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Returning cityward we meet our friend, the moonshi bashi, looking me up; he is accompanied by a dozen better-class Persians, scattering friends and acquaintances of his, whom he hag collected during the day chiefly to show them my map of Persia; the mechanical beauty of the bicycle and the apparent victory over the laws of equilibrium in riding it being, in the opinion of the scholarly moonshi bashi, quite overshadowed by a map which shows Teheran and Khoi, and doesn't show Stamboul, and which shows the whole broad expanse of Persia, and only small portions of other countries.
As far as we have gone, Tsui Goab, like Heitsi Eibib among the Namas, is a dead sorcerer, whose graves are worshipped, while, with a common inconsistency, he is also thought of as dwelling in the sky. Even Christians often speak of the dead with similar inconsistency. But, while the Khoi Khoi think that Tsui Goab was once a real man, we need not share their Euhemerism.
In ordinary philology, we should here demand a number of attested examples of goab, in the sense of dawn, but in Khoi Khoi we cannot expect such evidence, as there are probably no texts. Hahn examines tsu, in Tsui. Tsu means 'sore, 'wounded, 'painful, as in 'wounded knee' Tsui Goab. This does not help Dr Hahn, for 'wounded dawn' means nothing.
It is the slowest seven miles ever ridden on the road by a wheelman, I think; a funeral procession is a lively, rattling affair, beside our onward progress toward the mud battlements of Khoi, but there is no help for it.
But he reflects that a wound is red, tsu means wounded: therefore tsu means red, therefore Tsui Goab is the Red Dawn. This kind of reasoning is obviously fallacious. Dr. Hahn's point could only be made by bringing forward examples in which tsu is employed to mean red in Khoi Khoi. Of this use of the word tsu he does not give one single instance, though on this point his argument depends.
" Following this brilliant idea, many of them get " drank and happy " regularly every evening. They likewise frequently consume as much as a pint before each meal to create a false appetite and make themselves feel boozy while eating. In the morning the moonshi bashi, with a soldier for escort, accompanies me on horseback to Khoi, which is but about seven miles distant over a perfectly level road.
Wheeling down this pleasant avenue I encounter mule-trains, the animals festooned with strings of merrily jingling bells, and camels gayly caparisoned, with huge, nodding tassels on their heads and pack-saddles, and deep-toned bells of sheet iron swinging at their throats and sides; likewise the omnipresent donkey heavily laden with all manner of village produce for the Khoi market.
This creature they called Gaunab. They also had some moon myths, practised adoration of the moon, and danced at dawn. In 1803 Liechtenstein noted the cairn-worship, and was told that a renowned Hottentot doctor of old times rested under the cairn. Appleyard's account of 'the name God in Khoi Khoi, or Hottentot, deserves quoting in full: Hottentot: Tsoei'koap. Namaqua: Tsoei'koap.
After partaking of fruit and tea we continue on our way to the nearest gate-way of the city proper, Khoi being surrounded by a ditch and battlemented mud wall.
They then close the caravanserai gates until the excitement has subsided. Khoi is a city of perhaps fifty thousand inhabitants, and among them all there is no one able to speak a word of English.
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