182 SALT NOT A NECESSARY OF LIFE. [chap. vi. 



fires throughout half of the night, wliich one or t\vo 

 men can easily do, the stones become hot enough to 

 radiate for some hours longer when the fuel has become 

 exhausted and every body has dropped oflf to sleep ; 

 again, from the men sleeping so close in between the 

 hearths, they receive the full benefit of whatever heat is 

 afforded. We, like the Damaras, simply made a 

 roaring fire and slept to the windward of it, for we 

 always had plenty of firewood. I never liked sleeping 

 between two large fires on account of the smoke, and 

 of the great danger of sparks. Hans' bed was more 

 than half burnt under him one night, but some sheep- 

 skins that he was lying on kept him from being scorched, 

 and saved his powder flask. When a heavy log that 

 is half-burnt through breaks and falls with a crash, 

 it scatters burning cinders all about, which the wind 

 will often carry some distance. 



The Ovampo had Uttle pipkins to cook in, and eat 

 corn (milice) steeped in hot water ; they also eat some 

 salt, which the Damaras never take by any chance. 

 In fact the Damaras could not get it, for there is no 

 salt in their land. There are salt-springs in the lower 

 l^art of the Swakop, near where we first struck it 

 when we left Scheppmansdorf, and there are large salt- 

 pans, as I afterwards found out, in Ovampo land, and 

 also in the far east, but none whatever in Damara land. 

 In Europe it is generally supposed that salt is a 

 necessary of life, but here we never found it so ; I was 

 once on a riding excursion with Andersson and three 

 other men for six weeks, and a pill-box full of salt was 

 aU we used. We had then nothing else whatever but 



