Title: South-West Africa
Author: Eveleigh, William
Language: English
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  SOUTH-WEST
  AFRICA

  BY

  WILLIAM EVELEIGH

  AUTHOR OF
  “A SHORT HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICAN METHODISM”

  T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.

  ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON



 TO

 GENERAL BOTHA


 _First Published in 1915_

 [_All Rights Reserved_]



FOREWORD


“Of making many books there is no end,” said the Preacher, but strange
to say, there is not a single book in the English language that deals
with South-West Africa of modern days. Many references to the country
are found in the older books of South African travel and exploration,
and some good works have been written in later times by German authors;
but, unfortunately, the German publications are not available for the
average reader. In the present volume an attempt has been made to set
before the reader a brief but comprehensive account of the country,
its history, its people, its resources, and its possibilities. It is
impossible in a small book to deal more than briefly with the subject,
and very slight treatment has had to suffice for many matters of
interest. I hope, however, that I have succeeded in conveying a clear
impression of what South-West Africa is, and what it may become. Brief
and unpretentious though the book is, it may serve to dispel the notion
that the country is nothing more than a desert and of very little value
to the Empire.

My thanks are due to Dr. Rudolf Marloth, of Cape Town; Prof. E. H.
Schwatz, of the Rhodes University College, Grahamstown; Dr. Wm. Flint,
Librarian of the Houses of Parliament, Cape Town; Mr. F. W. Fitzsimons,
Director of the Museum, Port Elizabeth; and Mr. John Ross, of the
Kimberley Public Library, for valuable suggestions. My debt to various
writers I have endeavoured to acknowledge elsewhere.

  W. E.

  Kimberley, South Africa.
  1915.



  CONTENTS


  CHAPTER.                               PAGE

  I. THE LAND                              13

  II. CLIMATE AND RAINFALL                 37

  III. THE FLORA OF THE COUNTRY            53

  IV. THE FAUNA OF THE COUNTRY             71

  V. THE EARLY DAYS                        89

  VI. THE LATER HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT    113

  VII. THE GERMAN OCCUPATION              133

  VIII. THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY         157

  IX. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY      173

  X. THE DIAMOND FIELDS                   197

  XI. THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY  225



SOUTH-WEST AFRICA



CHAPTER I

THE LAND


A glance at the map of Africa shows that the territory now known as
British South-West Africa--formerly German South-West Africa--is a
triangular mass with the abrupt apex resting on the Orange River. It
comprises Ovamboland, in the north; Damaraland, the central portion
of the country; Great Namaqualand, in the south, and a tongue of land
running out from the north-east corner called the Caprivizipfel, and
has a total area of 322,450 square miles. This vast territory, into
which half a dozen Englands could be dropped with ease, is bounded on
the north by the Kunene River, Portuguese West Africa, and Rhodesia;
on the east by British Bechuanaland, and the Gordonia portion of the
Cape Province; on the west by the Atlantic Ocean; and on the south by
the Orange River. Some idea of the length of the eastern boundary, for
instance, may be obtained when it is stated that while the southern
extremity touches the Orange, a distance of only 400 miles from Cape
Town, the far corner of the Caprivi enclave is north-west of the
Victoria Falls. No less than 900 miles of coast-line stretch from the
mouth of the Orange to the Kunene estuary.


PHYSICAL FEATURES

The physical structure of the country is extremely simple. The dominant
physical facts are: a slowly rising sandy coast belt; a high interior
plateau, broken by isolated mountain ranges; and a gently falling
eastern strip of sandy country that merges in the level expanse of the
Kalahari Desert.


THE COAST STRIP OR THE NAMIB

The coast strip is a desert, varying from 15 to 100 miles in width,
stretching from the Kunene to the Orange, in which at only a few places
is fresh water obtainable. To this desert the designation “Namib” has
been applied--a name originally restricted to the middle portion of the
strip. Dr. Stapff divides it into three parts: the stony desert north
of Walvis Bay, the valley of the Kuisip converging on Walvis Bay, and
the long sand dunes that run south from Walvis Bay to the Orange.

As a picture of dreariness and desolation this desert in places is not
surpassed even by the Sahara. South of Walvis Bay there run from north
to south mile upon mile of yellowish grey sand in long lines of immense
dunes some of them 600 feet in height. Dark, rocky hills, with faces
scarred and scoured into grotesque shapes, cut across the lines here
and there, and heap up the sand at their base on the windward side in
numerous hillocks. In some of the depressions formed by the dunes the
white basins of _vleís_ reflect the burning rays of the sun. Fierce
sandstorms rage over the dunes at intervals, and the dense yellow
clouds sweep along close to the earth at a terrific speed, blotting out
the light of the sun, raining a perfect hurricane of gritty particles
upon the traveller unfortunate enough to be found in the track of the
tornado.

