The Damaras are bad guides considering that they are savages, and ought to have the instincts of locality strongly developed. On subsequent occasions, in retracing our routes over wide extents of country, it was a common amusement to try each other’s recollection of the road by asking what would be the next object or next turn of the path that we should come to. But it is difficult to compare a European’s idea of a country with that of these savages, as they look at it in such different ways, and have their attention attracted to such entirely different objects. A Damara never _generalises_; he has no one name for a river, but a different name for nearly every reach of it; thus the Swakop is a Namaqua name; there is no Damara word for it. A Damara who knew the road perfectly from A to B, and again from B to C, would have no idea of a straight cut from A to C: he has no map of the country in his mind, but an infinity of local details. He recollects every stump or stone, and the more puerile the object the more strongly does he seem to recollect it. Thus, if you say; “I intend to sleep by the side of the great hill where the river-bed runs close under its foot,” he would never recognise the place by the description, but if you said, “under the tree, a little way on the other side of the place where the black and white ox lowed when the red ox was in front of him, and Koniati dropped his assegai,” &c. &c. every savage in the party would understand the exact locality. The Damaras pick out their way step by step; they never dream of taking a course and keeping to it. All their observations are directed to spoors, sticks and stones, and they perpetually look down on the ground and not round about them. We had, as usual, been such early risers, that plenty of daylight remained, which we occupied in watching the baboons and climbing about their hills. We had made so zigzag a journey that I mapped out this mountainous region very satisfactorily. Towards evening I saw Andersson walking like a chief, with a long string of Bushmen at his heels; they had come together on the hill-side, and he brought them to the camp. We lavished favours of tobacco and such-like things upon them, showed them their faces in a looking-glass that I always carried with me, chiefly for that purpose, and finally succeeded in persuading some of the party to guide me to the next place—Otchikoto. One Bushman was to remain all night as a hostage; the others were to tell his wife, and to bring next day what they required for the journey. I am sure that Bushmen are, generally speaking, hen-pecked. They always consult their wives. The Damaras do not.