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The Reawakening : Scientific Exploration   229


(9) But when beasts or cattle are stolen from me or my people, I will take two-fold as many from the thief, or from those who have aided the thief, when it is proven. That it to say, I will take again the beasts which have been stolen, or when I ,cannot find all, so many as the number is. And I will also take the same number as "Regt's Beesten" (that is to say, cattle taken to pay for the trouble and costs).

(10) Also I will punish the thief with forty lashes.

(11) When one of my watchers on the feldt has been murdered, and my cattle stolen, then shall the murderer be brought to my place and put to death. I will take no payment from the murderer in any form whatever.

(12) From him who hides a thief, I will take 10 oxen as pledge oxen (Pand Ossen), and retain them until the thief is brought out to me. I will take 20 pledge oxen from those who hide a murderer. I will give these back when the evil doer is brought to me.

(13) If the thieves drive my cattle away to a werft, and the werft will not give the thieves up when my men go there and ask for them, then I will not fire that werft, neither will I take all their oxen, but I will take back the beasts that are stolen, and from their beasts will drive out " Regt's Beesten " for the werft is guilty, and besides these I will take the pledge oxen. I will not take more.

(14) Furthermore if the men of the werft have fled when they see my men coming and have left their cattle loose on the feldt, then I will not take all beasts that they have, but I will take the stolen cattle out from among the others, and then over and above the "Refit's Beesten " and the pledge cattle. I will take no more.

(15) The half of the "Regt's Beesten," shall go to him from whom the cattle have been stolen. The other half goes to me. The pledge oxen I take in charge.

A primitive law code it must be admitted! But this Galtonjustice ruled for many months on the borderland of the Namaquas and Damaras, and half-a-dozen honest Englishmen with fifty Cape mounted police could have maintained order and developed trade for many years in that district after Galton's visit. As it was the British Government idled and faltered, until Germany stepped in to reap where Galton had sown.

Imagination dwells pleasantly on the youthful law-giver fresh from his fallow years of shooting and hunting facing this population of "O'erlams"-a mixture of Boer and Hottentot blood-the greater part of whom according to him had the common "felon face." A note made on Jan. 24, 1851, in one of the pocket books is, however, worth reproducing

"donker is decidedly a talented man and seems in full vigour, his shrewd remarks, concise descriptions and keen observation shows him to be no ordinary man. He came out quite as a diplomatist in the long conversation I had with him about the interior, artfully contriving to turn the conversation to his own ends."


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