I had no reason to think that this outrage on Mr. Kolbe’s station was any worse than the usual attacks that the Hottentots and Damaras make upon one another; but the Damaras are savages, and are not supposed to know better, while Jonker is a British subject, born in the colony, and his best men are British subjects too. Missionaries and teachers in great numbers have been amongst them, or their fathers, for years and years; and the home of these people, though now they have trecked on to the tropics, is properly on the borders of the Orange River. I was very anxious to obtain something like an authentic history of these Hottentots, and of the Damaras, during the last few years, and I begged Mr. Hahn, who was eminently qualified to give me one, to do so; and as it will illustrate my story I will now give its substance, mixed up and corrected with what I have since gathered from various quarters, or made out for myself. The agents in this history are Namaqua “Oerlams,” or Namaquas born, in or near the colony, often having Dutch blood and a good deal of Dutch character in their veins. Among these, Jonker is a chief. The Namaqua “Hottentots” look at these Oerlams with great jealousy, and consider them almost as aliens; they do not approve of their intelligence and mixed blood, but nevertheless make common cause with them against the Damaras. It must be recollected that Hottentots are yellow, and not at all black. I could pick out many complexions far fairer than that of my own sunburnt face among them. But the Damaras are quite dark, though their features are good and seldom of the negro type. Oerlam was a nickname given by Dutch colonists to the Hottentots that hung about their farms; it means a barren ewe—a creature good neither for breeding nor fattening, a worthless concern, one that gives trouble and yields no profit. However all things are relative, and what these Oerlams were to the Dutchmen, that the Namaqua Hottentots are to the Oerlams.