SOUTH-WEST AP1IICA
135
well. Now the sore was of a chronic kind, very familiar to 'me when at the Birmingham Hospital. There was an outgrowth of what patients like to call "proud flesh," upon which a slight cautery often acts like a charm. I t stimulates the vitality of the part and causes it to act normally. I t did so in this case. I rubbed the sore lightly over with nitrate of silver, which hurt at the time, but eventually gave him the first good night's rest he had enjoyed for months. Thenceforward his finger rapidly improved and healed, and he felt and looked himself again.
I bought all his live stock of fifty oxen and one hundred sheep and goats at a single swoop, by a cheque on Cape Town for £71. Hans himself became a most valuable and efficient servant and friend. I n brief, he and Andersson went down to the coast with the new oxen, to break them in and to bring up the wagons, while I remained partly at the Mission Station No. 2, and afterwards at No. 3, where Mr. Hugo Hahn, a very accomplished man, who had married an English wife, was the resident missionary.
Mr. Hahn possessed all the extant knowledge about the Damaras, and was greatly interested in my proposed expedition. Information about the wretched state of the country was gradually obtained. It came to this, that the four tribes of Namaquas under Jonker, Cornelius, Amiral, and Swartboy respectively, well provided with horses and guns, had made many successive raids upon the Damaras, lifting cattle and selling them. They usually sent the stolen animals overland to the Cape. Sometimes when opportunity occurred they sold them
