254 ENGAGE EYBRETT. [chap. ix. 



arising from a cattle watcher having been lately 

 mui'dered there by the Damaras. Jonker received 

 me very kindly, and I expressed to him how glad I 

 was to hear of the excellent manner in which he had 

 kept order among his people during my absence. He 

 had, I knew, been put to very great trouble in doing 

 so, as the disposition to pillage is general among the 

 Hottentots, and requu'es a far more despotic ruler to 

 repress than Jonker or anybody else in this republican 

 part of the world is allowed to be. 



I found a man settled here who was of great use 

 to me, and whom I engaged ; he was white, and born 

 in the Cape ; spoke English and Dutch perfectly, 

 and was brought by the missionaries here as half- 

 carpenter, half-schoolmaster. He, however, did not 

 suit them, and had for a long time been dismissed 

 their service ; I found him installed as Jonker's prime 

 minister. He spoke Hottentot very fairly, and had 

 a winning manner about him that vastly smoothed 

 down the minor difficulties of my way ; and though he 

 was always getting himself and us into scrapes, yet he 

 had a marvellous faculty of creeping out of them 

 again. Eybrett, for that was his name, undertook to 

 guide me to Elephant Fountain, a deserted station on 

 the northern frontier of Amiral's tribe. No waggon 

 had passed that road for years, and the way led along 

 a country which was rarely travelled over, owing to its 

 being a border district between the Damaras and 

 Namaquas. 



Elephant Fountain and the country immediately 

 adjacent had been the Ultima Thule of missionaries 



