Journey from Walvis Bay - |Ae||gams – Ondonga by Francis Galton (British) and Charles John Andersson (Anglo-Swede), 1850-1851

Galton’s original sketch map of ‘Damaraland’. Source: http://galton.org/books/south-west-africa/map.htm, accessed 30 May 2016.

1852 map of ‘Africa between the 10º and 30º South Latitude’, distilling information from Francis Galton, ‘Livingston & Oswell’ and Henry Gassiot. Source: Galton 1852, opp. p. 140.

A new edition of Francis Galton’s “Tropical South Africa” under the new title “Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa” is published in 1890, including an updated map and remarks in the preface (written 1889) on the new establishment of a ‘German protectorate’ over the lands he travelled through and ‘the possession of Walfisch Bay by Great Britain’^[1].

Galton’s updated map in 1890 entitled “Map of Ovampoland”. Source: scan from Galton 1890, opp. p. 1.

Journey summary:

In 1850, Francis Galton (a ‘wealthy gentleman-explorer’ backed by the Royal Geographical Society in London^[2]) and Charles John Andersson (son of Englishman Llewellyn Lloyd and a Swedish mother^[3]) journeyed from England to Cape Town, and then to Walvis Bay, by ship, travelling eastwards from Walvis Bay across the Nariep Desert (between the Kuiseb and Swakop Rivers), through places along the Swakop (such as Tsaobis), to |Ae||gams and then northwards towards Ondonga. They are reportedly the first Europeans to see Etosha Pan, in 1851.

Galton and Andersson’s journey is mapped online here.

Primary source material:
Galton, F. 1890[1853] Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. London: Ward, Lock and Co. [also Galton, F. 1953 Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. London: John Murray, Albermarle Street].

Galton, F. 1853 Preface [to 1st Edition], pp. xi-xiii in Galton, F. 1890[1853] Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. London: Ward, Lock and Co. 

Galton, F. 1852 Recent expedition into the interior of South-Western Africa. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society 22: 140-163.

Andersson, C.J. 1861 Lake Ngami or Explorations and Discovery During Four Years of Wanderings in the Wilds of Southwestern Africa. New York: Harper & Brothers.

? http://galton.org/cgi-bin/searchImages/galton/search/pearson/vol1/pages/vol1_0297.htm 
reports that in the Galton Laboratory, UCL, there is ‘a folio book containing route distances, bearings, itineraries, sketches. History of Namaqua atrocities before arrival of Galton; letters to or from Jonker, Swartboy, Amiral, Cornelius and other Hottentot and some Damara [Herero] leaders. …’ [**to pursue]

Where Galton’s and Andersson’s narratives speak of the same dates / events both texts are included below, with the name of the authors clearly marked.

Notes 
1. Many of the places mentioned below are mapped with information from literature review here or here. 

2. Follow these links for a full bibliography and set of abbreviations. 

3. A double-asterix [**] is a marker that there is something to be checked or added at this point in the text.

4. Information and connections are welcome! Please email etoshakunenehistories@gmail.com or futurepastscontact@gmail.com 

***

In 1849 Francis Galton (1822-1911), a ‘wealthy gentleman-explorer’ backed by the Royal Geographical Society in London^[4], is determining ‘upon a long travel in Africa’, commenting on the fascination of ‘African tourists’ for ‘country which, after all, seems to afford little else but hazard and hardships, ivory and fever’, and being motivated by ‘the love of adventure’ and being ‘extremely fond of shooting’, seeing Africa as ‘[a] large field’ which ‘lay open to any [2] explorer who might wish to attempt the enterprise’^[5]. Spurred by Livingstone’s recent ‘discovery’ of Lake Ngami, and with the support of the RGS and the company of Mr. Charles John Andersson (1827-1867), son of Englishman Llewellyn Lloyd and a Swedish mother^[6], ‘a Swedish gentleman and a naturalist’, he fixes ‘on the Cape as the point at which to enter Africa’^[7].

Galton arrives in Cape Town on 23 June 1850^[8] with C.J. Andersson^[9]. Before leaving London Galton stocks up on ‘articles of exchange’ with the people he should meet, making ‘a great collection of ornaments so that I had a store like a pedlar’s shop’;

for besides the more staple articles of guns, beads, knives, and gaudily printed calico, I bought or collected looking glasses^[10], accordions, hunting coats, my friends’ old uniforms, burning-glasses, swords, gilt belts, immense bracelets, anklets, yards of picture chains for necklaces, Jews’ harps, mosaic rings; lastly [3] I explored the shops of Drury Lane for some theatrical finery, and a magnificent crown rewarded my search, which I vowed to place on the head of the greatest or most distant potentate I should meet with in Africa^[11].^[12] 

They leave for the Cape on 5th April, Galton remarking with a candour betraying the assumptions of his class that,

[i]t so happened that the ship in which I had taken my berth carried a number of [‘squalid, starved-looking’] emigrants – a fact which the careful agent only let us find out at the last moment – but I liked the crowding and bustle of it amazingly. The emigrants were not in the least in the way of the cabin passengers, for we, of course, had the poop to ourselves; and looking down from it, the deck had all the appearance of a crowded fair.^[13] 

Although intending to leave for Algoa Bay (eastern Cape) from Cape Town, on arrival he learns that ‘emigrant Boers – those Dutch colonists who had rebelled and run away from us – had broken into open revolt’, refusing passage north of the Orange River in the direction of Lake Ngami, then Governor of the Cape Colony Sir Harry Smith stating that ‘[t]he Boers… are determined men; and although I have no fear for the safety of your lives, they will assuredly rob you of all your goods and cattle, and thus prevent your proceeding further’^[14].

At first keen to travel to Mozambique and encouraged to do so by ‘a Portuguese gentleman of the highest standing’ at Quillimane (Quelimane) north of Beira, [5] Galton abandons this idea on learning that ‘no beasts of burden were used in the interior of Mozambique’ which would prevent Andersson from bringing home ‘a complete collection of the Natural History of the country’^[15]. Instead he is urged to sail to Walfisch Bay where ‘there were Missionary establishments already formed from near the coast to many days’ journey inland’ and then travel ‘with waggons’^[16]. He is ‘referred to a person who had already carried on for some years a cattle trade between Walfisch Bay and the countries near it and the Cape’ [presumably Morris/Dixon] and who ‘had built a store at the Bay’ and had a vessel there, and who sometimes sent cattle to St. Helena, sometimes sold them to whalers and guano ships ‘which then were numerous’^[17] and sometimes drove them ‘overland to the Cape’, ‘by a road to the west of …[the] Karrikarri [Kalahari] desert … and to the east of which the Boers and Bechuanas reside’, on country inhabited by ‘Namaqua Hottentots’ as he notes was first explored by Sir James Alexander^[18]. It is believed in the Cape at this time that ‘no white man had ever penetrated’ Damaraland, but missionary stations are placed on its borders, [6] their representatives in Cape Town assuring him of assistance and protection on his journey^[19]: ‘no European had ever penetrated 20 miles to the northward of the 22nd parallel of latitude, or 20 miles to the eastward of Elephant Fountain’, the latter of which is noted to have been placed by Alexander and on missionary maps ‘too far towards the interior’^[20].

Andersson: 

At that period, certain parties from the Cape had an establishment here for the salting and curing of beef. They, moreover, furnished the guano traders, as, also, Cape Town, with cattle; and had, in addition, a contract with the British Government for supplying St.Helena with live stock. The latter speculation proved exceedingly lucrative for a time, and a profit of many hundred per cent. was said to be realized.^[21]

Galton describes ‘[t]he country to the north of Walfisch Bay’ as ‘an entirely open field for exploring’, remarking subsequent to his journey that perspectives in Cape Town that it was ‘extremely fertile and very populous’, apparently linked to the arrival in Walfisch Bay of ‘large droves of Damara cattle’ that were ‘dispatched south, shipped to St. Helena, or sold to the, at one time, numerous guano and whaling vessels’ were in fact ‘much exaggerated’^[22]. He mentions how on landing here the late Mr Ruxton(?) ‘experience such determined opposition and obstructions, that he was compelled to set sail without having penetrated more than 20 miles into the country’, attributing this experience to Galton’s choice to take mules with him, ‘besides my wagons and a cart’, to facilitate independence in terms of ‘carry[ing] my things across the barren desert, which intervenes between the coast and the more habitable parts’^[23].  

Francis Galton (British) and Charles John Andersson (Anglo-Swede) arrive at Walfisch Bay’ in August 1850, and are told by missionary Bam at Scheppmansdorf [|Awa!haos / Rooibank] on the !Khuiseb that they would need a guide to go inland but that the ‘Hottentot’s’ at the coast were ‘frightened at the Damaras [Herero]’ inland and would be reluctant to go^[24]. At the RMS mission station at Otjimbinguè where the ex-sailor and now hunter and trader Hans Larsen was based, Galton observes that in the preceding seven years Larsen had ‘utterly shot of all the game’ in the Swakop River area^[25]: Larsen

had been the most successful sportsman in the country, and had lived the last two or three years in sole charge of an immense drove of oxen, once amounting to seven hundred, with only one or two native lads to help him in the care of them. He had shot a great many [39] lions out of the Swakop, six in the preceding year, and made it a much safer place than it used to be to drive cattle in. From his account the river bed must have swarmed with game when it was first seen by Europeans; but I can fancy, from the confined character of the country, how in a short time one or two guns would entirely exterminate them.^[26]

Galton: learns that the nearest water at Walfisch Bay is ‘three miles off, and that in very small quantities’ [= Sandfontein / ǂKhîsaǁgubus] and ‘[t]he nearest place where cattle could thrive was between twenty and thirty miles from the coast’, at the first missionary station called Scheppmansdorf, from which ‘a journey of ten or twelve days inland over wretched country led to two other stations’ and it is only here that oxen can be bought, those bought from Damaras [Herero] being ‘untaught’ and [7] those from Namaquas being ‘taught’^[27]. He is shown ‘a small pen and ink map, but it was blotted and not very intelligible’ [7] and hears that horse distemper is very severe, ‘[t]he Namaquas are always fighting with the Damaras [Hereros]’ making it difficult to pass through the country of both, ‘[n]o money was used or known, nothing but articles of barter, – iron things … among the Damaras, clothing and guns among the Namaquas’, [8] although under-calculates how much he will need to exchange for oxen – stating that ‘his great error was in not taking far more things of known exchangeable value, and in having taken those “presents” which the natives really cared very little for’^[28]. Jonker Africaner is known as ‘the great man of all the country’ but reportedly with ‘a wholesome dread of the English Government, and unlimited respect for a large letter with a large seal’^[29]. In Cape Town he purchases ‘two wagons [to be drawn by oxen he intends to buy in the country], nine mules [to pull the wagons and a cart to Scheppmansdorf], and two horses’, plus a few sheep, ‘thinking wrongly that there would be plenty of game’^[30]. He takes plenty of corn for the cattle and a cask of good water and hires personnel including a Portuguese chef called John Morta, an ex-slave called Timboo ‘liberated by one of our cruisers years ago, on capturing a slave-ship in the Mozambique’ [=? ‘a black servant  whom I had taken from the Cape, and who was born in some central part of Africa, found the language [oshiHerero] so much like his own, that by the time all was ready for a start he had become quite fluent in it’^[31], John St. Helena as wagon-driver and his brother as leader, John Williams as another leader, ‘a young scamp’ Gabriel who begged to join and supplied a pack of dogs, and an additional wagon-driver from ‘a wagon-maker’s shop’^[32]. Galton later remarks on how his men ‘were perpetually talking of the prison’ in Cape Town,

which they literally seemed to consider as a kind of club or headquarters, where a person had an excellent opportunity of meeting his friends and of forming fresh intimacies … They positively reckoned dates by the epochs in which either they or their mutual friends had been confirmed^[33].

He resolves to ‘get rid of two men’ who he considers ‘had the worst of influence over the rest’^[34].

Galton hears further from missionary Mr Bam that,

I should have great trouble in first going up the country, unless I had a person to guide me, and that there was not a Hottentot with him who could go. I had no interpreter for them, and they were frightened at the Damaras. [= Nama at the Bay were frighten of Herero inland] Stewartson [impoverished trader, see above] said that he was going in about two months, and would then be very happy to show me the way’^[35].

