SOUTH-WEST AFRICA 131
Damup are as purely negro as the Ovampo. The Bushmen and the Ghou Damup are equally hunted and equally ill-treated by the Damaras, and they live wherever they can find safety. The Ghou Damup are apparently the inferior of the two.
I suppose that the country was inhabited long ago by the progenitors of the Ghou Damup, probably a branch of the Ovarnpo; that the Hottentots invaded it, and lorded over the Ghou Damup for so many years that the latter wholly forgot their native tongue, and spoke the Hottentot language instead ; lastly, that the Hottentots, and of course the Ghou Damup also, were in their turn overrun by the progenitors of the
Damaras, and became dispersed among them as they y
are at the present time.
The Bushmen are nomadic and good hunters. The Ghou Darnup are sedentary, living on roots and the like, but they have a stronghold in Erongo, to the north-west of the Mission Station No. 2 on the map. They live there in marvellously rocky and easily defensible quarters, totally unsuitable to the pastoral Damaras, who have no object to gain by attacking and ousting them if they could. I visited also a large encampment of Bushmen in quite another part of the country, and stayed by them for four days, at the place marked Tbs Tounobis), on the extreme right hand of the map.
It was reckoned to be a six or seven days' sail from Cape Town to Walfish Bay, so I hired a small schooner, and with the help of many kind friends got all my equipment on board. It consisted of a light cart, two Cape wagons, nine mules from which a
