SOUTH-WEST PROTECTORATE NATIVE POPULATION. 455 



These Ovambo are a* fine people, at present unspoiled. Of 

 their wide response to our labour market I have spoken before. 

 Herero and Ovambo dialects are very closelv related. The 

 people themselves are much alike, and naturally orQod enemie.-.. 

 The country gradually becomes wilderness on eithe*- s'de. On 

 the east of the Waterbers^ district, the Doorstveld and Groove 

 Zand are inhabited by Bushmen; on the west (whatever relief the 

 Kaoko-veld, throug^h which the Hereros entered the land, may 

 .give), I do not know; but I can testify to the Namib between 

 Usakos and Swakopmund as a howling desert of sand. Our 

 troops could corroborate and emphasise this. One of the titles 

 of Witbooi further south was " Lord of the Wkter,'' significant 

 enough in a land of drought ; yet Hottentots were found to 

 inhabit the Namib. The Bushmen were formerly seen on its 

 borders. I was driven to Usakos by the kindness of the Magis- 

 trate of Karibib, by way of Ameib, an interesting Bushmen site 

 on the west side of Erongo. At the foot of an enormous natural 

 column I saw, and roughly copied, a long procession of buck and 

 other beasts, and hunters, done in the best Bushmen style. 

 The neighbouring farmer who showed us the place, and whom 

 I have to thank for two valuable books on the natives, was not 

 a German, but a Luxembourger, son of a Papal Chamberlain, who 

 was interned by the Germans at the beginning of the war. as 

 having helped the English in the Boer war. Another farmer not 

 far ofT was cousin to the prince bishop of Olmiitz, late archbisho'3 

 of Prague, whom I had met in 1912 in Bohemia. A far cry both 

 in place and circumstance. It will be remembered that the Ger- 

 mans made an effort to introduce a " better-born " class of farmer 

 in their later years of tenure. 



Having described the country in relation to its nativj inhabi- 

 tants, let me shortly sketch out the history of its occupation by 

 Europeans. 



The missionary, as usual, begins the story. In 1814 van 

 Schmelen was sent by the Cape Government to Great Namaqua- 

 land, and moved from Bethany to Okahandja (called after him 

 Schmelen's Hope), with Jager Afrikaner, who overcame the 

 Herero in 1839. He married, like Van der Kemp, a Hottentot. 

 By 1828 the last Cape Hottentots recrossed the Orange to the 

 protection of the Red chiefs of Namaland. In 1840 the Rhenish 

 mission arrived. In 1864 the Herero overcame the Elottentots, 

 who had ke])t them so long under, by the help of European arms, 

 this time helped, themselves, by the presence of Messrs. Green 

 and Anderson. The latter's store was burnt in :868, and also the 

 Rhenish mission ; hence appeals to the King of Prussia, two years 

 before the Empire. 



I propose to use, among other sources, the information which 

 Mr. Lindholm, one of a family of early pioneers, was good 

 enough to give me about his experiences. He was born at 

 O'okiep at the date we have reached, and entered South-West 



