We passed over very broken ground, and slept under some magnificent camelthorn trees: the meat we killed in the morning seemed a little tainted; so we cooked as much as we could in our iron pot, to prevent it from becoming worse, and gave all the rest to our two or three natives for a grand feast. The evening of the next day found us at Barmen, which, if I was to avoid the Hottentots, would probably be the starting-point of my exploring expedition. Mr. Hahn, a Russian by birth, and married to an English lady, and a missionary of considerable influence, was the founder of this station. Mr. Kolbe and his young wife, who had been attacked by the Hottentots at Schmelen’s Hope, had come here for refuge. They had lost nearly everything. It seems they had quite recently occupied the place, and that the poorer natives had settled in great numbers by them. Kahikenè, one of the four or five principal chiefs in Damara-land, had also trecked there with many of his men and large herds of cattle. He had always behaved in a very friendly way to the missionaries; but this was the first time that either he, or any of the influential Damaras, had encamped within easy reach of a mission station. Kahikenè showed no distrust, but lived in the friendliest relations with Mr. and Mrs. Kolbe; and they had sincerely hoped by his means to get a firmer footing than they then had in Damara-land. Just at this time, one night a troop of mounted Hottentots galloped up to the place, firing at and murdering all they could catch. Kahikenè narrowly escaped; the Hottentots scoured the country in every direction, and a most fearful night was passed. In the early morning, Jonker came reeling drunk to the mission-house, ordered the door to be unbarred, and behaved in the coolest way,—demanded some breakfast, and so forth; and then departed with his men, and the oxen, and what else they had robbed. It is very difficult to find out how many people are killed or wounded in occasions like these, as hyenas soon devour the dead bodies, and those who survive scatter in all directions; so that no clue remains towards the numbers missing. I saw two poor women, one with both legs cut off at her ankle joints, and the other with one. They had crawled the whole way on that eventful night from Schmelen’s Hope to Barmen, some twenty miles. The Hottentots had cut them off after their usual habit, in order to slip off the solid iron anklets that they wear. These wretched creatures showed me how they had stopped the blood, by poking the wounded stumps into the sand. A European would certainly have bled to death under such circumstances. One of Jonker’s sons, a hopeful youth, came to a child that had been dropped on the ground, and who lay screaming there, and he leisurely gouged out its eyes with a small stick.