428 GREAT NAMACQUA COUNTRY. [1813, 
Parents appear to have an affection for their children, 
and seldom beat them, even when they deserve it; but 
the children, when they grow up, often beat their pa- 
rents. Should any of them happen to break a limb, 
they tie splinters of wood round it, like a boot, which 
is worn until the limb be healed. They are generally 
kind to the sick, and rub over with fat those parts 
where the patient feels most pain. They are afraid at 
the approach of death, but none could inform me of 
the cause of their fear. Some of them treat their aged 
and infirm friends with kindness; but others, when 
they are about to remove from one part of the country 
to another, make a small inclosure with bushes, in 
which they put their aged father or mother who cannot 
walk, and leave with them some food and water, per- 
haps a sheep, which is intended to be their last food ; 
after which they leave them to die : some, from poverty, 
can leave them nothing. They bury their dead in a 
round hole. 
They exercise something like witchcraft, for when a 
person is in great pain, they frequently perform some 
motions over the place where the pain is; sometimes 
they let a small piece of wood drop upon it from their 
nose, which they assert came out of the sick person's 
flesh. At other times they kill an animal, and make a 
plaster of its fat, which they lay over the place, accom- 
panied with many motions of a particular kind. They 
likewise frequently make an incision into the part where 
the pain is. They are greatly afraid of the meteor which 
is vulgarly called a falling star, for they consider it a 
