Christmas and New Year’s Day had passed, when, early in January, 1852, as the morning haze cleared away, the sails of a schooner loomed large before us; in a moment I was in my pontoon and paddled out to her, jumped on board, and received my letters of a year and nine months’ interval. They were not indeed unchequered by melancholy news; but for the intelligence they conveyed of my own family circle I had every reason to be grateful. Thus closed my anxieties and doubts. I had much indeed to be thankful for. I had not lost one of my many men either through violence or through sickness in the long and harassing journey I had made. It was undertaken with servants who, at starting, were anything but qualified for their work, who grumbled, held back, and even mutinied, and over whom I had none other than a moral control. I had to break in the very cattle that were to carry me, and to drill into my service a worthless set of natives, speaking an unknown tongue. The country was suffering from all the atrocities of savage war when I arrived, and this state of things I had to put an end to before I could proceed. All this being accomplished, I found myself without any food to depend upon, except the oxen that I drove with me, which might, on any evening, decamp or be swept off in a night attack by the thieving and murderous Damaras. That all this was gone through successfully, I am in the highest degree indebted both to Andersson and to Hans, for single-handed, I hardly know what I should have done. On the 16th of January I said my last adieu, and in company with Timboo, John Williams, and John Morta, sailed away to St. Helena. The rest remained in the country. Hans intended to make a venture in cattle and ivory, and Andersson to investigate the natural history of the lake district. Of the natural history of Damara-land he had made a complete collection, but the barrenness of the country admitted of no great scope to the naturalist. The flowers were very few and wretched-looking. I really only know one that would look presentable in an English garden. What few seeds I brought from Ovampo-land are now planted in the gardens at Kew. My Ovampo fowls survived a stormy passage homewards, and laid eggs constantly, until they came to English latitudes, and then they all died; and my faithful cur, Dinah, is the only living animal of the expedition, besides myself, that fate has as yet allowed to revisit Europe. THE END. BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. FOOTNOTES [1] I am informed that certain New Zealand tribes not only eat without salt, but actually look upon it with distaste and aversion. [2] Translation from Josè Joaquim Lopez de Lima’s work on the Portuguese Settlements in Western Africa. 1846. (Page 196.)