54 
DEPOPULATION FHOM WAR. 
five slaves to the war, with only ten rounds of 
wrought-iron bullets each, to fight the powerful rebel 
chief ! 
This long-continued war had driven the natives of 
the country away from the Arab settlement ; the 
bazaar supplied almost nothing — only one tobacco- 
shop and one or two depots for grain ; the most com- 
mon iron- work could not be made. The villages 
around had no inhabitants but the sick, aged, dying, 
and starving, or idiots. We were told not to walk out 
alone, as a man had been killed the previous month; 
the country had been made dangerous, and the people 
were getting exterminated. But when one of our 
men cut through his hut and ran away one night, 
having been suspected of theft, Moossah said with 
confidence, " The Wezees will not harm him, neither 
will they give him shelter; he'll be found;" and so 
he was, rifle and bayonet untouched. All the natives 
were Hywans — that is, unable to count, write, or 
tell their own ages. Some practised medicine, giving 
one of our men, who suffered from weakness in the 
limbs after fever, a black ointment made of roots. 
The black art of the Damars and the chipping of the 
Oovamba's teeth are practised here, as noticed in An- 
dersson's Travels. During the illness of the late chief, 
witchcraft was suspected to be the cause. A fowl was 
placed in the hands of the suspected, dissected by a 
seer, and verdict given accordingly. Similar fancies, 
differing only a little in detail, long prevailed in the 
Highlands of Scotland, a very common form being to 
bury a black fowl in the exact spot where a person 
had been first seized with illness. Moossah had never 
heard of fowls being thrown up in the air to discover 
