190 CEREMONIES. [chap. vi. 



tree and the eanda, tliere is also Omakuru ; he can 

 hardly be called a deity, though he gives and withholds 

 rain. He is btiried in several different places, at all of 

 which he is occasionally prayed to. 



The Damaras have a vast number of small super- 

 stitions, but these are all stupid, and often very gross ; 

 and there is not much that is characteristic in them. 

 Messengers are greased before they set out on a 

 journey, and greased again when they come back ; of 

 one sort of ox only grown men eat ; out of one parti- 

 cular calabash of milk only grown men drink, and so 

 on ad infinitum. A new-born child is washed — the 

 only time he is ever washed in his life — then dried 

 and greased, and the ceremony is over. Some time 

 during boyhood the lads are circumcised, but at no 

 particular age. Marriage takes place at what appears 

 to be the ages of 15 or 16, but as the Damaras keep 

 no count of years it is scarcely loossible to be certain 

 of their ages ; my impression was that the Damaras 

 were not so precocious as black people usually are. 

 The teeth are chipped with a flint when the children 

 are young. After death the corpse is jjlaced in a 

 squatting posture, with its chin resting on its knees, 

 and in that j)osition is sewn up in an old ox-hide (the 

 usual thing that they sleep on), and then dropped down 

 into a hole that is dug for it, the face being turned to 

 the north, and covered over ; lastly, the spectators 

 jumj) backwards and forwards over the grave to keep 

 the disease from rising out of it. A sick person meets 

 with no compassion; he is pushed out of his hut 

 by his relations away from the fire into the cold ; they 