Regarding Damara / ǂNūkhoen, Galton writes:

[n]o people inhabit Oosop [place close to the Swakop rivier = Husab], or the lower part of the river, except some straggling Ghou Damup [Damara / ǂNūkhoen], who live, like jackdaws, up in the hills. These are a very peculiar and scattered race of negroes, who speak no language but Hottentot, and are frequently slaves to the Bushmen. Who they are, and where they came from, has been a standing enigma; but I subsequently found out much that was interesting about them.^[36] [for more detail see here]

He also mentions ‘Ghou Damub’ in the Erongo mountains.^[37], ‘Bushmen’ and ‘Ghou Damup’ around the Waterberg: 

[t]he two mountains between which we were now encamped, Omuvereoom [Waterberg] and Ja Kabaca, were said to be great strongholds of Bushmen and Ghou Damup.^[38]

Galton considers ‘Bushmen’ and ‘Hottentot’ [Nama] as different classes and refers to ‘Bushmen’ as ‘Saen’^[39]: 

[t]here is no difference whatever between the Hottentot and the Bushman, who lives wild about the hills in this part of Africa, whatever may have been said or written on the subject. The Namaqua Hottentot is simply the reclaimed and somewhat civilised Bushman, just as the Oerlams represent the same raw material under a slightly higher degree of polish. Not only are they identical in features and language, but the Hottentot tribes have been, and continue to be, recruited from the Bushmen. The largest tribe of these Namaqua Hottentots, those under Cornelius[?], and who muster now 1,000 guns, have almost all of them lived the life of Bushmen. In fact, a savages loses his name, ‘Saen’, which is the Hottentot word, as soon as he leaves his Bushman’s life and joins one of the larger tribes, as those at Walfisch Bay have done; and therefore when I say Oerlam, Hottentot or Bushman, the identically same yellow, flat-nosed, woolly-haired, clicking identical individual must be conjured up before the mind of my kind reader, but differing in dirt, squalor, and nakedness, according to the actual term employed; the very highest point of the scale being a creature who has means of dressing himself respectably on Sundays and gala-days, and who knows something of reading and writing; the lowest point, a regular savage.^[40]

Regarding ‘Herero’, named at the time ‘Damara’, he notes: 

[t]o commence with their name. It is in their own language ‘Ovaherero’, or the ‘Merry People’; but those who are settled towards the interior are always called ‘Ovampantieru’, or the ‘Deceivers’; for what reason I am totally unable to find out. Damup which is the Namaqua name for the people generally, has been corrupted by the Oerlam and Dutch traders into ‘Damara’, and by this title they have always been known to the whites. Like the word ‘Caffre,’ it is an established name, and also a convenient one; for it supersedes all distinctions of locality and of tribes, which Ovaherero does not; in addition to this it is very pronouncable, and therefore I prefer adhering to established usage and calling the savages by it, rather than by words in their own language.^[41]

Regarding the relationship of ‘Damara’ [Herero] and ‘Bushmen’ to Oshivambo speaking groups in the north of Namibia, he notes:

I cannot speak with certainty of the exact standing in which the Damaras [Herero] and the Bushmen severally live among the Ovampo. The first are employed principally as cattle-watchers; the second, who are even more ornamented than the Ovampo themselves, are a kind of standing army; but I have great reason to doubt whether either the one or the other class is independent. The Ovampo, as I have mentioned, looked down with much contempt on the Damaras; and there is not a single instance, so far as I could learn, of an Ovampo-woman marrying a Damara, and settling in Damara-land; but the reverse· is a very common case. The Bushmen appear to be naturalized among the negro-tribes, and free in the border-lands between them to a distance very far north of Ondonga…. Of the Ghou Damup I lost all trace in Ovampo-land.^[42]

With regard to the inhabitants 70 years (1780s) earlier [see 1775-85 above], Galton states:

I had much satisfaction in comparing the results of my inquiries with those of Mr. Hahn, with regard to the earlier history of Damara land. It appears undoubted that seventy years ago not a single Damara [Herero] existed in the parts where I had been travelling, but that they all lived in the Kaoko, while tribes of Bushmen and Ghou Damup possessed the entire country between the Orange River and the Ovampu, excepting only the Kaoko on the north-west, and the central Karrikarri desert on the east. The Ghou Damup, though treated kindly by the Bushmen, were always considered as inferiors, and the two races never intermarried. The Ghou Damup lived then, as they do now, about the hills, and the Bushmen on the plains.^[43]

   The Damaras [‘Herero’] at that time made a sweeping invasion eastwards right across the country, to the very neighborhood of Lake Ngami, and attacked the Mationa (as they call the people who live there). Subsequently the Mationa retaliated and invaded the country as far as Barmen on one occasion, and on a second attack passed up the Omoramba as far as Omanbondè. The last Mationa invasion took place about twenty-two years ago. The result of all this fighting was that the Bushmen tribes have been exterminated or driven out of the whole pasture country between Barmen and Okambuti (...) and the Damaras inhabit it in their stead.... The Ghou Damup live in large communities about a mountainous district on the lower part of the Omoramba, where they appear to be by no means an impoverished nation, but agriculturalists and traders with the Ovampo and other nations to the north. My own believe is, that very long ago the Ghou Damup were the aborigines not only of the present Damaraland but also of the whole country to the south of it half-way down to the Orange River, and that they are of a race in every respect kindred to the Ovampo. The Bushmen [which he equates with ‘Hottentots’, see above] appear to have invaded and thoroughly conquered the Ghou Damup, for they not only exist as the superior caste of the two, but have also taught them their language, to the entire exclusion of whatever other one they may at some former period have possessed. Those Ghou Damup that I saw have no tradition of any other language than that they used; but the tribes who live on the lower parts of the Omoramba were described as speaking several languages; and some of these were said to be ignorant of Hottentot. All these bits of information were derived from very many sources; some I received from persons in Damara land, some from Ghou Damup among the Namaquas, and the rest from Bushmen who lived far to the east of them. The Ghou Damup are abused and tyrannised over by everybody, but servitude has become their nature, and the very name of Ghou, which they themselves adopt and use is far from complementary. Like many other Hottentot names it is not translatable to ears polite. The missionaries for delicacy’s sake call them ‘Hill’ Damaras, because they live on the hills.^[44]

Towards the start of Galton’s summary report to the Royal Geographical Society published in 1852 he remarks on the difficulty in selecting place names for the map published with this report, due to the multiple names that might exist for a known place. He writes:

[i]n all the border country, and where the missionary stations now exist, most places are known by two, three, or even four names. The Damaras have one, the Hottentots another-this latter, translated into Dutch, forms a third, which is used very generally - and the missionaries add a fourth; thus the place marked Scheppmansdorf, which is called Aban’hous [|Awa!haos – red rocks] in Hottentot, is always known as Roëbank [Rooibank, i.e. Red Bank]^[45] by the traders and as Scheppmansdorf by the missionaries. It would have created great confusion to have attached all these different names to each place on the map, and I have therefore adopted the missionary names for their own stations, Damara [Herero] names for all places that have them, and used Hottentot words as little as possible, for no orthography can possibly express their sound, except in rare instances, such as T’was and T’ounobis, which are capable of being pronounced^[46]. With perhaps less reason I have adhered to the Dutch word “Damara” to express the Ovaherero and Ovampantieru tribes, as it is a convenient name and one that has been long established, and which has as much right to pass current as the word “Caffre.” The Hottentot name for that people is Damup in the plural, or Daman in the singular, and this is the root of the name “Damara,” which it is needless to state is utterly unknown to the people themselves.^[47] 

He considers that the ‘Cunene River’ is a tributary of the Nourse which flows to the Atlantic (now both known as the Kunene)^[48], being ‘a broad, swift-flowing stream, to the border of which Portuguese traders come and traffic’ with a ‘ferry, which is chiefly used by the Ovampo’ lying north-west of ‘Nangoro’s werft in Ondonga, and is near the junction of the two streams which principally form this river’ [= Humbe?]^[49]. He writes further that,

[t]here is also a Portuguese trading station on the river opposite the country of the Onganjèra; this cannot be far from the coast, for the caravan from Damara-land to that nation leaves Omaruru and travels northwards for a long way over some very high land frequently in view of the sea [this seems inaccurate]. From the mouth of the river a kind of sea-shell, much prized, and called by the natives Ombou, [156] is frequently bought.
   As regards the size of this river it is said to be such, that when a man calls across it his voice can be heard, but not his words. Opposite to the Ovampo it is extremely swift (boats cannot paddle up it) and very deep. It appears to be a most interesting river, and well worth exploring. I can say nothing as regards its salubrity, except that Ovampoland appeared a remarkably healthy country, and Damara-land I know is such. Corn land extends the whole way S. of it from Ovampo-land to very near the sea. Between the two confluents of the river the Ovabuntja live. Their country is described as very marshy, and many of their houses are built on poles: of course fever is to be dreaded there.^[50] 

About ‘Mossamedes’, now Namibe, on the Angolan coast Galton writes,

I learnt from the same and other authorities [i.e. ‘[t]he captains of coasting-traders in those parts’] that a constant river of considerable size, though small at its actual mouth, flows into Little Fish Bay (Mosammedes). There is now a thriving settlement there, where a Frenchman has long resided, who is said to make distant trading journeys into the interior. It would be very desirable for any officers of the slave squadron, or others who might land at that port, to make inquiries about the lower part of this stream, which must be perfectly well known there. The Ovampo told me that it seldom ran quite into the sea, but ended in a large deep pool close by the coast, beyond which the sand was dangerous to walk over, as it was a quicksand.^[51] 

Galton also considers that the Fish River begins at the ‘Awass’ [Auas] mountains east of |Ae||gams [Windhoek], and that the west is ‘ploughed up by the Kuisip, the Swakop, and five other more northerly river courses, which run into the Atlantic’^[52] (it is now known that there are eight westwards flowing ephemeral rivers north of the Swakop).

Galton mentions a land area known as ‘Kaoko’:

[t]he sea-face of this broad [western] belt is, except along the watercourses, uninhabitable, as during half the year there is no water and scarcely any pasturage. A strip of desert sand, 40 miles wide, follows the coast line, beyond which lies, north of Walfisch Bay, the barren Kaoko, and to the south of it the arid Namaqua land. The summit of the belt is a dense impracticable thorn coppice, though affording grass and a few scanty springs; …^[53] 

He writes that ‘it was a constant complaint of the Damaras, that less rain falls now in their country than some twenty or thirty years back; and even their extensive migration from the Kaoko, … has been ascribed by the Damaras to the water failing them for their cattle’^[54]. Thus,

[a]bout 70 years ago (certainly between 65 and 75 years), and when, from uniform testimony, water was much more abundant [157] than it is now, the Damaras [Herero] lived in the Kaoko alone. The Ovampo were within their present frontier, but the Mationa [Bechuana] extended to Ovampantieru-land, certainly far to the westward of Otchombinde [Tunabis], and all between these and down to the Orange River, lived Hottentots of various tribes. The Nareneen lived by the sea, and the Ounip (called by the Dutch Toppners [i.e. ǂAonin]) about the parts of which we are now speaking, and south of these were the Keikouka [Kai||khauan / Rooi Nasie / Red Nation], now represented by the red people, by Swartboy, the Kubabees [||Habowen / Veldschoendragers], and Blondel Swartz [!Kamiǂnûn / !Gamiǂnûn^[55]]. Near to the Orange River the tribes were more numerous and more civilized, from their neighbourhood to the Dutch. They had a few guns, sometimes waggons and so forth, and these were the ancestors of Jonker, Amirals, Jan Boys, and other smaller tribes, as Buchess’ and Fransman’s. There was also a certain admixture of bastard blood in these last, who came to be designated Oerlams (a term of half reproach) by the Dutch, and to be disavowed by the Keikouka [Kai||khauan / Red Nation] as partly aliens. Hence a jealousy arose, and still exists, between the two great divisions of the more southern Hottentots, the Keikouka and the Oerlams, who together are usually called in the aggregate “Namaquas,” in contradistinction to the northerly tribes of Bushmen.

