushmen arranged ourselves in large circles, enclosing fresh patches of ground each time, and then beat up towards the centre. We generally enclosed two or three of these funny creatures, who hopped about in the oddest way, and we rushed in and assassinated them with sticks. The sinews of their powerful tails form excellent materials for sewing carosses.

I worked hard to fix the longitude of ’Tounobis, which I did more successfully than I could have hoped, as my instrument was a small and not very legible one, and for want of oil I had to read off the observations by firelight.

The Bushmen assured me that the character of the country between that place and the lake was of exactly the same description as that around us, a sandy soil with not unfrequent dried-up vleys, and covered with trees, but by no means so thickly as to impede the progress of a waggon.

In fact, if a person wanted to go from Walfisch Bay to the lake, he would have an excellent waggon-road after he had left Eikhams (Jonker’s place), one day behind him. He should follow the Quieep River as far as it goes eastwards, and then make a straight course for Kurrikoop, taking the chance of vley water by the road; from Kurrikoop, through Elephant’s Fountain to ’Twas, all is excellent; thence he should follow the foot of the ridge and not the top of it, as we had done, sending the oxen to water up the gorges. In the twenty-one hours’ journey to ’Tounobis, three or four large vleys are passed, in which water would lie for many months. From there onwards I should have no fear whatever in the rainy season, even if the Bushmen refused to guide me, because the character of the country is adapted for holding water; but from Damara-land to the Ovampo no person could think of travelling without guides, unless there was a recent track to follow. If he once strayed from the path he would be hopelessly involved in the thorn thicket.

I fancy that the Bushmen spoke truth about the want of water ahead, as the droves of animals who had congregated in the neighbourhood of ’Tounobis continued drinking every night, the repeated firing being insufficient to drive them away; it seemed as though they had no other neighbouring watering-place to go to.

As the Bushmen learnt to understand our Hottentot a little better, we had some long talks about the animals on the river that joins the western end of the lake; that there are many there quite new to the Hottentots is beyond doubt, as several carosses were stolen by the Kubabees and brought back south, and the skins that many of these were made from were quite unknown to them. The Bushmen, without any leading question or previous talk upon the subject, mentioned the unicorn. I cross-questioned them thoroughly, but they persisted in describing a one-horned animal, something like a gemsbok in shape and size, whose horn was in the middle of its forehead, and pointed forwards. The spoor of the animal was, they said, like that of a zebra. The horn was in shape like a gemsbok’s, but shorter. They spoke of the animal as though they knew of it, but were not at all familiar with it. It will indeed be strange if, after all, the creature has a real existence. There are recent travellers in the north of tropical Africa who have heard of it there, and believe in it, and there is surely plenty of room to find something new in the vast belt of _terra incognita_ that lies in this continent.

Of another fabulous monster, the cockatrice, a most widely spread belief exists. The Ovampo, the Bushmen of this place, and Timboo, all protested that there is such a creature, and that they had often seen it. They described it as a snake, sometimes twelve feet long, and as thick as the arm; slender for its length, with a brilliantly variegated skin; it has a comb on the head exactly like a guinea-fowl, but red, and has also wattles; its cry is very like the noise that fowls make when roosting—I do not mean crowing, but a subdued chucking; its bite is highly venomous, and it is a tree snake. I heard an instance of ten cows having been bitten one after the other; they said that sometimes people when on their way home at night hear a chucking in the tree, and think that their fowls have strayed, and as they are peering about under the branches to see where they are, the snake darts down upon them and bites them. It appears to be a particularly vicious snake. I have generally heard it called “hangara.” I never heard of its possessing wings.

Since my return I have had my attention directed to a recent book, Mr. Gosse’s “Notes of a Naturalist in Jamaica,” in which he mentions the prevalence of the same belief there, and relates several reported facts relative to the creature. In the Penny Cyclopædia, under the head cockatrice, many old drawings of these snakes are reproduced, and are worth looking at; they differ much in character from one another, and seem to have been derived from different originals. I can give no clue to the fable of the cockatrice’s eggs.

