23^ SLAVERY AND SERVITUDE. [chap. viii. 



I cannot speak with certainty of the exact standing 

 in which the Damaras and the Bushmen severally live 

 among the Ovampo. The first are employed princi- 

 pally as cattle-watchers; the second, who are even 

 more ornamented than the Ovampo themselves, are a 

 kind of standing army ; but I have great reason to 

 doubt whether either the one or the other class is 

 independent. The Ovampo, as I have mentioned, 

 looked down with much contempt on the Damaras ; 

 and there is not a single instance, so far as I could 

 learn, of an Ovampo-woman marrying a Damara, and 

 settling in Damara-land ; but the reverse is a very 

 common case. The Bushmen appear to be naturalised 

 among the negro-tribes, and free in the border-lands 

 between them to a distance very far north of Ondonga. 

 I cannot say how far; but I certainly think to the 

 latitude of Caconda. I believe them to be a very widely 

 spread race. Of the Ghou Damup I lost all trace in 

 Ovampo-land. The Namaqua Hottentots and Oer- 

 lams, in all their plundering excursions, capture and 

 drive back with them such Damara youths as they take 

 a fancy to, and they keep them, and assert every kind 

 of right over them. They punish them just as they 

 please, and even shoot them, without any one 

 attempting to interfere. Next in the scale of slavery 

 are those Damaras, Ghou Damup, or Bushmen, who 

 place themselves under Hottentot " protection," and 

 on much the same footing as those among the 

 Hottentots, are the paupers that are attached to 

 different werfts among the Damaras. These savages 

 . court slavery. You engage one of them as a servant, 