   Interspersed among the Hottentots from the north to the south were the Ghou Damup [ǂNūkhoen], who were invariably considered as slaves and a good deal ill-used; they lived, when in communities, in the hills, or table-mountains, of which there are many, such as Omuvereoom [Waterberg / !Hos], Konati [today’s Okonjima], Ketjo [Mount Etjo], Erongo [!Oeǂgā], and many others, of which I have often heard, more to the south and west. Two movements now began to take place; first the Damaras [Herero], pressed for room or for some other cause, made an irruption to the eastwards, and spread over the country as far as Otchombinde [Tunabis], almost exterminating the Hottentots in their way and driving back the Mationa [Bechuana], while the Ghou Damup were pretty safe in their mountain fortresses and received but little harm. The Toppners [ǂAonin], however, not being at that time accustomed to the mountain-passes with which the Ghou Damup were familiar, were, as I said, greatly cut off [i.e. westwards towards the coast]. And it is curious, that within very late times (about eight years ago), exactly the same thing occurred to the Nareneen living west of the Kaoko.

   The more northerly Toppners [ǂAonin] were thus quite cut off from all communication with those about Walfisch Bay, and remain so to the present time. There exists, however, the greatest fondness for traditional stories among these people, and I found the liveliest interest expressed on my return from the north relative to the well-being of those Hottentots whom I met among the Ovampo, and of whom scanty information only had been received from time to time [i.e. so Red Nation ‘Nama’ in the north were connected with those in the south, from whom they were ‘cut off’ by Herero movement and expansion in ‘Damaraland’ in the middle]. In Sir James Alexander’s work mention will be found of the Navees, or Nabees[**?check], as he spells it, on information [158] received among the Hottentots. These are the Ovampo; Navees being the Hottentot name for them.

   We have seen thus how the Damaras [Herero] drove the Toppners [ǂAonin] to the same places as the Ghou Damup [ǂNūkhoen]. Community of misfortune is gradually destroying the feeling of difference of race between them, so that intermarriage, which would have been quite unheard of in former years, is now becoming common [= expressing concern about ‘miscegenation’]. The Hottentots told me that 10 years ago it was quite unknown; and I have never seen any but children of the mixed race.

   The Mationa [Bechuana] made at various times reprisals on the Damaras [Herero]; the last being about 20 years ago, when the Mationa came up the Epukiro River, while on a previous occasion they had passed up the Omoramba.

   From the Damara invasion we now come to that of the Namaquas, which dates at a much later period, and in which Jonker Africaner played the principal part. Of all the particulars of this I have the fullest information; but I cannot expect that an interest which depends chiefly on persons and parties in South Africa, will be felt here; suffice it, therefore, to say, that by gradual encroachment the tribes, whose names you see here mentioned, strengthened and formed themselves, and plundered all before them. Sometimes they went on a professed national feeling to aid the Toppners [ǂAonin], sometimes on none at all. In every case, however, the Toppners were thoroughly victimised; and it is only of late, when the Nareneen had obtained so many guns and so much ammunition from whalers and guano ships, that they acquired sufficient strength to be recognised as others than simply as Bushmen by the Namaquas.

   The moment that I saw the Ovampo I was most strongly impressed with the national identity of the Ghou Damup; it is true that the latter are most squalid and thievish, very strikingly opposite characteristics to those of the Ovampo, but on the other hand we cannot forget that they must have been an outcast race for ages, to have so completely lost, not only their own language, but all traditions of it. They dig and plant, which neither the Hottentots nor the Damaras do; and on the other hand I was assured that the Soun Damup, who lived to the north, were the field labourers of the Mationa [Bechuana] (the Hottentots call bread “soun” from them), and were exactly the same as the Ovampo, except in some trivial difference of dress, and that there, some spoke Ovampo, some Mationa, some Hottentot, and some all of these tongues.

   I conclude, then, that the Ghou Damup were the real aborigines of the country S. of the Ovampo, that very long since the Hottentots invaded and entirely conquered them, and that they both together settled down into the condition in which I described them to be at the beginning of this account.

   [159] I may add that exactly the same process is now going on between the Namaquas and the Damaras [Herero], and probably one-half of the whole Damara population has already been enslaved or murdered by the Namaquas. Those that are made slaves are used as cattle-watchers; their children, as they grow up, learn Hottentot, and readily identify themselves with the habits of their masters, so that few generations will probably have passed before the Damara language will be obsolete among them, and they will have become a race affording an exact parallel to that of the Ghou Damup. The Namaquas are still pressing on with the peculiar restlessness and obstinacy of the race, a belief in their destiny, a scorn of blacks, and a fondness for plunder, which has already led them from the Orange river, and which now seems to be more marked than ever. As unarmed savages can never resist their guns, which number between 3000 and 4000, my belief is that not many years will have elapsed before they will have utterly destroyed the Damaras [Herero], and will come into direct conflict both with the Ovampo and the Mationa [Bechuana]. …

Summarising his ‘ethnology’ of the ‘tribes in this part of South Africa’ – and betraying and perpetuating the hierarchical racism of the times, Galton thus reports that ‘[t]heir history is not a little involved; but they may be enumerated thus’^[56]:
‘1. The Ovampo are corn-growing tribes to the north, who, considered as blacks, are a highly civilized people, and one with strong local attachments, well ordered, honest, laborious, and neat, yet still with much of the negro in them’^[57] - ‘[t]he King, Nangoro, is despotic [according to Galton], and seems to rule with a patriarchal sway. … [although] [t]he tribute to the King is small, and paid by a per centage on the tobacco grown, and not on the corn. … [and] [t]he Ovampo possess the entire carrying trade between the Damaras [Herero] and the Portuguese’^[58];    

‘2. The Damaras are a vagabond, lazy, thieving, pastoral race’^[59], although also described as ‘a striking race, with an appearance of strength, lightness, and daring that is highly imposing …’ ^[60];

‘3. The Hottentots to the south are too well known to require further comment’ – ‘[t]he ‘Namaqua Hottentot is an invader of the last few years’, amongst which live ‘outcast Damaras’ [presumably cattle-less Herero, i.e. Tjimba],

and also a very peculiar race of negros speaking the Hottentot tongue, and that only. These have no traditions indicating their descent, and are found as far south as Bethany. They live peculiarly on the hills, and have puzzled ethnologists ever since they were first described. They call themselves Ghou Damup, and in Sir James Alexander’s work and in missionary publications, are described as the Damaras of the hills. With the Damaras, however, they have nothing in common. Their features, shape, customs, and aptitudes indicate an entirely different origin, and it will be seen that an enquiry into their earlier history throws great light upon the former state of this country [i.e. Damara / ǂNūkhoen]^[61];

‘4. The Mationa Caffres to the east’, ‘[t]he Mationa are Bechuanas, among whom, partly as slaves and partly independent, live the Soun Damup, a tribe kindred to the Ghou Damup in every respect, language, appearance, and superstitions’^[62];

‘and lastly, 5, the Bushman Hottentots and others, who lead a Bushman's life in the barren tracts, that separate these larger nations’ – ‘the Bushmen have not even the tradition of another home’ [unlike the ‘Namaqua Hottentot’].^[63] 

1852 map of ‘Africa between the 10º and 30º South Latitude’, distilling information from Francis Galton, ‘Livingston & Oswell’ and Henry Gassiot. Source: Galton 1852, opp. p. 140.

Of the map above, published by the RGS in 1852, Galton writes (with some hubris):

[m]y map is for all practical purposes, and so far as it professes to go, very fairly accurate. I am not aware that any isolated hill is left out, though I do not profess to give the peaks in each group. I should have been involved in endless confusion, had I attempted so much. The limits however of all hills and all groups of hills are taken. I triangulated chiefly with an azimuth compass, from Walfisch Bay onwards as far as there were mountains to triangulate by, that is to Otchikoto on the N., and to Elephant Fountain [Gobabis] on the E. I have so great a number of bearings, that I have had no difficulty in making many independent series of triangles, and checking one by the other. I thus pretty easily found out such errors, either of reading off observations, of mistaking hills, or of writing them wrongly down, which I saw in spite of all my care would occasionally occur. I then selected the series of triangles that I thought would give the most trustworthy result, guided by the size of the angles, and more particularly by the definiteness of the mountain peaks that I observed, and then protracted them. Having done this, and registered the longitudes which this triangulation gave for my three main stations, Barmen, Okamabuti [Grootfontein], and Elephant Fountain (assuming the longitude of Pelican Point, Walfisch Bay, at 14-° 27' 5", and determining the scale of the map by differences of latitude), I compared these longitudes with those deduced astronomically, and I am glad to say that the agreement is very satisfactory. There is an abstract of all this at the end of the paper. Some grave error had affected my instrument, so that although the observations in each group agree extremely well together, yet there is a wide difference between the longitudes derived from these several groups. I had, however, done my best when taking lunars, say E., to take others W. under as nearly as possible the same circumstances, both of altitudes and of distances, as I could, and of the same bodies also. With sun observations I used one coloured glass, and always the same one, toning the instrument of course as required. I also examined the adjustments of my sextant with all the care I could, previously to beginning to observe; and it is solely from having taken these precautions with great pains that I can account for the excellent agreement of the mean longitudes (deduced as they are from such wide extremes) with that obtained by triangulation. As regards T'ounobis [Tunobis / Otjimbindé] and Ondonga the lunars were taken with a good, though small, and not clearly divided circle, which had to be read off by firelight; still the results of the former are very fair, and those of the latter, being checked by the position of Otchikoto, will answer sufficiently well. I am thus particular upon these matters, as it is of course a satisfactory thing to have well determined the geography of a new country, even though only in outline, for it may save much trouble and doubts to future travellers. I have altogether determined astronomically the longitudes of 6, and the latitudes of 53 stations, and I had no object in taking more.^[64] 

At the time of Galton’s travels, ‘the Rev. Mr. Hahn’ had had nine years experience at Eikhams [Windhoek] and Barmen [Gross Barmen / Otjikango]^[65].

Andersson also works on packing and they set sail in second week of August, arriving in ‘Walfisch Bay’ on 20 August 1850.

They round,

Galton: Pelican Point (on which pelicans were certainly sitting) and came into a wide bay, the shores of which were dancing with mirage, and presented the appearance of the utmost desolation. The store-house was a wretched affair to have received so grand a name – being a wooden shanty, about the size of a small one-storied cottage – which we could not for a long time see from on board our ship. The name of the bay, “Walfisch,” is Dutch, and means whale-fish: the sailors have corrupted it to Walwich, and, lastly, to Woolwich Bay, all which aliases may be found in different maps. There are a great many whales of the sort called “humpbacks” all about this coast; in coming here we passed through a ”school” or herd. It was a magnificent sight for the whole sea around us was ploughed up by them. We went up the bay very cautiously, for it has never been properly surveyed; and different charts give most widely different plans of it. At nightfall we anchored a mile or so off shore. We could see no natives; and not a sign of life anywhere, excepting in the immense flocks of pelicans and of flamingoes and other sea-birds. And this, it appears, is the character of the entire coast between the Orange River and the Portuguese territory – a physical barrier which has saved the natives who live behind it from the infliction of a foreign slave-trade.

   The books of sailing directions say that no fresh water can be obtained on the coast for the whole of that distance; but this is a mistake, [10] as in Sandwich Harbour, some twenty miles south of Walfisch Bay, there is, at least at present, a copious supply.^[66]

On the morning of 21st August they ‘see some savages about’, and bring the schooner in to around 1/3rd of a mile from the ‘storehouse’ and,

[Galton p.10] at midday the captain, the new Missionary, and ourselves landed. A row of seven dirty, squalid natives came to meet us. Three had guns: they drew up in a line, and looked as powerful as they could; and the men with guns professed to load them^[67]. They had Hottentot features, but were of a darker colour, and a most ill-looking appearance; some had trousers, some coats of skins, and they clicked, and howled, and chattered, and behaved like baboons. This was my first impression, and that of all of us; but the time came when, by force of comparison, I looked on these fellows as a sort of link to civilisation.^[68] 

[Andersson p. 18] We had not been many minutes on shore, when some half-naked, half-starved, cut-throat-looking savages, made their appearance, armed with muskets and assegais. Nothing could exceed the squalid, wretched, and ludicrous aspect of these people, which was increased by a foolish endeavour to assume a martial bearing, no doubt with a view of making an impression on us. Without noticing either their weapons or swaggering air, and in order to disarm suspicion, we walked straight up to them, and shook hands with apparent cordiality^[69].