Seen from the coast the Namib has the general appearance of a vast
plain with a boundless horizon, but the country ascends continually
though almost imperceptibly towards the interior; at a distance of only
60 miles from Walvis Bay, for instance, the traveller finds himself
some 2,000 feet above sea-level.

The prevailing formations along the coast are: gneiss, granite,
quartzites, mica schists, recent chalks, crystalline limestones.

“The whole coast, several miles wide,” says Dr. Versfeld, “is a portion
of a vast Titanic pudding, whose ingredients have been well stirred.”[1]

There is a concensus of opinion among geologists that at some remote
period a tremendous upheaval of the marine bed took place, resulting
in the present coast formation. The disintegration of the gneiss rocks
and the action of the furious trade winds, have since led to the
formation of the sand dunes.

The natural harbours are surprisingly few for such a lengthy
coast-line. Walvis Bay, which lies almost exactly midway between the
Orange and Kunene estuaries, is the principal inlet. A deep channel
gives access to large steamers, which are able to lie at anchor in a
fine, oval basin some 20 square miles in extent, completely sheltered
from the strong prevailing winds. This Bay, with 450 square miles of
adjoining territory, has been in the possession of Great Britain since
1878, but very little use has been made of it.

Luderitz Bay, some 250 miles south of Walvis Bay, is the next
considerable inlet. It ramifies to the right and left for about five
miles south of the entrance, and here, too, large steamers find safe
anchorage. Swakop Bay, 25 miles north of Walvis Bay, is merely an open
roadstead with a landing jetty.


THE CENTRAL PLATEAU

We will begin in the north with Ovamboland and follow southward the
line of the main ridge that forms the inner plateau.

Separated from the highlands of Angola by the gorges traversed by
the Kunene, the rocky heights of Ovamboland rise but slowly at first
above the general level, but south of the Otavi Hills in Damaraland
they gradually ascend until a veritable highland system is developed
with towering masses of table rocks and huge dome-shaped summits.
Mount Omatako, which has an altitude of 8,500 feet, is the highest
peak. Around it, but some distance from it, grouped like satellites,
are numerous other imposing mountains from 5,000 to 6,000 feet in
height. In the clear air of the uplands the granite pinnacles of these
peaks are visible from a great distance. Huge valleys or gorges are a
characteristic of this part of Damaraland. The mountain plateaux are
widely extended. In the region of Windhoek several rivers have their
rise. Further south the ridge falls again to a level of about 3,000
feet, and in many places is broken into by isolated ranges of manifold
forms, while the lower levels are studded with stony kopjes.

The country along the eastern border consists of undulating plains and
large areas of sandy land which closely resemble the Kalahari.

In all these uplands the prevailing formations are granite, or mica
schist. Surface limestone occurs everywhere.


GREAT NAMAQUALAND

Great Namaqualand, the country that stretches from the south of
Damaraland to the Orange River, is a land of rugged hills, stony
kopjes, and boundless plains. In the Karas Mountains, the main ridge
rises again to a height of 6,600 feet above the sea, and the plateaux
have a north to south direction. The boundless plains, really extended
tablelands, are a principal feature of the country, and they are
invariably sandy.

“Sir,” said a person who knew the country to Dr. Moffat in 1818, “you
will find plenty of sand and stones, a thinly scattered population
always suffering from want of water, on plains and hills roasted like a
burnt loaf under the scorching rays of a cloudless sun.”

“Of the truth of this description,” says Moffat in his laconic fashion,
“I soon had abundant evidence.”[2]

Although this portion of South-West Africa is regarded as semi-desert,
at rare intervals after rain the plains are covered with long coarse
grass and then they have to English eyes the appearance of a vast field
of waving oats.


THE ORANGE RIVER BASIN

Trekking south through Great Namaqualand, toiling over the blistering
wastes, the traveller experiences a peculiar sensation of
unexpectedness when on rounding a kopje he sees below him in the near
distance a long, twisted line of vivid green. This is the line of the
Orange River.

As very little is known about the course of this, the largest river in
South Africa, a brief description may not be without interest.

