14 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
hunting for the last three years ; but he had a lot of 
Damara cattle — nice little beasts, of medium size, and 
well shaped ; some were nearly white, with black spots, 
but most of them were speckled either white and black, 
or white and brown, and all had very long horns, 
turning up at right angles to the forehead. 
He had had some difficulty in getting through with 
the cattle, having had to fight twice to save himself 
from being robbed. As it was he had lost twenty 
head. 
“ But that is nothing,” he added. “ I have had lots 
of worse adventures than that in my time, among both 
men and beasts. Twice I have lost everything I pos- 
sessed for want of water, being forced to leave my 
waggons in the sand, with all my goods and all my 
teams, and only escaping death from thirst myself by a 
miracle.” 
“ You must know the country pretty well, after 
thirty years of it,” I said. “ I should be thankful for 
any hints you can give me.” 
“Yes, I think I know most of the tribes hereabout. 
I have been up as far as latitude 12°, visiting every 
tribe east and west, both going and returning. And a 
rum lot they are. The only people to be trusted at 
all are the Bushmen. If a Bushman once gets to know 
you, and you trust him well, he will stick to you 
through thick and thin. But the Hottentots are a lot 
of born thieves. They live by stealing cattle from 
their neighbours, and are not content with that, for 
they carry the women — and sometimes men, too, for the 
matter of that — into slavery, and treat them worse than 
dogs : in fact, they call their slaves ‘ dogs.’ 
“ The Damaras are jet-black, not like the Hottentots, 
who are a kind of copper-red colour.” 
And he went on to give me a lot of hints as to the 
country, how to treat the natives, what districts to 
avoid, where to find game, and so on. In fact, from 
this half-hour’s talk I gathered more useful information 
about the country than I had read in all the published 
books put together. 