[Galton p. 10] They were well enough acquainted with sailors; and the advent of a ship was of course a great godsend for them, as they bartered, for tobacco, clothes, and all sorts of luxuries, the goats’ milk and oxen which a few of them had; but they had been savagely ill-used more than once, and had occasionally retaliated. The captain of them soon made his appearance, and we became very amicable, and walked towards Sand Fountain, signs and smiles taking the place of spoken language. A letter was sent on to the Missionary [Bam] at Scheppmansdorf, a cotton handkerchief and a stick of tobacco being the payment to the messenger for his twenty-five miles’ run. We passed over a broad flat, flooded in spring-tides, following the many waggon-tracks that here seemed so permanent as not to be effaced by years. We were surrounded by a mirage of the most remarkable intensity. Objects two hundred yards off were utterly without definition; a crow, or a bit of black wood, would look as lofty as the trunk of a tree. Pelicans were exaggerated to the size of ships with the studding-sails set; and the whole ground was wavy and seething, as though seen through the draught of a furnace. This was in August, the month in which mirage is most remarkable here; it is excessive at all times, and has been remarked by everyone who has seen the place. A year and a half later I tried on two occasions to map the outline of the Bay, which was then comparatively clear, but still the mirage quite prevented me; an object which I took as a mark from one point being altogether undistinguishable when I had moved to my next station.

   After proceeding half a mile we came to the bed of the Kuisip, a river that only runs once in four or five years, but, when it does, [11] sweeps everything before it. … Bushes (Dabby bushes I have always heard them called^[70]) not unlike fennel, but from eight to twelve feet high, grew plentifully; a prickly gourd, the ‘Nara, with long runners, covered numerous sand-hillocks; and lastly, high shifting sand dunes, on either side, completed the scene. … [14] it is the staple food of these Hottentots, and a very curious plant. In the first place, it seems to grow nowhere except in the Kuisip and in the immediate environs of Walfisch Bay; and in the second place, every animal eats it; not only men, cattle, antelopes, and birds, but even dogs and hyenas. It is a very useful agent towards fixing the sands; for as fresh sand blows over, and covers the plant, it continually pushes on its runners up to the air, until a huge hillock is formed, half of the plant, half of sand. I do not much like its taste; it is too rich and mawkish. …^[71]

Andersson [22] Sand Fountain, notwithstanding its disagreeable guests [sand fleas], had its advantages. Almost every little sand-hillock thereabout was covered with a 'creeper’ which produced a kind of prickly gourd (called, by the natives, naras) of the most delicious flavour. It is about the size of an ordinary turnip (a swede), and, when ripe, has a greenish exterior, with a tinge of lemon. The interior, again, which is of a deep orange colour, presents a most cooling, refreshing, and inviting appearance. A stranger, however, must be particularly cautious not to eat of it too freely; as, otherwise, it produces a peculiar sickness, and a great soreness of the gum and lips. For three or four months in the year it constitutes the chief food of the natives.  

   The naras contains a great number of seeds, not unlike a peeled almond in appearance and taste, and being easily separated from the fleshy parts, they are carefully collected, exposed to the sun, dried, and then stored away in little skin bags. When the fruit fails, the natives have recourse to the seeds, which are equally nutritious, and perhaps even more wholesome. The naras may also be preserved by being boiled. When of a certain consistency, it is spread out into thin cakes, in which state it presents the appearance of brown moist sugar, and may be kept for almost any length of time. The cakes are, however, rather rich and luscious ...  

   The naras only grows in the bed of the Kuisep river, in the neighbourhood of the sea. A few plants are to be met with at the mouth of the Orange river, as also, according to Captain Messum, in a few localities between the Swakop and the Nourse [Kunene] river.^[72]

Galton [11] We were so much out of condition, that the depth of the sand and the heat of the sun (at least, what we then thought was heat) gave us a good tiring, and we were heartily glad when Sand Fountain and its watering-place came in sight. My imagination had pictured, from its name, a bubbling streamlet; but in reality it was a hole, six inches across, of green stagnant water. It was perfectly execrable to taste, as many years had elapsed since the Kuisip last ran, and the water which drains from its damp sand to the hollow here had become almost putrid, and highly saline. However, it was drinkable, and I was satisfied that with plenty of digging enough could be obtained to water my mules.^[73] 

[Andersson observes that,] the water, moreover, was of so execrable a quality as to make it totally undrinkable. However, on cleaning away the sand, it flowed pretty freely, and we flattered ourselves that, by a little care and trouble, we might render it fit for use, if not exactly palatable^[74].

[… Galton p. 11] Some years ago, when the trader lived here, the water was copious and very good, but all these sort of wells' are very uncertain, even more so than the flow of the river on which they depend. We came back much as we went, and bought five ostrich eggs that were brought to us, giving seven sticks of tobacco for the lot; but this was a piece of extravagance, five being the proper price. Cavendish tobacco is that which has been nearly always bartered here; it is, as most smokers know, in sticks, each stick weighing about an ounce, and worth a penny. I had taken only a hundredweight with me; but five hundredweight would not have proved at all too much. We took the captain and an ill-looking Hottentot, who appeared to be a relation of his, on board, as the two were inseparable; and we employed ourselves in picking bush tics from our persons, for the bushes swarmed with them.

   During the night a gun was heard on shore, and a fire was lighted, which proved to be made by the Missionary, Mr. Bam, and Stewartson, who had been a cattle-trader, but had lately lost everything, so that he, his wife, and children, could not afford to return to Cape Town, but lived at the same station with Mr. Bam. We had sent the letter at midday [see above]; they received it about nightfall, and had ridden down on [12] oxen in five hours. I had up to that moment no conception that oxen ever were, or had been, used as hacks, except possibly as a joke; but here were two fine-looking beasts, saddled, and with sticks through their noses, and a thin bridle fastened to the stick, and tied to a log of wood, and really they looked uncommonly well, and not at all out of their element.

   We at once proceeded to disembark. The horses and mules had to swim; the sailors managed it rather clumsily, and nearly drowned one; but at last the creatures were all got on shore. Heavy packages had next to be landed in the dingy, and we got through a deal of work. In the evening I rode with Mr. Bam to the Hottentot kraal by Sand Fountain, and of course listened with great interest to all he [Bam] had to tell me of the country. With the Damaras [Herero] he had little or no acquaintance. He was born in the Cape; had made several overland journeys; spoke much of the difficulty of travelling here, both from want of food and the badness of the road; and did not hold out to me the slightest encouragement as regarded my journey.

   After sunset Mr. Bam returned on board to sleep, and to get a good substantial dinner there, which is not to be despised by a resident in these parts. I pitched my tent on shore, and slept in guard of the things. My men had worked with very good spirit through the day in landing them, though it was hard work, and they were wet all the time. Some slept on shore and some on board. I had a heavy spar, which lay on the beach, carried under the Iee of the store-house, and picketed my mules and horses to it. The night was very chilly, damp, and windy, and the animals extremely restless. In the morning we found that my two horses had broken Ioose and escaped. Timboo and John St. Helena [see above] went directly to their tracks; but as hours passed, and they did not return, I became much alarmed. On Mr. Bam’s coming on shore he advised me at once to send some natives with provisions after the men, as all was desert for forty miles and more round the Bay; the horses would never perhaps be overtaken by the men, who would possibly follow their tracks till they were exhausted, and so be themselves unable to return. I therefore sent two natives directly, – Mr. Bam interpreting for me, – one with provisions, and the other with orders to go on after the tracks and bring the animals back. Late in the afternoon my men made their appearance, looking sadly exhausted. They had gone very far, until they dared not go further; and then, intending to return by a short cut back soon [13] became bewildered among the sand-hills, and quite lost their course. They were on the point of going altogether wrong, when the mist cleared away, and showed them the sea and the Bay, with the schooner in it, in the far distance. After a long walk they came to the waggontracks, which took them to Sand Fountain, where they obtained water, and there the Hottentots met them.

   The sailors had landed some of my things very carelessly indeed, dropping bags of flour into the sea. I made a great row, with much effect, about it. Some goats driven down to sell. I bought two kids for a second-hand soldier’s coat without the buttons. I had three dozen, and gave sixpence each for them at a Jew’s shop in Cape Town.

   The horses were still missing. I sent the captain, “Frederick,” [Khaxab] and another man, on their ride-oxen upon the spoor – for I became extremely anxious for their lives; there is not a blade of grass or a drop of water where they are gone. Frederick would not go unless I promised him and his friend a really respectable coat and a pair of trousers, to be paid if they brought the horses back-not otherwise. The agreement was made, and off they started. I wish I had brought more old clothes. Two coats and the etceteras are a sad drain upon my wardrobe. Another accident happened: my large white dog, that I begged from the barracks, took fright at the waggon-whips which we had landed, and were cracking; he ran straight away, and was never seen by us again. Flamingoes gathered here in immense flocks; their flight is very curious; the long projecting neck in front, and the long legs behind, make them look in the distance more like dragon-flies than birds. I broke a pelican’s wing with a cartridge of swan-shot, and had a chase of a good mile after him before I came up; the Hottentots ate him. The Bay seems, from all accounts, to swarm with fish; but, though I have a small seine net, I have no time now to set it.

   August 23. – The horses are found! They had strayed nearly forty miles (I saw their tracks long afterwards), and Frederick drove them to Scheppmansdorf for food and water, as it was much nearer for them than the Bay. He came to claim his apparel. I grudgingly enough gave him the only coats I could; they were the workmanship of Stultz: 1 had intended them for full-dress occasions at Missionary chapel-meetings, etc. But it could not be helped; and the greasy savages put them on, exulting in their altered appearance. …^[75]

Andersson [23] A few miles from our encampment, resided a small kraal of Hottentots, under the chief, Frederick [Khaxab], who occasionally brought us some milk and a few goats, as a supply for the larder, in exchange for which they received old soldiers’ coats (worth sixpence a-piece), handkerchiefs, hats, tobacco, and a variety of other trifling articles. But they infinitely preferred to beg, and were not the least ashamed to ask for even till' shirt on one's back.^[76] 

= Andersson is reported to observe that ‘Khaxab’s people’ (at ǂKhîsa-||gubus / Sandfontein) are ‘still extremely poor, being anxious to exchange milk and goats for trifles such as tobacco, old coats, or handerchiefs’.^[77]

Galton[14] The waggons that belonged to the Missionaries in the country came down to the beach to carry away their supplies, which had arrived by my ship. A vessel would have been chartered for them if I had not previously engaged it. They had arranged that one should be sent every two years to bring them their things of barter-clothes and groceries, and whatever else they might want; for the overland journey was found to be more expensive and less practicable, as it takes quite four months to reach Cape Town from Walfisch Bay, and the roads are so rocky that a waggon is seriously risked by the journey. The oxen, too, are probably much worn out, and, after all, only some 1,500 lb net weight can be carried in each waggon. On the other hand, a vessel from the Cape arrives in a week, and can, of course, carry anything. The trip costs about £100; it would be much less if it was not that the prevalent winds make it a matter of some four weeks to return. Chance vessels hardly ever arrive nowadays at Walfisch Bay; not one had come for more than a year.

… All our things were at length landed; the wells at Sand Fountain yielded enough water for the mules; the storehouses both there [Sandfontein?] and at the Bay were unlocked, and cleared out to receive my luggage; the waggons and cart were pieced together; and the schooner sailed away. 

   [15] The Missionary who had come with us from Cape Town went off at once to Scheppmansdorf with Mr. Bam, whose oxen fetched his waggon and all his things, and who very kindly promised to give me a help with mine, when the oxen were sufficiently rested, if I would first get the luggage as far as Sand Fountain. The mules were therefore harnessed, and worked excellently, carting my heavy things through the deep sand; and they made sometimes two and sometimes three trips a day between that place and the Bay. Andersson and myself slept at Sand Fountain. John Morta cooked for us, and the others drove the cart, and took care of my store at the Bay.

