The National Game of Skill of Africa. 
49 
from the literature on the subject, which is very meagre, the different 
varieties of the game may be classified as follows : 
(1) Those in which all the pieces or "men" originally on the board* 
remain in play throughout the game. The Hottentot game of 
\\Htis exemplifies this variety. 
(2) Those in which the captured or killed " men " are removed from 
the board or placed in a receptacle attached to the board. 
The games belonging to the second category can again be subdivided 
into those — 
(a) Played on boards with four parallel rows of holes. Four-row games 
have a wide distribution in Southern and Eastern Africa as far 
north at least as the Uganda Protectorate.! 
(h) Played on boards with two parallel rows of holes. Games of this 
type are played throughout Western and Northern Africa, 
(f) Played on boards with three parallel rows of holes. They are 
exemplified by the Abyssinian game of Gahaffa. 
It is proposed in the following pages to give a description of games 
belonging to each of these groups. 
I.— The Game of \\H?}s or Ofjitofo. 
The game of \\Hus (holes) is played under that name by the Namaqua 
Hottentots and Berg Damaras of South-West Africa, and under the name 
Otjitoto (also meaning holes) by the Hereros or Cattle Damaras. The Berg 
Damaras and Hereros are said to have learned the game from the Hotten- 
tots. The writer has heard it stated that the same game is played 
by the Ovambos inhabiting the extreme northern portion of South-West 
Africa, but has not succeeded in obtaining any definite information on this 
point. 
The rules of \\Hus are briefly described by Leonhard Schultze in his 
admirable work Aus Namalancl und Kalahari, but so far as the writer is 
aware no detailed account of the game has hitherto ])een published. It is 
played in four parallel rows of holes made in the ground or scooped out of 
sand, there being an even number of holes in each row. When only two 
players participate it is not customary to have more than twelve holes in a 
row, but when there are two or more players on each side, as is frequently 
the case, there may be twenty-four or more holes in a row. The players 
squat or kneel on opposite sides of the board facing one another. 
* In the present paper the word " board " is used not in its literal sense, but to 
denote a surface of play, whether it be an actual board or merely a series of parallel 
rows of holes scooped out of the ground. 
t Cf. Sir H. H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate, p. 795. 
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