THE KALAHARI DESERT. 
13 
I replied by carelessly taking up a repeater and 
firing at a white crow, which I luckily knocked over, 
and then fired it again instantly after. His curiosity 
was excited, and he wanted to know what kind of a 
gun that was. When it was explained that sixteen 
shots could be fired from it without reloading, he de- 
liberately said that he must have it as a present, he 
would take nothing 
else. Now, that was 
just what I wanted 
him to do, for I could 
hoist him with his own 
petard. 
“ You must give me 
fifteen oxen in ex- 
change for my rifle,” I 
said ; “ or, if you like, 
you shall have it for 
the horse and a cow. 
If not, I cannot give 
it you till I come back 
from hunting in the 
desert.” 
Then, giving him a 
plug of tobacco, I 
told him the talk was 
ended. 
He went, but the 
trader stayed to talk. 
“You treated the old 
nigger quite right,” he 
said ; “ he always tries head op the hartebeest (.antilope caama). 
to bleed us, but we 
never give him anything more than a little tobacco and 
coffee. You need have no fear of him, as he has no 
following.” And then he went on to tell me that he 
was on his way from Damaraland to the colony, after a 
fifteen months’ journey. He had not collected many 
feathers and skins ; it was the old story, the war 
between the Damaras and Namaquas had stopped all 