   Mr. Bam told me I should have great trouble in first going up the country, unless I had a person to guide me, and that there was not a Hottentot with him who could go. I had no interpreter for them, and they were frightened at the Damaras. Stewartson [?] said that he was going in about two months, and would then be very happy to show me the way. It appeared, on further conversation, that the business which detained him from going at once was that he had to make a fence round his garden to keep it from Mr. Bam’s pigs. So I arranged with two of my men that they should go and help him to get through the work quickly, while my others were employed with me. After a week everything was returned to Sand Fountain. Andersson and myself had employed ourselves in walking about, superintending the work. The Hottentots of course crowded round us every day, but they did not at all trouble us: only one or two of them were impudent, and, as I did not [16] know how much thrashing they would stand, I let them alone.^[78]

Galton shows the ‘Hottentots’ a rat-trap, explaining that if they put their hands into his stores to steal ‘they would infallibly be caught’^[79]:

The black-and-white crows almost attacked our larder for food. They live on the dead fish that lie about the beach, which indeed is almost the only food hereabouts for them. The natives brought us milk every morning to barter for tobacco, and also some goats. Mr. Bam very kindly sent me a slaughter ox. It seemed to me the most princely of presents. Meat keeps wonderfully well here in this season (August and September), and even dries instead of tainting; but I subsequently found it otherwise in December. I had taken plenty of salt meat with me from Cape Town, and rice and biscuits – quite two months' provisions – for I knew it must be a long time before we could fall into the ways of the country, and find our own commissariat there.

   I gave the mules a day's rest, and then started with my first load to Scheppmansdorf, Andersson remained behind [at Sandfontein]. Mr. Bam had sent me word that a lion had come over from the Swakop, River, and was prowling about and very daring, and that a hunt should be got up at once. As we travelled sometimes in the soft sand of the river bed, sometimes on the gravelly plain, through which it runs, we kept a sharp look-out for the track that had been seen there; we found it after we had travelled ten miles. The natives amused themselves by cleverly imitating it; they half clenched their fist, and pressed their knuckles into the sand. It was curious to see to what a distance the lion kept to the waggon-road, walking down the middle of it as though it had been made for him. I listened deferentially to Timboo und John St. Helena, who were quite learned on the subject of tracking. Except some ostriches scudding about, some crows, lizards, and a few small birds, there was no other sign of animal life, but we saw spoors now and then of the little steinbok, a very pretty gazelle some sixteen inches high.

   We followed the waggon path till an hour after nightfall, when the damp feel of the air, distant lights, and barking of dogs, announced that we had arrived at Scheppmansdorf. Mr. Bam welcomed me most kindly, introduced me to his wife, gave me an outhouse for my boxes and myself, and we formed a very pleasant party that evening, more [17] especially as I heard my horses were quite well and fat …^[80] 

They talk until late about what should be done concerning the lion, ‘a well-known beast, who usually hunted the lower part of the Swakop, and had killed an immense number of cattle’, [20] a great hunt drawing on ‘most skillful tracking’ by the accompanying ‘Hottentots’, including Captain Frederick [Khaxab], leading to its eventual demise, from a ‘single shot at the head, fired by Mr. Bam’ [21] the skin being given to Galton as a covering for his saddle-bags^[81]. Galton describes Mr. Bam’s household as giving ‘a good idea of consisting of a Missionary establishment’, consisting of ‘himself, Mrs. Bam, a numerous family, and an interpreter [Johannis^[82]], who helped at the schools, [and] could drive a waggon’, plus ‘a few hangers-on, more or less trustworthy, and always ready for a job’; the house being ‘a tolerably sized cottage or bothy, all on one floor, built of course by the Missionary himself’ with ‘[c]hairs, a table, and a bureau’ brought from Cape Town’^[83]. Describing the gendered division of labour he notes that,

[t]he wife does the whole housework, cleaning the rooms, managing the children, cooking the dinner, and, what I never liked, waiting at table. These ladies have the hardest and rudest of occupations, but, I must candidly say, they seem to like this life extremely, and I am sure that Missionaries must find great favour in the eyes of the fairer sex, judging from the [18] charming partners that they have the good fortune to obtain.^[84] 

The ‘natives’,

make their huts as they like, and where they like. They plant sticks in a circle of six feet across, then bend the tops , together and tie them with strips of bark; lastly, they wattle the sides and plaster them up.^[85] 

Scheppmansdorf itself is described as

Pretilly [sic] situated on a kind of island in the middle of the Kuisip River bed near a clump of fine trees, somewhat resembling elms [the soft-wooded ‘unna’^[86] = ‘ana’? – Faidherbia albida]. At one side stands the Missionary’s and Stewartson’s houses, in the middle is the white-washed chapel, and round the other sides lie the huts, twenty or thirty in number. All round is sand; to the south there is a perfect sea of sand-dunes from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet high, to the north the Naanip plain. A small streamlet rises from the ground, and runs through the place, watering about three acres of garden and field, and losing itself half a mile off in a reedy pond full of wild fowl.

[19] [Built in a ‘rude circle’] [t]o the middle of this the oxen of the place come of their own accord every night as the evening sets in, and lie their until the early morning...

… [18] The natives crowd the church and sing the hymns, which, being about three-quarters articulate and one-quarter clicks, produce a very funny effect. The Missionary is, to all intents and purposes, lord paramount of the place, though he is modest, and refers matters as much as possible to the captain of the tribe. Savage countries are parcelled out by a tacit understanding between different Missionary Societies, priority of occupation affording the ground of claim, it not being customary for one sect to establish its stations in a land where another sect is already settled. Mr. Bam and the other gentlemen I was thrown amongst belonged to a German Mission, and were all of them Germans or Dutch. Further to the interior, and communicating with the Cape, not by the sea, but overland, are some English Wesleyan stations. Subsequently, I passed through these, but at the time of my visit they were unoccupied.^[87] 

Galton buys two oxen, ‘a black and a red one, from Stewartson’ for ‘[g]roceries and a gown for his wife’ and a yellow ride ox from Johannis, the interpreter, for ‘a common gun’^[88]. He acquires Dama and Herero men as guides and workers, from mission stations at Scheppmansdorf (led by Missionary Johannes Bam) (i.e. Rooibank) and Otjimbingwe (led by Missionary Johannes Rath, accompanied by Hans Larsen - ‘trader, hunter, trek manager and cattle farmer’, who later joins Galton’s expedition)^[89]. He also hires Philippus Kajimune who spoke Herero, Nama and Dutch and who had worked as interpreter for Missionary Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt (1812-64)^[90]. He describes that country as being,

in the utmost confusion; the Namaquas were robbing and murdering the Damaras in every direction, and had indeed, just on my landing, attacked and destroyed the Schmelen’s Hope Station, that of Mr Kolbe.^[91]

Galton hears constantly from Andersson,

who remained at Sand Fontain with most of my men, guarding the boxes till Mr. Bam’s oxen were fresh enough to go down and take them. They had a monotonous time of it. A hyena paid them two visits at night, but got away in the dark unscathed. Little else happened.^[92] 

[Andersson p. 15] This lagoon teems with various kinds of fish; and, at low water, many, that have lingered behind, are left sprawling helplessly in the mud. At such times, the natives are frequently seen approaching; and, with a gemsbok's horn, affixed to a slender stick, they transfix their finny prey at leisure. Even hyaenas and jackals seize such opportunities to satisfy their hunger^[93]. 

He makes his ‘first attempt at mapping’ from the sandhills at Scheppmansdorf, from which Walvis Bay and [23] the mountains of the Swakop could be clearly seen^[94]. He is shown by ‘natives’ the first place they would aim for on the difficult, grassless and waterless ‘first stage’ across the plain to the Swakop, which for their journey in mid-September is guided by Stewartson on an ox, with Galton and Andersson on horseback and the rest of the men on foot, the wagons having been brought to Scheppmansdorf and a full-list of things taken and how packed provided in Galton’s narrative^[95].

They make it to the ‘rivulet’ at ‘Oosop’ [Husab] in the Swakop without mishap, [26] where the spoor and skulls of ‘buffaloes’ going down to drink are found,

Galton stops at ‘Oosop’ [Husab?] on the Swakop, finding it green with grass and tall reeds, with a small rivulet and ‘skulls of numerous buffaloes … lying about’ whose spoor were ‘all going down towards the mouth of the river’, but no sign of other ‘game’^[96]. Galton describes the Swakop as ‘the frontier’ between ‘Damaraland’ and ‘Namaqualand’ with three missionary stations on its banks [**= Otjimbingwe, Otjikango / Groß Barmen, and ??], and ‘the only road that is known to be practicable at all seasons from the sea to the interior’ running along its side^[97]. He describes the Kuisip as leading ‘into Namaqualand, but the watering places are few and uncertain’ and the road ‘execrable in places’^[98]. Of ‘Oosop’ Galton says, ‘[n]o people inhabit Oosop, or the lower part of the river, except some straggling Ghou Damup, who live, like jackdaws, up in the hills’, writing here that ‘[t]hese are a very peculiar and scattered race of Negroes who speak no language but Hottentot and are frequently slaves to the Bushmen’, and ‘[w]ho they are, and where they came from, has been a standing enigma’^[99]. He observes here that,

[t]he Hottentots come over now and then from the Bay, when the ‘Naras are not in season, and bring their cows and oxen to give them a good feed. The place is not suited for savages, for there are no roots for them to grub up and feed upon, and the river bed is so deep, and the rocks so abrupt, that nothing would be easier than to entrap a drove of oxen in it. Anywhere else, when a plundering attack is made, men and oxen scamper off in all directions, but here they would be If pounded.^[100]   

We had crossed a ridge [from ‘Oosop’ towards ‘Davieep’]; and a huge, rounded mountain (Tinkhas [Tinkas]), that faced us, was the principal feature in the landscape^[101].

At Davieep, Galton and expedition access water, are joined by ‘Andersson, Timboo and John St. Helena’, who hastily leave again to see if they can find three mules ‘that had laid down, and would go no further’^[102]. They encounter lions here (pp. 28-30) and in the evening a wagon comes down ‘from the Missionary station of Mr Hahn [i.e. Otjikango / Groß Barmen] to the Bay’ whose wagon driver had ‘a small flock of slaughter sheep for his own consumption by the way’, of which he sold Galton two^[103].

Travelling from ‘Davieep’ (near Tinkas) towards Tsaobis, passing rhino spoor, ‘in the middle of the day they met some Ghou Damup, and persuaded four of them to join us’^[104]. Galton writes that he,

had a great curiosity about these natives. It was so peculiar to see Negroes speaking the language of a light-coloured race, the Hottentots, and that too in a far more northern part of Africa than Hottentots [31] were believed to exist in. All published maps up to the last two or three years place a dotted line no great distance north of the Orange River, with the remark, that that is the northern limit of the Hottentot race. Now not only were the Hottentots by Walfisch Bay natives in the country, but here were black people, a race living in amity with, but as inferiors to these very Hottentots, and also speaking their language without any other of their own. It seemed that these Ghou Damup have a stronghold of their own, a large table-mountain [Erongo, see below], inaccessible except by one or two passes, which a white man in the country, by name Hans [Larsen], of whom I shall have much to say by-and-by, had visited and gone up; he gave me a very interesting account of it^[105]. This mountain I had made Stewartson promise to accompany me to, to buy goats, after I had reached the Missionary station ahead. Now these very Ghou Damup belonged to it, and therefore we engaged them as guides. I found also the advantage of having natives to do the troublesome work, as carrying wood, watching the cattle, which they have an aptitude for, and which similar servants do not like, and cannot be spared to perform.  

Erongo is the name of the mountain^[106]; it was described as two days’ ( journey, either from hereabouts or from the next Missionary station (Otjimbinguè) that of Mr. Rath's. We had no difficulty in explaining our wants to the Ghou Damup, although Stewartson's vocabulary was extremely limited; few interjections, twenty or thirty substantives, and infinite gesticulation, are amply sufficient for a dexterous traveller to convey to an intelligent native his views and wishes on a marvellous rariety of subjects.^[107]   

Andersson on 18 August writes,

[a]bout the Kuiseb and south of it, a great number of Bergdamaras are living. The Ovahereros have not been much in that direction. Before the arrival of the Damaras [Herero], the Namaquas and Bergdamaras are said to have lived together in the plains and possessed plenty of cattle.^[108] 

26th September – ‘We slept at the mouth of the Tsaobis River bed, and eat our last meal of animal food’^[109].

On the ‘Tsobis River’, ‘under a camelthorn tree’, stands his ‘first giraffe’, which he chases on his weak horse and shoots ‘as much for the pot as the sport’:

[34] the unhappy [wounded] creature looked down at me with her large lustrous eyes, and I felt that I was committing a kind of murder, but for all that I was hungry, and she must die; so I waited till she turned her head, and then dropped her with a shot.^[110] 

His ‘Ghou Damup guides [from near ‘Davieep’] ran on to Tsobis, where many of their people lay, and who brought us six ostrich eggs and sweet gum, in return for the [giraffe] meat we had left behind’^[111].

