Recognized HTML document

APPENDIX.   209

customs. These North Ovampos speak a dialect of the Damara language, and cultivate each hereditary farm separately and not in common like the Hah6 and Huilla natives ; they will not willingly sell their land ; they possess plenty of cattle and goats, and take care of the natural fruit trees of the country, which, with Indian corn, form their staple food. Indian corn is the food of all races in this part of Africa. Boers, and the poorer Portuguese eat large quantities of it. Bananas and oranges are a cultivated luxury, and the poorer natives seldom get meat, except as hangers-on to a European camp, where they become hewers of wood and drawers of water, and return in a short time to their villages strong and well loaded with the dried meat of antelopes, giraffes, etc., which they have saved up. I found all natives during my journey quite peaceable, very much frightened at the horses, for before the Boers came into the country, some eighteen months ago, they had never seen a horse; a mounted man makes them run away, but they are now beginning to be accustomed to these animals, especially the villagers living near the waggon track in which we were travelling, and which is the one made by the Boers on their journey from the Transvaal to Humpata. This district so thickly inhabited is covered with large baobab trees.

" On the night of October 19th, by the light of the full moon, we drove our waggons into Humb6 (fixed by Dufour in r6° 50' south latitude), camping under a large wild fig-tree in a mealie field, not far from the Roman Catholic mission-house. The next day I went to see Fathers Hogan and Lynch, who have charge here ; they were much pleased to get papers and news from England."

[Mr. H. H. Johnston tells me that a variety of European comforts were procurable at Humb6, which had been brought there by the traders through Damaraland from Walf sch Bay. Humb6 itself was very populous; it was not a town of adjacent houses, but each house had a separate plot of ground, and a large tract of country was covered by them. He estimated the total population at no less than 8o,ooo.-F. G.]

" The Cun6n6 is a much smaller river than many would imagine from its appearance on the map, and the reports that have been received of it. A good deal further up the river from where I was, Mr. Jordan informed me that it was navigable, but at the place where I saw it, and at that season, it certainly was not navigable