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Lichtenstein tells of priests among the Bechuanas who made long cuts from the thigh to the knee of each warrior who slew an enemy in battle. Among some tribes of the Kaffirs a kindred custom was practiced; and among the Damaras, for every wild animal a young man destroyed his father made four incisions on the front of his son's body.
The Damaras knock out a wedge-shaped gap between two of their front teeth; and the natives of Sierra Leone file or chip their teeth after the same fashion. Depilatory customs are very ancient, and although minor in extent are still to be considered under the heading of mutilations. The giving of hair to the dead as a custom, has been perpetuated through many tribes and nations.
I've had a go at climbing it myself several times but, of course, it can't be done. The Bushmen couldn't, Erongo himself only had his werf half-way up when he fought the Damaras. No one has ever climbed it!" "You don't know heverythink if yer thinks yer does," sniffed old Jim; "you're wrong. I've bin up it meself!" "Rubbish, Jim!" I said; "don't talk rot. How far have you been up, anyway?
"On the western side of the African coast, and above Namaqua-land, whose inhabitants are probably chiefly of the Hottentot race, we have the Damaras, who may be classed as the Western Caffres; with these we have had little or no communication.
But I was not permitted, for the natives feared it might bring ill luck on the "party," or perhaps the tribe. Mr. Galton, for instance, could hardly feed his people. The Damaras, he says, have numberless superstitions about meat which are very troublesome.
At the time of which I write they were known as the Erongos, so named after a famous chief of the Gainin Bushmen, who had made something of a stand there against the invading Damaras that eventually "ate up" both him and his tribe.
Interesting journeys have been made by the enterprising travellers, Andersson, the artist Baines, and Mr Galton, who, starting from Walvisch Bay on the West Coast to the north of Cape Colony, visited the Damaras, the Namaquas, the Bechuanas, and other tribes to the west of Lake Ngami.
The Pantomimic dances of the Kamchadales are in imitation of birds, dogs, and bears; and the Damaras represent, by four of the tribe stooping down with their heads together, and uttering harsh cries, the movements of oxen, and of sheep. The Australian Bushmen Mimic the leaping of calves, the antics of the baboon, and the buzzing of swarms of bees.
Out of the long defiles and valleys we threaded our way into the open country, past the huge flat-topped mountains of Ombokoro, the fastness of the Berg Damaras, thence following the dry river-bed of the Om- Mafako north-east to the confines of the Omaheke desert that great north-western outlier of the true Kalahari not far, indeed, from this very spot!
"On the western side of the African coast, and above Namaqua Land, whose inhabitants are probably chiefly of the Hottentot race, we have the Damaras, who may be classed as the Western Caffres; with these we have had little or no communication.
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