Andersson similarly writes,

[h]ere we were at once visited by several Hill-Damaras, of whom more hereafter. On finding that a giraffe had been killed and that they were at liberty to take what flesh we had left, their joy knew no bounds, and some of them actually returned that same night to the carcass. These men kindly brought us some sweet gum, a kind of coarse stirabout made from the seeds of a species of grass[!!], and a few ostrich eggs.^[112]   

At this point they are ‘only two days from the Missionary station Otjimbinguè’ where they send for the former sailor Hans Larsen was living having asked to leave a ship at Walvis Bay, who had been to Erongo was encamped and whom missionary Bam at Scheppmansdorf had encouraged Galton to engage as a guide^[113]. Larsen is described as having ‘been in the service of two cattle-dealers, who successively ruined themselves by their speculations’, and he,

had received payment of his wages partly in goods and partly in cattle, and was now living about the country [for seven years] an independent man, shooting, enjoying the possession of his cattle, and doing odd jobs for the Missionaries. He intended to drive his stock down to Cape Town as soon as the rains had set in, and to make what money he could by them. … Having been seven years living about the Swakop he had had very many adventures there; and, as it appeared subsequently, had utterly shot of all the game in it.^[114] 

They arrive at Otjimbinguè a couple of days later (late September 1850), Galton observing that, as well as water and grass being plentiful here,

no more yellow faces of Hottentots were about us, as at Walfisch Bay, but we had come among the black me – the Damaras [Hereros] – and a country that was, in a certain sense, generally habitable, stretched before us instead of a sand-desert.^[115]

At this time RMS missionary Rath is building a ‘[a] gigantic house’, ‘on the top of a little cliff’ close to the Mission-house which ‘was a temporary affair, a mud wall six feet high, and over it a round-tented ceiling of matwork, in shape like a waggon roof’^[116]. Galton writes that ‘[t]he natives around the station were excessively annoying and troublesome, and I was strongly inclined to male an example of some of them; but I still followed a pacific policy’^[117]. Soon after arriving Galton hears that,  

quite recently the neighbouring Namaqua Hottentots [under Jonker Afrikaner] had attacked Schmelen’s Hope [Okahandja] (three long days’ journey ahead), had murdered and mutilated the Damaras [Herero] that lived there, and, naturally enough, terrified the resident Missionary into leaving the place. The cause of this outrage, as far as I could learn, was simply savage barbarism, a little robbery, and a demonstration of dislike to the Missionary cause. …

   The effect of this attack, which had occurred after a long peace or pause from fighting, was to frighten every Damara [Herero] who had cattle to lose into the far interior, so that hardly an ox was grazing within two days’ journey north of the Swakop, and to seriously alarm the Missionaries, who had hitherto depended on these very Hottentots for protection from Damara insult. The Damaras that I saw were paupers [=Tjimba] who had no cows - people who chiefly lived, not on milk, but on roots like pig-nuts, and who collected round a white man with a vague hope of protection from him against their countrymen.

   [as a result, Galton determines] to start immediately for Barmen, the head seat of intelligence as regards Damara and Hottentot movements … [calling], upon Hans, the next morning, to get, not horsed, but “oxed,” for the journey. … [and finding] him in the neatest of encampments, with an old sail stretched in a sailor-like way to keep the sun off, and in an enclosure of thick reeds, that were cut and hedged all round. The floor was covered with sheep-skin mats: shooting things, knick-knacks, and wooden vessels were hung on the forked branches of the sticks, that propped up the whole. A very intelligent English lad was acting as his “help." Natives squatted round at a respectful distance, and Hans [Larsen] sat on an ottoman, looking like a Mogul. I had some conversation with him, and saw at once that he was not only willing to accompany me, but that also he was the very man I wanted. …^[118] 

They agree that Larsen will be employed by Galton as ‘head servant’, after which Galton is,

strongly urged to make a good enclosure (kraal) for mules and men, as the lions were extremely numerous about the low ground in which I had encamped, for the sake of the shade, though they seldom prowled upon the bare cliff on which Hans and the Damara huts were scattered. I therefore collected all the natives together that I could, and set vigorously to work, cutting down all the bushes I could find to strengthen my kraal with, and two days passed very busily.^[119] 

Galton leaves Andersson in charge, riding with Stweardson and Hans Larsen towards ‘Barmen’, their

little caravan consisted entirely of Hans’ animals, for all of mine required rest; besides our ride-oxen, we had one ox packed and one loose; three sheep, and two Damaras; our pace was a jog trot, and the Damaras drove the sheep and two oxen in front, while we rode behind and drove on the Damaras. We off-packed after three hours, but it was dark when we did so, and the sheep ran loose, and we could not drive them in together; one ran quite away, and was eaten, I presume, by the hyenas who disturbed us a good deal; one we killed, and the other we tied to a bush.^[120] 

Hans shows Galton how to make a ‘comfortable bed’ from dry grass and sheep skins surrounded by a dead hedge of cut bushes, and in the evening Galton listens ‘with much interest to Hans’ tales and anecdotes’, writing that Larsen  

had been the most successful sportsman in the country, and had lived the last two or three years in sole charge of an immense drove of oxen, once amounting to seven hundred, with only one or two native lads to help him in the care of them. He had shot a great many [39] lions out of the Swakop, six in the preceding year, and made it a much safer place than it used to be to drive cattle in. From his account the river bed must have swarmed with game when it was first seen by Europeans; but I can fancy, from the confined character of the country, how in a short time one or two guns would entirely exterminate them.^[121]

Andersson observes of the Herero that,

The Damaras are divided into two large tribes, the Ovaherero and the Ovapantiereu of which the former lives nearest to the sea; still, with the exception of a slight difference in the language, they appear to be one and the same people. They may again be divided into rich and poor Damaras, or those who subsist on the produce of their herds, and those who have no cattle, or at least very few, and who live chiefly by the chase, and what wild fruit and roots they can pick up abroad. These are called Ovatjimba, and are looked upon with the utmost contempt by the prosperous classes, who reduce them to a state of slavery, and do not even scruple to take their lives. … the Hill-Damaras … are a totally different race of natives.^[122]

Andersson writes of Onanis (…  Onanis [ǂŌ!nanis^[123]] (a mountain between Kuiseb and Swakop Rivers, now in the Namib-Naukluft National Park), and Erongo mountain (now private freehold farmland)^[124]) that it,

is the permanent residence of a kraal of very poor Hill-Damaras, who subsist chiefly upon the few wild roots which their sterile neighborhood produces. Most of them, however, manage to raise a little tobacco, for which they have a perfect mania, and which, moreover, they value nearly as much as the necessaries of life.  

They also cultivate "dacka," or hemp, not, as with us, for its fibre, but for the sake of the young leaves and seeds, which they use as a substitute for tobacco, and which is of the most intoxicating and injurious character. It not unfrequently happens, indeed, that those who indulge too freely in the use of this plant are affected by disease of the brain.  

The manner in which the Hill-Damaras smoke is widely different either from Hindu, Mussulman, or Christian. Instead of simply inhaling the smoke, and then immediately letting it escape, either by the mouth or nostril, they swallow it deliberately. The process is too singular to be passed over without notice. [**illustration of pipe]  

A small quantity of water is put into a large born-usually of a koodoo-three or four feet long. A short clay pipe, filled either with tobacco or "dacka," is then introduced, and fixed vertically into the side near the extremity of the [90] narrow end, communicating with the, interior by means of a small aperture. This being done, the party present place themselves in a circle, observing deep silence, and with open mouths, and eyes glistening with delight, they anxiously abide their turn. The chief man usually has the honor of enjoying the first pull at the pipe. From the moment that the orifice of the horn is applied to his lips, he seems to lose all consciousness of every thing around him, and becomes entirely absorbed in the enjoyment. As little or no smoke escapes from his mouth, the effect is soon sufficiently apparent. His features become contorted, his eyes glassy and vacant, his mouth covered with froth, his whole body convulsed, and in a few seconds he is prostrate on the ground. A little water is then thrown over his body, proceeding not unfrequently from the mouth of a friend; his hair is violently pulled, or his head unceremoniously thumped with the hand, These somewhat disagreeable applications usually have the effect of restoring him to himself in a few minutes. Cases, however, have been known where people have died on the spot from overcharging their stomachs with the poisonous fumes.^[125]     

Travelling north from Schmelen’s Hope (Okahandja) Galton writes:

As I travelled northwards [from Schmelen’s Hope], ascending the plateau, I saw the tops of the hills by the river, that had appeared so prominent when among them, slowly sink down below my level, and disappear among the trees. Diambotodthu no longer bounded the prospect in front, but on a sudden the two magnificent, almost faultless cones of Omatako burst full into sight, each appearing like a Teneriffe, beyond which was the broken ground of Otjihinna ma Parero, and the long wall of Koniati, that bound the arid Kaoko.^[126] 

Galton’s sketch map of ‘Damaraland’, notes that ‘Berg Damara’ were living at Koniat, Erongo, Omuvereoom [= Waterberg] mountains^[127]. At some point Tom Bechuana becomes Galton’s servant in these years: he ‘later entered Angola and Portuguese service … [and] [h]is son was Vita Thom (also known as Oorlog)’^[128], who became an extremely significant leader in northern Kunene in the post WW1 years.

Of the Omoramba K’omatako [Omuramba Omatako] Galton writes that,

[i]n the case of the Omoramba K'omatako, whose course lies alternately over districts of sand and over hard ground, it is very curious to observe how, what in the first case is a fine magnificent river bed with high banks, suddenly, as the ground becomes hard, loses itself in the open plain, where there is not a vestige of its course; and a few miles further on, the ground becoming sandy, the river bed re-appears again, just as unexpectedly as it had been lost, and altogether as large as before.^[129] 

They make,

a considerable detour to avoid a very hostile tribe of Damaras [Herero], who were then encamped on the Omoramba, and through whose neighbourhood my men refused to attempt a passage. I, therefore, guided only by such vague information as I could then occasionally procure from the savages, went under the escarped sides of Omuvereoom [Waterberg], at the termination of which the reported lake Omanbondé was said to lie. Through the whole of this road I had to trust to chance in finding water, and in also finding a practicable road for waggons. A t this time my men were undisciplined, and in no way to be depended upon. My oxen were only half broken. There was fighting going on between two powerful tribes immediately behind us, and a dense jungle of thorns surrounded us on all sides. Of game there was none, so that it was impossible to depend on anything else but my oxen for food. The waters were drying up on all sides, and [148] the prospects of the expedition became gloomy enough. I chanced, however, to fall upon a curious watercourse, that we named the River Vley. It was a narrow strip of green, not much depressed below the country on either side, which contained frequent shallow pools. It was simply a succession of Vleys or pools, and varied from thirty yards to much more in width, and here and there stretched out into broad plains …^[130]

In this country Galton repeatedly mentions the thickness of the thornveld through which they are travelling: ‘the thickest of thorn jungle, and one perfectly impassable to a waggon’^[131]. He thus writes,

[t]t is wonderful how little inhabitable country there is in this part of Africa. Either the thorns occupy the ground to the exclusion of everything else, or drought makes it unfit for cattle. In fact, Damara-land is made by the watercourses and a very limited number of springs; take away these, and no pastoral people could inhabit the country; whilst agriculture, except to the most limited extent, is in all cases out of the question. The watercourses, though utterly arid to all appearance, are really to a great extent reservoirs of water, which is checked in its evaporation by the great depth of sand that overlies it. There are places known to the natives in most of these river beds, and which probably correspond to the lowest parts of the longer reaches, where water can be got by digging; but it is useless, as I am well aware by long experience, to dig deeper than the sand, for no water exists in the hard ground below it. It must not, therefore, be in any way supposed that, because I have dotted out in the map a large space and called it Damara-land, the whole of that area is occupied by these people. The case is far different. The number of pasturages is extremely small; and I am sure that I myself have seen and know quite half of them. It will be easily understood also that the boundaries of a people like the Damaras are exceedingly arbitrary. It rains perhaps heavily one season, and there is abundant Vley water at a distant place, where the pasturage is also good; the neighbouring tribes, of course, flock there, and spare the grass nearer their usual haunts and more certain waters until the dry season. The boundaries are not definite and natural, excepting so far as the long range of Omuvereoom is concerned; but they are decided to a certain degree by custom, and I have endeavoured, under this view only, to represent them on the map. One point bearing on this subject must not be forgotten - that two African tribes never live close up to a common frontier. They are always fighting and robbing, and therefore a broad border-land is essential; and in these border-lands, so far as I have seen, the Bushmen and other outcasts live. As regards the water that these get, it will [149] easily be understood that many places are found which yield enough for a small family, but which would scarcely support two or three oxen. The water oozing slowly into a well from the damp sand surrounding its bottom, at the rate say of a gallon in a day, is a case often observed, and then the tracks of Bushmen are pretty sure to be seen about it also. But to proceed with my itinerary. Just where the Vley River began to be lost the bushes became more open, and Omuvereoom sloped down into the plain, and I here met with guides who took me straight to Omanbondé. This had been constantly described to me as a large lake. I thought it might have been the Demboa of early maps, with whose position it fairly coincides, and to whose name Omanbondé bears a certain resemblance.

