2103   APPENDIX.

Mossamedes to Capangombe, all included, was X45. No oxen died on this route as they very often do.

" Humpata, the new Boer settlement, had been established some eighteen months when I arrived. The Boers, with their wives, children, and cattle, had trecked from Pretoria in the Transvaal, and took seven years' wandering to reach this place. They were already living in comfortable little thatched cottages, with stone and mud walls, and all were most kind, obliging, and hospitable. Taking them all round, a finer set of men I had rarely seen ; without doubt, during that terrible seven years' journey it was a case of the survival of the fittest. The whole account, written by Mr. W. W. Jordan, is given from a Cape journal in my report on Ovampoland, now in this Society's Library. The little cottages at Humpata are scattered about on rolling downs. To the north mountains rise up, and to the south the ground gradually falls till near Huilla, which is on the second plateau. The temperature is the same nearly the whole year round, and a healthier place I cannot well imagine. Two streams water the many Boer farms lying around, and a cleverly constructed canal with many branches brings water within reach of all the cottages and gardens.

" On July 31st, we left Humpata for the river Cundne. The first thing that happened was that one of the waggons stuck in a muddy irrigation channel just outside Humpata; we had to dig it out. We reached Huilla the next day. It is a Portuguese military station situated in a fertile valley with a muddy and deep stream running down it; the position is fixed by Dufour in 15° 2' 4" south latitude. This is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Mission, and here I had the pleasure of meeting Pere Duparquet, who has given to the world so much information on the river Okavango, and the tribes of Ovampoland. The mission at Huilla is flourishing ; they are building a college for pupils from St. Paul de Loanda, and Huilla is a healthy and pleasant place to reside in."

Page 466.-" Before reaching Humbe we passed a Portuguese settler's home ; this district is thickly inhabited by Ovampos, who are little different from those living south of the Cunene ; in fact, as Pere Duparquet stated to me, he cannot sea any difference betweon the tribes near the north bank of the Cunene and those living south in the so-called Ovampoland. I have seen natives from the south : they are the same in dress, language, and manners and