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HUTS AND FINERY.   [CHAP. VL

children are young. After death the corpse is placed in a squatting posture, with its chin resting on its knees, and in that position is sewn up in an old ox-hide (the usual thing that they sleep on), and then dropped down into a hole that is dug for it, the face being turned to the north, and covered over ; lastly, the spectators jump backwards, and forwards over the grave to keep the disease from rising out of it. A sick person meets with no compassion; he is pushed out of his hut by his relations away from the fire into the cold ; they do all they can to expedite his death, and when he appears to be dying, they heap oxhides over him till he is suffocated. Very few Damaras die a natural death. The huts are wretched affairs-I have already slightly described them-the women are the builders. They first cut a number of sticks eight or nine feet high, and also strip off quantities of bark from the trees, which they shred and use as string; holes are then "crowed" in a circle of eight or ten feet across, in which the sticks are planted upright, their tops are next bent together, and pleached and lashed with the bark shreds-this makes the framework ; round about it brushwood is woven and tied until the whole assumes a compact surface; a hole for a door three feet by two, is left in one side, and a forked prop is placed in the middle of the hut to support the roof; the whole is then daubed and plastered over, and the work is completed. As the roof becomes dried and cracked with the heat of the fire, and indeed as it generally has a hole in it for a chimney, the Damaras lay old ox-hides on the outside upon its top, weighting them with stones that they may not be blown off; these they draw aside when they want ventilation, but pull them over at night when they wish to make all snug. The furniture of the hut consists of a couple of ox-hides for lying and sitting on, three or four wooden vessels, a clay cooking pot, a bag of pig-nuts, a leathern box containing a little finery, such as red iron earth to colour themselves with, and a small skin of grease. There may perhaps be an iron knife and a wood chopper; everything else is worn on the person, or buried secretly in the ground. When they sleep, the whole population of the hut lie huddled up together like pigs, and in every imaginable position round the small fire. They have nothing to cover themselves with. The children before they can walk, are carried in a kind of leather shawl at the mother's back ; afterwards they are left to shift for themselves, and pick up a living amongst the pig-nuts as well as they can. They all have dreadfully swelled stomachs and emaciated figures. It is wonderful how they