   The occasional existence of hippopotami in it was also thoroughly substantiated, and yet, when I saw it, it was perfectly dry. The place is a remarkable one enough, for it is the long reach of a watercourse, closed up at both ends by a dam, which, together with its sides, slope upwards till they attain an elevation of about 100 feet above the bed. The breadth of Omanbondé is trifling, but its length is some 8 miles. Going downwards, and passing over a broad dam, we come into another reach also dammed up, and then again into another. N. of Omanbondé there are also two other places just like it. The water evidently filters through these dams in the rainy season; and I was assured that, even in the driest times of usual years, Omanbondé was a reservoir of water: I, however, to my great misfortune in many ways, chanced to travel during a year of great and almost unprecedented drought. The course of the Omoramba downwards was so clogged with thorns as to be quite impracticable for a waggon, and it was indeed with great difficulty that we even crossed it.

   On leaving Omanbondé, and getting out of the valley of the Omoramba as well as I could, we came to a far more open plain than any I had hitherto met with; and suddenly, at lat. 19º 50’, found ourselves among palms - the harbingers of a better land. A little further on they flourished to the exclusion of almost every other tree; but before we came to Okamabuti [near Grootfontein^[132]] had ceased almost as suddenly as they began, though during the whole road to Ovampo-land one or two were every day to be seen. We had now arrived at a much more luxuriant country, and water was plentiful: a long limestone ridge at Kutjianashongué yielded springs in numerous places, around which large herds of cattle and numbers of Damaras [Herero] were collected. Timber-trees began to appear, growing in clumps, with long open grassy savannahs between them; and to me it was a constant wonder to observe the straight and perfectly defined borders that these belts of wood presented. Here and elsewhere I have seen them look, not [150] as one would conceive that Nature could have planted them, but presenting exactly the appearance of the work of an ornamental gardener. I am in no way able to account for this striking peculiarity, as there is no perceptible difference in the soil on which the trees grow, and in that where they are absent. I cannot explain the fact, but simply state it. Okamabuti may be considered as the northern boundary of Damara-land, though in the rainy season the natives sometimes go further. The country is said to be quite impassable to the N.E. It appears to be entirely uninhabited, and is thickly wooded. I made an excursion to a hill in that direction, about 8 hours off; but, so far as I could see from the top of it, one level forest extended far away.

   The masses of hills that lie to the N.W. of Okamabuti are all limestone. I saw a good deal of them from the guide having lost his way more than once when he first took us there, which ended in compulsory and anxious wanderings for more than a week about them. A great many Bushmen live among these hills. I saw there a most curious freak of nature, which I afterwards witnessed on a far more magnificent scale at Otchikoto. Wherever a piece of bare rock is to be seen (which is nearly everywhere between Ootui and Otchikoto), it is pierced with holes perfectly circular, and of all sizes, and like round smoothed tubes. Thousands of them would just admit the thumb, and are quite shallow; numbers are about the diameter of a bucket, and from 3 to 5 feet deep, forming most dangerous pitfalls: in many of them we find trees growing, some not quite filling the hole, others just fitting it, and, again, others so constricted that the trunk swells over and entirely hides the sides of the hole. I saw a few holes about 8 feet across, but I do not recollect observing any intermediate size between that and Orujo, a perfectly circular hollow in the midst of chalk about 30 feet deep and 90 feet across. The sides of this were certainly not smooth, but they formed an exact circle, like a gigantic pan, the floor of which was level, with a small well in the middle. Otchikoto was still more astonishing. Equally circular, and its sides equally steep, it measured 400 feet across, and was almost filled with the clearest of water, the level of which stood at 33 feet below the banks, with the extraordinary depth of from 170 to 180 feet, which I plumbed in five places. I heard there was another, if not two more of these places, somewhere among the Soun Damup [located by Galton in the Omuramba Omatako, north-east of T’ounabis / Tunabis^[133]]. The water-level of Otchikoto was, as I was told, and I could myself gather from appearances, not increased in the rainy season.

   I was fortunately not encumbered here with my waggons, for I do not think it would have been possible to have taken them on through the thick forest. Here there is not a single landmark to [151] catch the eye, and nothing but the most skilful tracking could find the road when the rain had obliterated the spoors of the preceding year. We got water at Otchando, and came to the first Ovampo cattle-post at Omutchamatunda. Travelling on, we arrived suddenly at the large salt-pan of Etosha, which is about 9 miles across from N. to S., and extends a long way to the W. The mirage was too strong to admit of my measuring the distance of the high banks that there bound it, and which I could just make out both as I went and as I returned.

   This lake is impassable in the rainy season, but was perfectly dry when I saw it, and its surface was covered over in many parts with very good salt. A little further on we come to the remarkable Otchihako-wa Motenya, a perfectly flat, grassy, but treeless extent of country, stretching like an estuary between high and thickly wooded banks. It is said to extend a very considerable distance W.; indeed, I cannot help thinking even down to the sea-coast. I passed it near its head, where it was only 12 miles across; but where the Ondonga and Omaruru route crosses it, it is a long day's journey from side to side, and all the Damaras who had been that route assured me that it extended as far as they knew to the W. Again, the Omaruru and Onganjera route crosses a flat of three days’ extent, but in which there is some water, and which is asserted, and indeed appears, to be identical with it. It is looked upon with great horror by the Damaras from the bitter coldness of a night passed upon it, as there is of course no fuel and no shelter.

   It is difficult for me to express the delight that we all felt when in the evening of the next day we suddenly emerged out of the dense and thorny coppice in which we had so long been journeying, and the charming corn country of Ondonga lay stretched like a sea before us. The agricultural wealth of the land, so far exceeding our most sanguine expectations, - the beautifully grouped groves of palms, - the dense, magnificent, park-like trees, - the broad, level fields of corn interspersed with pasturage, and the orderly villages on every side, gave an appearance of diffused opulence and content, with which I know no other country that I could refer to for a parallel.

   I arrived ultimately at Nangoro, the king’s werft, where I spent three weeks most pleasantly. But my oxen had fallen lame and sadly out of condition, and I felt some misgivings as to whether they could even take me back, and there was no grass for them at Nangoro’s to eat. All his cattle were sent far away to the cattle posts. Half my party were left scarcely in a fit state to protect themselves among the Damaras, and I had often anxious thoughts for their safety. My provisions were getting very low, and unless more cattle could be bought in Damara-land we had [152] not sufficient to take us back even to Barmen, where we had left the missionaries in too great want to be able to help so large a party as ourselves. The country too was fast drying up, and the road southward might become impassable; still the great river [Nourse / Kunene] was only four long, or five comparatively easy, days ahead; but this and the return journey, together with the rest necessary for my oxen, I was aware would be at least a three weeks affair, and I hardly knew what course to take in case Nangoro would give me permission to proceed. It was certainly with regret, yet still with a feeling of relief, as putting an end to my indecision, that a message was at length received from Nangoro, prohibiting me from proceeding farther. If I had been in a condition to temporize, I have no doubt that I could have persuaded him to let me proceed, but that was now out of the question, and I therefore took leave and returned. Fortune now favoured me in many ways. I found my waggon mended, a sufficiency of cattle bought, and obtaining a guide, returned by a good road up the Omoramba without much difficulty, except in having nearly every day to dig or to clear out wells, which fully employed my whole party, now consisting of thirty-four people.^[134] 

Returning to our starting point, Barmen, I will next describe the route which I followed to the eastwards, and which is very interesting, as it presents a peculiarly easy and open highway to the interior, and one practicable at almost all times for waggons, though indeed I - travelling at the driest time of an unusually dry year, one in which many of the Damara cattle perished of thirst, even at their own cattle posts - failed in reaching Lake ‘Ngami. Proceeding up a small, but frequently running, river-course, a tributary of the Swakop, to Eikhams, and thence by a well-made Hottentot waggon road, over a very broken and arid country, we ascend out of the valley, keeping the high ridge of Awass to the right hand. We are now upon an elevated open plain, presenting no difficulties whatever to waggons if we follow the course of the Kuyip, but the ground that borders the upper part of the Noosop, by which I went, is very rugged and thorny. There is far more water to be got all about here than in Damara-land, but this being at present the border country between the Hottentots and Damaras, the wells were not generally opened. From Kurrikoop [Witvlei / !Uri!khupis^[135]] eastwards no anxiety need be felt for food, as there is plenty of game, though the animals are exceedingly shy. The ground is sandy and undulating. Proceeding on, we get to Elephant Fountain, beyond which there are no peaked hills, nor landmarks, in fact, that could be laid down in the map, and thence recognised by a future traveller. Elephant Fountain had been a Wesleyan missionary station, but was abandoned for the double reason of being subject to fever from April to June, as well as from its vicinity to some [153] warlike Damara tribes. There is nothing in the appearance of Elephant Fountain that would suggest an idea of unhealthiness; it possesses, indeed, no peculiar feature, but it stands well on a barren and thorny hill; the - here contracted - bed of the Swart River is below, and there is a small, clear spring, which supplies water. Most fearful attacks of fever have year after year been experienced at the place, but not, so far as I could learn, anywhere else in the immediate neighbourhood. At Elephant Fountain I left my waggon, and rode on with a Hottentot chief, Amiral, and about forty of his men, to the eastwards. They had lately explored a long limestone ridge of hills that extends some 50 miles from T’was, and which is greatly intersected by watercourses, headed by springs, and along which we went. It appears to be of about 20 miles breadth, and attains a height of at least 1000 feet above the general level of the country. I consider it quite as a natural boundary between the thorny country of Damara-Iand and the broad, sandy, and wooded tracts of Central Africa. I contrived to get Bushmen guides to take us and about half of Amiral’s party to T’ounobis, which we reached after a journey most trying to the oxen. The road passed by many large but dried up vleys; the ground was sufficiently hard, and would at ordinary seasons afford an excellent road for waggons, which after leaving T’was should pass not on the top of the ridge, as I did, but skirt it in the plain. T’ounobis is a fountain in a river-course, sufficient to supply any quantity of cattle, where I remained a week recruiting my oxen, of which I had barely sufficient to carry me back. I found a large village of Bushmen there, from whom I received much information concerning the lake and the country ahead. The land in front, up to its very borders, was described as being exactly the same as that we had now traversed., Hard sand, with plenty of trees, but not so thickly overgrown as to form any obstacle to a waggon, and growing but very few thorns, - indeed, I had great difficulty in getting thorn-bushes, of which to make my sheep kraals. So far then as T’ounobis I can guarantee the road from Walfisch Bay towards the interior to be perfectly open at any season of the year, and, except in the driest of times, from T’ounobis onwards. T’ounobis was passed by the Kubabees Hottentots^[136] in 1850 [reportedly over 7 days on August^[137]]. They had come upwards along the Umak Desert on a plundering and shooting excursion, with horses and oxen in great numbers to ride on. They had also built shooting-huts by the waterside, which I used, and had left other tokens of their passage. At T’ounobis they obtained a guide, whom I saw, and from whom I received much information, and under his escort they reached the lake.

   A perfectly marvellous quantity of game congregated here; [154] deep pools of water that were supplied by a fountain were drunk dry every night, and I therefore more readily believed in the constant assertions of the Bushmen, that there was then no water whatever for a distance twice as great as that over which we had travelled ahead.^[138] 

Galton contacts a Dama village in the southern Erongo mountain foothills and observes here that ‘the Ghou Damup have plenty of sheep and goats’^[139]. Dama strongholds are also recorded as the Omatako Mountains^[140]. Although iterating his odious hierarchichal categorisation of the peoples he encounters he also writes that ‘[t]here is no difference between the Hottentot and Bushman … the Namaqua Hottentot is simply the reclaimed and somewhat civilized Bushman^[141].