The Bushmen of ’Tounobis are far superior to the Damaras in the art of catching animals; their springe is a very simple one. I admired the simplicity of the method by which the antelopes were induced to leap into the middle of it; an unpractised hand would have made a fence as though he were laying out a steeple-chase course, but the Bushmen simply bend a twig across the pathway, which does not in the least frighten the animal, but which, in the gaiety of his heart, he overleaps. The pitfalls are neatly made; there is, however, nothing in them which an English gamekeeper would not contrive as well.

I must take this opportunity of explaining to the uninitiated how to set a common gun (as a spring-gun) to shoot game in the night. The use of such a contrivance is obvious. Hyenas, perhaps, vex and trouble you night after night, and it is a horrid bore to sit up through the cold when sleep is in these tropical climes so peculiarly grateful, simply for the chance of shooting the worthless animal; it is far simpler to have a gun in his path, and let him pull the trigger himself, to his own destruction. Again, as to lions, they do real mischief; and, after all, they are not noble animals whose character entitles them to the privilege of a code of honour, but skulking, troublesome creatures, who give infinite annoyance, and will seldom wait to be shot at. In England one thinks differently, but a traveller who has large herds of cattle with him is only too glad to exterminate lions out of the land, and a spring-gun is the best way of doing this. This is my creed, though I personally am guiltless of its use upon the king of beasts. The way of setting a gun is very simple; everybody has a sort of general conception how an animal when he chests a string shall in some way pull the trigger, and be shot, but without a more definite notion considerable difficulty would in practice be found in making the necessary adjustments. The plate (next page) will explain how to do it. A piece of stick is lashed across the narrow part of the stock of the gun in such a way as to have a slight play backwards and forwards; a string from the lower part of the stick is fastened to the trigger, one from the upper leads through the ramrod tubes (the ramrod being taken out), and passes across the pathway; it is evident that when an animal pushes the string the gun will go off. A few points have to be observed; one is, that the string should not be too tight, else as soon as it is touched the trigger will be pulled, and the bullet make only a skin wound in front of the animal’s chest. The other, a very important point, is that the height to which the gun is lashed should be such as to send the bullet through the beast’s heart, or thereabouts. The rule is, that for a hyena the barrel should be as high as a man’s knee from the ground, but for a lion a span (or eight inches) higher. Neither the string nor the stick that is lashed to the stock, and which acts as a lever, should be too strong, lest, if the animal carries all before him in a rush, they should not break, but the gun be torn from its supports and smashed.

When a lion’s death is determined upon by means of a spring-gun, advantage is taken of the first animal that he kills; this is probably found half eaten, and the lion is sure to return to his prey the ensuing night. Bushes are then put round the carcase, a doorway is made to one side of a couple of posts, against these two posts the gun is lashed, and the trigger-string passes across the doorway to the opposite side (see plate).

[Illustration: SETTING A COMMON GUN AS A SPRING-GUN.]

[Illustration: HOTTENTOT METHOD OF CARRYING A GUN ON HORSE OR OX-BACK.

Drawn on Stone by W. L. Walton. Printed by Hullmandel & Walton.

John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1853]

I have never seen instances of native poison doing much mischief; that of the Damaras is in practice very harmless. I have seen plenty of people who had been wounded by poisoned arrows, and have dressed their wounds, but saw no great harm experienced from them. The poison becomes so hard and dry on the arrows that it will not dissolve. The Bushman poison is far stronger and more complicated; the manufacture of it is kept secret, but many ingredients are put into the composition. Beside vegetable poisons the Bushmen assured me that the poisonous black spider (a kind of tarantula) is an important ingredient. It seems to be for its size, the most venomous of creatures. Death is very frequently the consequence of its bite. Amiral’s son, who was with me, had lingered between life and death for a long time after having been bit by one, and his escape was considered as a singular piece of good fortune. I saw one once; it happened to be among my bed clothes, and was a nasty creature with huge nippers; though a very quick runner it had comparatively short legs. When I teased it with a little twig it snapped its nippers together and made quite a noise with them.

Throughout our journey we have had great good luck as regards poisonous animals, nobody but Timboo having been bitten, and that only by a scorpion, but we suffered pretty severely from hornet’s stings, both at Otjimbinguè and elsewhere; the oil from our tobacco pipes was the panacea in all these cases.