cirAP. 1x,3 HISTORY OF DAMARALANL,
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I heard of the safety of three of my mules which had travelled down to Scheppmansdorf and taken up their quarters there; they grazed, strayed, and slept just where they pleased, for the Hottentots could not manage them. They were five in number when they ran away from me at Schmelen's Hope, but two of them must have been killed on the road by lions ; they certainly did not die of starvation, for the other three arrived at Scheppmansdorf very plump and in good condition.
I ought to mention that the horse distemper does not appear to exist at Scheppmansdorf : five or six horses have at different times been kept there, but none have suffered from the disease. I had much satisfaction in comparing the results of my inquiries with those of Mr. Halm, with regard to the earlier history of Damaraland. It appears undoubted that seventy years ago not a single Damara existed in the parts where I had been travelling, but that they all lived in the Kaoko, while tribes of Bushmen and Ghou Damup possessed the entire country between the Orange River and the Ovampo, excepting only the Kaoko on the north-west, and the central Karrikarri Desert on the east.
The Ghou Damup, though treated kindly by the Bushmen, were always considered as inferiors, and the two races never intermarried. The Ghou Damup lived then, as they do now, about the hills, and the Bushmen on the plains. I saw an old Damara, and an old Ghou Damup who remembered this state of things, and several who were born just after it was put an end to; among these was Katjimaha himself who looks about sixty-five years old. TIe Damaras at that time made a sweeping invasion eastwards right across the country, to the very neighbourhood of Lake 'Ngami, and attacked the Mationa (as they call the people who live there). Subsequently the Mationa retaliated and invaded the land as far as Barmen on one occasion, and on a second attack passed up the Omoramba as far as Omanbonde. The last Mationa invasion took place about twenty-two years ago. The result of all this fighting was that the Bushmen tribes have been exterminated or driven out of the whole pasture country between Barmen and Okamabuti (the place where the waggons broke down) and the Damaras inhabit it in their stead. Eastwards, they are now separated from the Mationa by only a broad strip of barren country. The Ghou Damup live in large communities about a mountainous district on the lower part of the Omoramba, where they appear to be by no means an im. poverished nation, but agriculturists and traders with the Ovampo and other nations to the north. My own belief is, that very long ago the