In September he writes that:

[t]he Dama that I saw were chiefly paupers who had no cows – people who lived chiefly not on milk but on roots like pignuts [probably C. fulgens or ‘uintjies’]^[142]. 

On hearing of the raid by Jonker Afrikaner on Schmelen’s Hope (Okahandja), and concerned about his own mission east to Lake Ngami, Galton invokes British colonial authority in writing to Jonker demanding that he cease raiding the Hereros.^[143] Galton also writes to Herero leaders explained ‘that he represented the monarch of a great nation who wished to send traders to the Damaras [Hereros] to purchase cattle in exchange for iron implements, but who did not rob and plunder as the Namas did.^[144] 

In the vicinity of Etosha Pan, Galton refers to ‘Bushmen’ there as ‘Saen’^[145].

1851

Galton and Andersson travel to ‘Eikhams’, i.e. |Ae-ǁgams or ‘hot water’ (Klein Windhoek) where they meet with Oorlam Kaptein Jonker Afrikaner (now fully based at |Aeǁgams and whose chief advisor is a Eibregt / Eybrecht K. who later – 1852/3 – works as a trader for Andersson^[146]), described by Galton as ‘a very intelligent man with a great deal of information’^[147]. Galton makes an impression by dressing in ‘red hunting-coat, cap, corduroy breeches, and jackboots’, and charging to the doorway of Jonker’s hut on his ride-ox^[148]. Keen to encourage Jonker to refrain from raiding the Herero – motivated partly by his own desire to be able to move through the country without danger – Galton demands that Jonker ‘sign letters of apology both to the Kolbes and to the British Government’ and to pledge to refrain from further raiding of the Herero, drawing up ‘a 15-point code of conduct for Nama chiefs’ to which Jonker held for around a year^[149], illustrating consolidating European administrative influence and control over indigenous affairs. Andersson drew Jonker on this occasion^[150].^[151] 

Galton and Andersson also meet the Oorlam Kaptein Amraal Lambert (1774-1864) who ‘had moved from the cape northwards across the Orange River, and had settled in the Nossob area’^[152].

Galton leaves ‘Eikhams’ for Ngami in March 1851. Amongst his personnel were two Hereros provided by ‘the Nama chief Swartboy’ of which one, Onesimus ‘spoke fluent Damara [Herero] and Namaqua, [and] had been captured by the Namaquas as a child and brought up by them’, whilst the other, Phillipus, ‘had forgotten his native tongue but could speak Namaqua and Dutch fluently’^[153]. On 26 May they reach Lake Otjikoto finding ‘wildlife in large numbers, although rhinoceros was rarely encountered’^[154]. ‘[I]n the company of Owambo traders who had bought copper ore from Heiǁom people near Lake Otjikoto’, on 29 May Galton and Andersson reach the cattle-post of ‘Omutjamatunda’ (also Great Onamotoni, Amutoni and now Namutoni) observing 3-4,000 herd of cattle as well as springbok and zebra, and becoming ‘the first Europeans to record the existence of Etosha Pan’^[155]. Andersson ‘gives an impression of lushness at Namutoni, writing: “there is a most copious fountain situated on some rising ground and commanding a splendid prospect of the surrounding country”^[156]. Galton and Andersson reach Etosha Pan in this year and are considered the first Europeans to have done so^[157]. After leaving the ‘wide thirstbelt’ of ‘Damaraland’, Galton is struck by ‘the fecund terrain of Ondonga’, writing that,

It is difficult for me to express the delight that we all felt when in the evening of the next day we suddenly emerged out of the dense and thorny coppice in which we had so long been journeying, and the charming corn country of Ondonga lay stretched like a sea before us. The agricultural wealth of the land, so far exceeding our most sanguine expectations, - the beautifully grouped groves of palms, - the dense, magnificent, park-like trees, - the broad, level fields of corn interspersed with pasturage, and the orderly villages on every side, gave an appearance of diffused opulence and content, with which I know no other country that I could refer to for a parallel.^[158]

His narrative was later commented as saying,

Fine dense timber trees, and innumerable palms of all sizes, were scattered over it: part was bare for pasturage, part was thickly covered with high corn stubble: palisadings, each of which enclosed a homestead, were scattered everywhere over the country. The general appearance was that of the most abundant fertility. It was a land of Goshen to us; and even my phlegmatic wagon-driver burst out into exclamations of delight.^[159]

Galton is refused permission by Nangolo^[160], king of Ondonga, to travel through Oukwanyama to the Kunene River, the aim of his journey^[161].

On 18 August, Jonker Afrikaner issues a ‘Gunpowder Regulation’ stating that:

No trader or other person shall sell any gunpowder whatever in my country except at my place. If they do so I shall take from them as a fine twice the value they have obtained for the gunpowder so sold.^[162] 

This action is precipitated because,

Some Berg Damaras and others of my people have of late bought and still endeavour to buy a considerable quantity of gunpowder; they have already made use of this for the purpose of attacking and robbing the Cattle Damaras, and by it they are also able to resist those men whom I send to punish them. I have therefore great difficulty in preserving such good order as I desire in these parts.^[163] 

Galton describes a big ‘game’ hunt, of which he conducts quite a few during his travels. In the vicinity of Elephant Fountain (Gobabis) in the east, and following in the footsteps of a Nama hunting expedition, he and his men the hunters slaughtered rhinoceros, both white and black, with abandon, avoiding the elephants for fear of being trampled on and returning only after Galton had tired of ‘massacreing the animals’:

On August 30 they set out for Elephant Fountain [Gobabis], named for the vast numbers of elephant tusks and bones discovered there, shooting hartebeest, impala, and zebra along the way. After a fortnight of difficult travel, they arrived at Elephant Fountain, a copious spring on a thorn-tree-covered hillside where animal herds came to drink, but from which the elephants were long gone. Amiral and about 40 of his Nama tribesmen were encamped there, returning from a shooting expedition further east where they had bagged 40 rhinoceros, but they decided to retrace their steps with Galton to engage in further sport. On September 19 they left Elephant Fountain with the land soon becoming sandy, bushy, and devoid of prominent landmarks. At ‘Twass they came upon a large encampment and Galton hired an Afrikaaner named Saul, an expert shot who spoke perfect Namaquan, to accompany him. On September 24 they left ‘Twass for their "shooting excursion" and two days later camped where Amiral’s men had slaughtered the black rhinoceros, seeing skulls all around.^[164]

On October I they started out for ‘Tounobis [Tunobis], which proved to be overrun with game: Galton: “[t]he river-bed was trodden like the ground in a cattle fair by animals of all descriptions.”^[165]  There were large herds of gnu and troops of zebra, and the hunters slaughtered rhinoceros, both white and black, with abandon, avoiding the elephants for fear of being trampled on^[166]:

Andersson: [in the course of just a few days their party shot] “upwards of thirty rhinoceroses. One night indeed, when quite alone, I killed in the space of five hours (independently of other game) no less than eight of those beasts, amongst which were three distinct species. And it is my belief that if I had persevered I might have destroyed double that number. But I never took delight in useless slaughter”.^[167]

After a week of shooting Amiral’s men were agitating to return to their wives and Galton had tired of “massacreing the animals.”^[168]

By November 5 Galton was back in Eikhams where he parted with Jonker for the last time^[169].  

Map by Galton (1853*), source: http://galton.org/books/south-west-africa/, accessed 30 May 2016.

Map of Galton’s route adapted for clarity by Gillham (*) stretching from Walvis bay in the west to Lake Ngami in the east and including locations of emerging mission stations in central Namibia.

They arrive back at Barmen (Otjikango), having ‘joined my then mended waggon’ which had broken in ‘Damara land’ on northwards journey, in August 1851, from where Galton sends a messenger ‘overland to the Cape to make arrangements for forwarding a vessel to meet me at Walfisch bay in December or January’^[170]. In the meantime they take a wagon and their remaining oxen eastwards to ‘Elephant Fountain’ where they join ‘Amiral, a Hottentot chief’ with whom, after leaving the wagon, they ride eastwards to explore ‘Otchombinde’, ‘called by the Hottentots T’ounobis’, arriving back on the coast ‘with utterly exhausted oxen’ in December^[171]. Galton leaves from Walfisch Bay in December 1851, sailing first to St. Helena where he waits for several weeks to make [143] ‘a short excursion to Little Fish Bay and … obtaining some information from thence’, before returning to England^[172].

1852

In January Galton returns to England, taking Andersson’s first collections, ‘including about 500 bird-skins and 1 000 insects’^[173]. At this time, Andersson travels overland to Cape Town in an uneventful journey was uneventful, except for ‘one day in April…, encamped on the Hountop River, he shot a rhinoceros’, an event because at the time rhino were thought to be rare south of the Kuiseb^[174]. Andersson draws maps of north-central Namibia following expedition from 1950-52 with Francis Galton from Walvis Bay to Ondangwa^[175].

Shortly before Galton returned to England, he writes an account of his trip, published in 1852 in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society^[176]. This paper was read at the Society whilst Galton was sailing home, and it was celebrated for its attentiveness to measurement and quantification^[177]. In this year Galton was awarded the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society - for which, his accomplishments regarding measurement and quantification were emphasized.^[178]

Galton’s mapping work is ‘professionally transcribed onto a map by Livingstone, Oswell and Gassiot of London’ and published in this year^[179]. The map clearly shows ‘Nareneen’, presumably ‘!Narenin’ to west of ‘Kaoko’ mountains positioned west of Outjo and Etosha, plus ‘Ghou Damup’ north-west of Erongo and ‘Soun Damup’ east of Outjo^[180].

Galton’s map of Africa between 10 and 30 degrees South latitude, in Galton 1852, p. 141.

Detail from Galton’s map of Africa between 10 and 30 degrees South latitude, showing ‘Nareneen’ to west of ‘Kaoko’ mountains, plus ‘Ghou Damup’ north-west of Erongo and ‘Soun Damup’ east of Outjo. Source: Galton 1852, p. 141.

1853

Galton’s sketch map [see 1852] is sent to the Academy in Sweden, probably by Jacob Letterstedt, Swedish-Norwegian Consul for the Cape at the time, with the request by Andersson that they not be published - probably because they were based on notes from work done with Galton and conversations with Livingstone^[181]. Galton’s “Tropical South Africa” is first published to acclaim, and recognised as written “in an excellent manly style”, the RGS showing ‘its appreciation by the award of a Founder’s Gold Medal’^[182]. Galton writes in his preface to the first edition that,

[t]he result of this excursion has been to fill up that blank in our maps which, lying between the Cape Colony and the western Portuguese settlements, extends to the interior as far as the newly discovered Lake Ngami.

   The country of the Damaras [Herero] – warlike, pastoral Blacks – was in the first instance explored; beyond them he found a broad tract, inhabited by aboriginal Hottentots; and, again, to the north of these, the Ovampo, a race of intelligent and kindly negroes, who are careful agriculturalists …

   Few new objects of natural history were either collected or heard of, as the tract in question was for the most part a high barren plateau, that supported but little variety of either animal or vegetable life. [although there was also ‘shooting in abundance’, p. xii]

   The journey may perhaps produce a useful result, by indicating a very favourable opening to missionary enterprise, namely, among the Ovampo. [xii] … Ovampoland … [being] exempt from the scourge [of slavery^[183]].^[184]

1854

Charles John Andersson meets ‘big-game hunter and pioneer’ Frederick J. Green in Cape Town^[185]. Francis Galton is elected to the Council of the RGS^[186].

1855

Francis Galton publishes “Art of Travel; or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries”^[187].

1869[?] 1883[?]

​​Francis Galton publishes “Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences”, [vii] incorporating ‘his study of the comparative worth of different races, and the influences that affect the natural ability of nations’, beginning the work that would lead to his association with eugenics^[188]; commenting on ‘the practicability of supplanting inefficient races by better strains, and to consider whether it might not be our duty to make conscious efforts to improve the human race’; suggesting ‘an alteration in our mental attitude’ and imposing ‘a new moral duty’^[189].