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56   MUTILATED VICTIM.   [CHAP Hr,

directions, and with each set of footsteps there was the mark of something being dragged ; the first spoor led to a bush on one side of the river where a man lay dead the other to a thick hakis thorn cover, but nothing could be seen under it though the sand was disturbed. Looking further they found a spoor that went thence by itself right up the river bed. The interpreter followed it; it was that of a person crawling and dragging himself, and the wretched man whose track it was, was found a mile off under a tree in a most pitiable state, with the back of his neck cut through to the bone. It was in the forenoon of the day before that he had been wounded, and it was now past the early morning, but he was still able to speak. lie said-and further inquiries corroborated the story-that he and the man that lay dead were loitering about digging roots, when they saw a fire and the three Damaras, from Barmen, eating meat over it; an ox lay slaughtered by their side. They offered to feed them if they would help to carry as much meat to Barmen as they could, so they agreed and went on. Arriving at the river bed, the three men fell upon their two porters, knocked them down with their knob kerries, and struck them till they were nearly insensible, and then hacked at their necks with their assegais. This one was left for dead, but lie recovered, and succeeded in crawling from under the thorn bush to where he was found. The tenacity of life in a negro is wonderful. The object of the murder proved to be simply this. The three Damaras had found cattle belonging to their werft but not to themselves; they were hungry and killed an ox to have a good gorge, and then, not knowing how to get out of the scrape of having killed their friends' cattle, they determined to lay the guilt upon these two unhappy men, and therefore murdered them It would never do to leave this man to die where he was, so I went with water, a litter, and some bandages. The first man's throat was cut quite through, and he had long been dead; the second man I found under the shadow of a tree with his head between his two hands on his knees and insensible, but we roused him up, his lips were cracked with thirst, and lie could not speak. I could never have believed that a man with a wound like this could have survived an hour ; all the back sinews of his neck were severed to the bone, and the cut went quite round his neck, but only skin deep near the jugular vein and windpipe. The head was perfectly loose upon his shoulders, and heavily bruised, and his skin was torn with the kakis thorns. I put him on the litter, but his head rolled so shockingly from side to