Sir James Alexander was the first traveller to explore the country who possessed the scientific attainments essential to extensive and accurate observation. The Scottish knight journeyed slowly through Great Namaqualand and Damaraland in 1836-7, covering, from the time he left Cape Town till his return, a distance of 4,000 miles. It is rather surprising, in view of what we have recorded, to read in more than one “reliable résumé of the history of the country,” that Sir James Alexander “was the first European to explore the unknown land.” Even Francis Galton assumes that Alexander was the pioneer. Doubtless Sir James was proud to emphasise the fact “that up to this day the whole of the western region of southern Africa to the north of the Orange River has hitherto remained a blank on our maps,” but it was hardly the unknown land he imagined it to be. Sir James did a good deal of hunting in the country; he spent some time in the vicinity of Walvis Bay; where the “climate was healthy and good”; he gathered a large number of zoological and other specimens, many of which were unknown to the world of science, and he gleaned much useful information about the social condition of the Bushmen, Namaquas, and Damaras. He was the first white man to secure an exclusive interview with the headman of the Berg Damaras, who told the knight that he had never before looked upon a white man; all his people had run away on hearing that such a fearsome creature was approaching. At Warm Bath Sir James “set up his staff to wait for the thunder rains,” and while there “took the waters,” and thereby “set the natives the example of ablution.”[16] For a few years after Alexander’s visit, Wesleyan missionaries occupied stations in Damaraland, and the Rev. J. Tindall was the first white man to reside at Gobabis, although the Rev. Edward Cook and his wife had spent three months there in 1840; but these stations were at length handed over to the German missionaries who belonged to the Rhenish Missionary Society. With the entry of these men into the country in the ’forties we note the forging of the first link in the chain of events which had its end in the establishment of a German Protectorate.