The Ovampo had little pipkins to cook in, and eat corn (milice) steeped in hot water; they also eat some salt, which the Damaras never take by any chance. In fact the Damaras could not get it, for there is no salt in their land. There are salt-springs in the lower part of the Swakop, near where we first struck it when we left Scheppmansdorf, and there are large saltpans, as I afterwards found out, in Ovampo-land, and also in the far east, but none whatever in Damara-land. In Europe it is generally supposed that salt is a necessary of life, but here we never found it so; I was once on a riding excursion with Andersson and three other men for six weeks, and a pill-box full of salt was all we used. We had then nothing else whatever but meat and coffee, the latter of which, after a certain degree of “condition” has been obtained, is also a very unnecessary superfluity, and one that I could at any time abandon without regret. The Namaquas occasionally use salt, but they set no store upon it. There is no doubt that people who live on meat and milk would require salt much less than those who live on vegetables, but half the Damaras subsist simply on pig-nuts,—the most worthless and indigestible of food, and requiring to be eaten in excessive quantities to afford enough nourishment to support life. The Hottentots by Walfisch Bay, who live almost entirely on the ’nara gourd, and who have the sea on one side and salt-springs in front of them, hardly ever take the trouble to collect salt, which they certainly would do if they felt that craving for it which distresses many Europeans. The last fact that I have to mention with reference to salt, is that the game in the Swakop do not frequent the salt rocks to lick them, as they do in America. I visited these salt rocks (below Oosop) when there had been plenty of game about, and when the spoors of a month old were perfectly distinct, yet no tracks led to the salt which hung down like stalactites from the rock, from one to twenty feet above the ground, at a place where a small brack-spring dribbles over it, and which was perfectly accessible, and in full view.[1]