Again, notwithstanding that everything comes out of the tree, men have in some separate manner a special origin or “eanda.” There are six or seven eandas, and each eanda has some peculiar rites. The tribes do not correspond with the eandas, as men of every descent are to be found in each tribe. The chiefs of tribes have some kind of sacerdotal authority—more so than a military one. They bless the oxen; and their daughters sprinkle the fattest ones with a brush dipped in water every morning as they walk out of the kraal. They have no expectation of a future state; yet they pray over the graves of their parents for oxen and sheep,—fat ones, and of the right colour. There is hardly a particle of romance, or affection, or poetry, in their character or creed; but they are a greedy, heartless, silly set of savages. Independently of the tree and the eanda, there is also Omakuru; he can hardly be called a deity, though he gives and withholds rain. He is buried in several different places, at all of which he is occasionally prayed to. The Damaras have a vast number of small superstitions, but these are all stupid, and often very gross; and there is not much that is characteristic in them. Messengers are greased before they set out on a journey, and greased again when they come back; of one sort of ox only grown men eat; out of one particular calabash of milk only grown men drink, and so on _ad infinitum_. A new-born child is washed—the only time he is ever washed in his life—then dried and greased, and the ceremony is over. Some time during boyhood the lads are circumcised, but at no particular age. Marriage takes place at what appears to be the ages of 15 or 16, but as the Damaras keep no count of years it is scarcely possible to be certain of their ages; my impression was that the Damaras were not so precocious as black people usually are. The teeth are chipped with a flint when the children are young. After death the corpse is placed in a squatting posture, with its chin resting on its knees, and in that position is sewn up in an old ox-hide (the usual thing that they sleep on), and then dropped down into a hole that is dug for it, the face being turned to the north, and covered over; lastly, the spectators jump backwards and forwards over the grave to keep the disease from rising out of it. A sick person meets with no compassion; he is pushed out of his hut by his relations away from the fire into the cold; they do all they can to expedite his death, and when he appears to be dying, they heap ox-hides over him till he is suffocated. Very few Damaras die a natural death.