12 MY FOLLOWERS. [chap. i. 



additional articles of exchange for I hoped to obtain 

 enough game to supply us with daily food, in addition 

 to the few sheep we should take with us as slaughter 

 cattle. This was a sad mistake, as I found out after- 

 wards. I was aware I should require at least sixty 

 waggon oxen, — ^two spans of fi'om fourteen to six- 

 teen for each waggon. As Namaqua land was out of my 

 intended route, and as I had been so strongly advised 

 not to go there, I took only enough clothing, &c., to 

 buy some forty or sixty oxen there, and iron things 

 enough to buy 150 from the Damaras ; the surjilus 

 beyond what I immediately wanted being meant to 

 cover the unavoidable expenses of travelling. I had, 

 as I motioned before from England, a large and indeed 

 an expensive set of " presents" but my great error was 

 in not taking far more things of knoivn exchangeable 

 value, and in having taken those " presents " which the 

 natives really cared very little for. 



I felt quite sure that everything connected with my 

 waggons was right, because I got more than one expe- 

 rienced friend to look them over ; and having engaged 

 my vessel, a schooner of some 100 tons, all except my 

 servants were at length in readiness. I wanted, in 

 the first instance, a headman — one who had travelled 

 with oxen and knew the work — a man -with a character 

 that he could not afford to lose, under whom I could 

 put every detail, and whom I would pay highly ; but 

 I could find no such person in Cape Town. I, how- 

 ever, engaged a Portuguese, John Morta, a most 

 thoroughly trustworthy man, who, though he did not 

 in the least fulfil the conditions I have just mentioned, 



