(19) 
NOTES ON A JOURNEY IN GERMAN SOUTH-WEST 
AFRICA. 
By J. C. WATERMEYVER. 
(Read January 26, 1899.) 
The object of the journey was an inquiry into the agricultural and 
pastoral prospects of the country. 
- The German Protectorate on the west coast of South Africa is 
bounded by Angola on the north, and the Kalahari Desert and Cape 
Colony on the east and south. It is a territory of about 320,000 
square miles in extent. The northern portion is occupied by the 
Ovambos; Damaraland is inhabited by two classes, the Hereros or 
Beestdamaras, the wealthy class, and the Bergdamaras, a poorer 
class, looked down upon by the Hereros, and treated by them as 
slaves; Great Namaqualand is inhabited by several tribes of 
Hottentots, Bushmen, and Bastards. The Witbooi tribe has proved 
the most powerful, and Hendrik Witbooi, their chief, was, even 
after the German occupation, looked upon as their great general, 
for offensive and defensive purposes. 
Six days after sailing from Cape Town, we reached and dis- 
embarked at the mercantile settlement at the mouth of the 
Tsoachaub River, about 18 miles north of Walfish Bay. From 
the Orange River northwards a barren, sandy waste reaches 
inland from the coast for a distance of from about 6 to 40 miles. 
A belt of shifting sandhills a few miles in width is a prominent 
feature of this sandy tract, and at the mouth of the Tsoachaub 
River, where the strip of sand is at its narrowest, the shifting sand- 
hills terminate. 
From the Tsoachaub mouth we started on our journey into the 
interior, our means of transport being an ox-waggon. The first six 
or eight miles of our journey took us across the sandy waste, and 
we now proceeded in the vicinity of the river over a no less barren, 
though less sandy, region, until we finally crossed the river about 
20 miles from its mouth. Up to this point we had been making 
gradual ascent, and now had to descend into the bed of the river, 
which is here skirted by rocky declivities, the rocks being composed 
