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 Ovampo; 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 

 are at the present time. 



The Bushmen are nomadic and good hunters. 

 The Ghou Damup 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 



