250 HISTORY OF DAMARA-LAND. [chap. lx. 



The Ghou Damup, though treated kindly by the 

 Bushmen, were always considered as inferiors, and the 

 two races never intermarried. The Ghou Damup 

 lived then, as they do now, about the hills, and the 

 Bushmen on the plains. I saw an old Damara, and 

 an old Ghou Damup who remembered this state of 

 things, and several who were born just after it was 

 put an end to ; among these was Katjimaha himself 

 who looks about sixty-five years old. 



The Damaras at that time made a sweeping invasion 

 eastwards, right across the country, to the very neigh- 

 bourhood of Lake 'Ngami, and attacked the Mationa 

 (as they call the people who live there). 



Subsequently the Mationa retaliated and invaded 

 the land as far as Barmen on one occasion, and on a 

 second attack passed up the Omoramba as far as 

 Omanbonde. The last Mationa invasion took place 

 about twenty-two years ago. The result of all this 

 fighting was that the Bushmen tribes have been 

 exterminated or driven out of the whole pasture 

 country between Barmen and Okamabuti (the place 

 where the waggon broke down), and the Damaras 

 inhabit it in their stead. Eastwards, they are now 

 separated from the Mationa by only a broad strip 

 of barren country. The Ghou Damup live in large 

 communities about a mountainous district on the 

 lower part of the Omoramba, where they appear 

 to be by no means an impoverished nation, but 

 agriculturists and traders with the Ovampo and other 

 nations to the north. My own behef is, that very long 

 ago the Ghou Damup were the aborigines not only 



