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Inquiries into Human Faculty
inconvenience to the traveller in ox-waggons, who constantly feels
himself in a position towards his oxen like that of a host to a company of
bashful gentlemen at the time when he is trying to get them to move from
the drawing-room to the dinner-table, and no one will go first, but every
one backs and gives place to his neighbour. The traveller finds great
difficulty in procuring animals capable of acting the part of fore-oxen to
his team, the ordinary members of the wild herd being wholly unfitted by
nature to move in so prominent and isolated a position, even though, as is
the custom, a boy is always in front to persuade or pull them onwards.
Therefore, a good fore-ox is an animal of an exceptionally independent
disposition. Men who break in. wild cattle for harness watch assiduously
for those who show a self-reliant nature, by grazing apart or ahead of the
rest, and these they break in for fore-oxen. The other cattle may be
indifferently devoted to ordinary harness purposes, or to slaughter; but the
born leaders are far too rare to be used for any less distinguished service
than that which they alone are capable of fulfilling. But a still more
exceptional degree of merit may sometimes be met with among the many
thousands of Damara cattle. It is possible to find an ox who may be
ridden, not indeed as freely as a horse, for I have never heard of a feat like
that, but at all events wholly apart from the companionship of others; and
an accomplished rider will even succeed in urging him out at a trot from
the very middle of his fellows. With respect to the negative side of the
scale, though I do not recollect definite instances, I can recall general
impressions of oxen showing a deficiency from the average ox standard of
self-reliance, about equal to the excess of that quality found in ordinary
fore-oxen. Thus I recollect there were some cattle of a peculiarly
centripetal instinct, who ran more madly than the rest into the middle of
the herd when they were frightened; and I have no reason to doubt from
general recollections that the law of deviation from an average would be
as applicable to independence of character among cattle as one might
expect it theoretically to be. The conclusion to which we are driven is, that
few of the Damara cattle have enough originality and independence of
disposition to pass unaided through their daily risks in a
