180 CHIKORONGO-ONKOMPE. [chap. vi. 



US every attention, but refused most decideolly to let 

 any of their party guide us, and insisted that we should 

 return with them to Chapupa's werft, promising at the 

 same time that when they had finished their bartering 

 and returned they would take us with them. The first 

 question that Chikorongo-onkompe (their captain) asked 

 us, was whether we were rain-makers. I regretted that 

 we were not, else we could travel when we liked and 

 where we Hked, and be independent of guides. He 

 told us a long and minutely circumstantial lie — at least 

 he afterwards denied every word of it — to the effect 

 that rain-makers were in great request in Ovampo land, 

 and that a tribe of them lived by the great river that 

 bounded it to the north, and that Nangoro sent a 

 woman with several presents to these people. If rain 

 was scarce in any year they killed and eat the woman, 

 and had a fresh one sent to them. He also said that 

 the Bushmen on our road to Nangoro's were very 

 ferocious, and that he and his companions had been 

 fighting with them as they came by, and that now they 

 were more exasperated than ever. These were the 

 only two lies that I have ever heard from an Ovampo. 

 The second was natural enough ; as to the first I cannot 

 yet understand why he took such pains to invent and 

 tell it. 



Chi]i:orongo-onkompe, or " Chik," as I will for 

 brevity's sake call him, spoke Damara language 

 perfectlj'', but with an accent, and so did Katondoka and 

 Netjo, the next in command, but the others could 

 barely make themselves intelligible. Their own 

 language is most musical and hquid, and they speak it 



