132 STAET ON THE EXPEDITION. [chap, v 



March Ath. — This was our most difficult day: the 

 Swakop ran through a gorge so broken and narrow, 

 as not to admit a waggon, and the only road we could 

 find out of it lay for some considerable distance along 

 a narrow ridge of jagged rock with a precipitous fall 

 on our left. Hakis thorns and ravines made the 

 country quite impenetrable everj-where else ; our road 

 was horrible ; the waggon crashed and thundered and 

 thumped, but somehow or other got safe over. If I 

 had to undergo two or three more such days of jour- 

 neyings, the waggons would have to be left behind. 

 The oxen were dreadfully wild ; there was no guiding 

 or restraining them down hill, but they tossed them- 

 selves about and charged like wdd buffaloes ; it still 

 took us an hour and a half to inspan the two 

 waggons, and every man was actively emi)loyed. We 

 went only three hours, and slept at the furthest 

 watering-place that Hans and I had explored. Now 

 we had to trust to the guides, whose ideas of time and 

 distance were most provokingly indistinct; besides 

 this, they have no comparative in their language, so 

 that you cannot say to them, " which is the longer 

 of the two, the next stage or the last one ? " but you 

 must say, "the last stage is little ; the next, is it great ? " 

 The reply is not, it is a " little longer," " much 

 longer," or "very much longer;" but simply, "it is 

 so," or " it is not so." They have a very poor notion 

 of time. If you say, " Suppose we start at sunrise, 

 where will the sun be when we arrive ? " they make 

 the wildest points in the sky, though they are some- 

 thing of astronomers, and give names to several stars. 