The river enters South-West Africa along a deep channel and winds
its sinuous way like a giant snake between towering precipices and
overhanging mountains grey with age along cañons reminiscent of
Colorado. In some of the deep, rocky gorges the stream is inaccessible
on either side, since the overhanging escarpments of the surrounding
plateau rise sheer from the water many hundreds of feet, and a thirsty
traveller might actually perish of thirst as he looked down upon
the tantalising waters from the precipitous banks that offered not a
single practicable way of descent. At intervals the stream broadens to
a considerable distance and takes on the appearance of a quiet lake
reflecting the image of the willow and mimosa trees that fringe its
banks; islands of vivid green dot the waters; flamingos, ibises, and
other wading birds, move leisurely in the shallows, while ever and anon
birds of brilliant plumage dart across the surface. It then presents
a picture of considerable charm. Barred in its approach to the sea by
rocky hills and granite cliffs, in its eager efforts to find the line
of least resistance, the river twists and turns, flowing now north, now
south, and in one place actually doubling back to the east. On emerging
from the mountain ranges it sprawls itself over a wide area as if
reluctant to lose its greatness in the ocean. Its mouth is generally
blocked for a number of years by a continuous narrow sand barrier
formed by the big breakers of the Atlantic, and while the waves pound
the sand with great fierceness on the one side, the cool, fresh waters
of the river gently lap it on the other side. When the river comes down
in strong flood the dam bursts with a crash and a roar heard many miles
distant. Mr. A. D. Lewis, a Government engineer, visited the mouth at
the end of 1912, having made a survey journey along the river valley
from Pella to the Atlantic. He is actually the first scientifically
trained individual to make the journey. His report,[3] together with
plans and reproductions of photographs, is of absorbing interest.


THE RIVERS

The rivers of South-West Africa, like many others in South Africa, are
found, mostly, on the maps. Though the country is trenched by the beds
of many rivers, not a single perennial stream reaches the sea between
the Kunene and the Orange. On account of the great depth of its channel
below the adjacent land, the Orange is of no economic value to the
country. The Swakop, which has a total length of 250 miles, rises to
the east of the Damara highlands in the Waterberg and traverses the
plateau through deep, rocky gorges. Occasionally it flows into the sea
north of Walvis Bay. The Kuisip rises in the mountains beyond Windhoek
and intersects the Namib plain south of the Swakop to a depth of over
600 feet, but it rarely reaches the ocean. The last occasion on which
it pushed its way through to the Atlantic previous to the present year,
was in 1904. South of the Kuisip are other watercourses which are
arrested without even forming channels to the sea. During the greater
part of the year the Swakop and the Kuisip are non-existent as rivers;
a line of stunted willows or acacias, or, perhaps, a few muddy pools,
mark the river courses. After the storms, however, they are raging
torrents for a brief period, and immense volumes of water rush along
their beds.

The feeble, intermittent streams on the east of the divide fall for the
most part into the saline marshes of the Kalahari. The Fish River flows
south through Great Namaqualand, and sometimes reaches the Orange.
Lake Etosha in the north is a lagoon about sixty miles wide and fifty
miles in length. When full one or two rivers issue from it.

But water is not the scarce commodity that one might imagine it to be,
except, perhaps, in the Namib, for the springs or _fonteins_ are a
peculiar feature of the inner plateau. The most remarkable of these are
situated in a hill to the north of Windhoek. No less than five springs
issue from the limestone. They are all warm, and lie approximately in
a straight line at intervals of a few hundred yards apart. It is a
somewhat curious phenomenon that the temperatures vary considerably; a
difference of no less than 54°F. has been noted between one and two.
If the streams are all from the same source, as seems likely, they are
probably influenced in their passage to the surface by the geological
formation. Cold springs also exist in the limestone below the hot
springs. The waters of the warm spring at Warmbad, in South Great
Namaqualand, have strong sanative qualities. Centres so far distant
from each other as Bethanien, in the south-west, Omaruru, north-east of
Walvis Bay, and Gobabis, east of Windhoek, on the Kalahari border, also
have their springs.

Water may generally be obtained even in the dry season by digging
beneath the alluvium of a river bed, especially where a ledge of rocks
crosses the watercourse. In some places, notably on the borders of the
Namib and in the eastern areas, the water found by boring is brackish,
and often unfit for human consumption. After the rainstorms water often
lies for long periods in the natural depressions or _vleís_; these
afford a good supply for cattle and game.

In some of these depressions, when the water around the edges has dried
up, an incrustation of salt is left, which, as Dr. Moffat found in
Namaqualand nearly a hundred years ago, “crackles under the feet like
hoar-frost.”


SCENERY

The lover of natural scenery will find little to attract him in such
parts of the country as the Namib, Great Namaqualand, or the eastern
steppes, for over large areas the aspects of nature are so consistently
uniform as to become painfully monotonous, and this uniformity,
combined with the absence of foliage and verdure and lakes and running
streams, is very depressing to the traveller. But the country is not
the wilderness many have been led to believe. When once the desert
belt is crossed and the mountain plateaux are reached, some bold and
striking mountain scenery meets the eye. Stupendous masses of naked
rock, on which the light strikes bright and hard, rise into the sky,
while other frowning heights tower aloft, menacing and fearful. In
the Waterberg the numerous rocky summits, with their clear-cut edges
and rifted walls, resemble in places the famous Giant’s Causeway,
and in their boldness and variety of outline they present a scene of
extraordinary rugged grandeur. Here are Cleopatra’s Needles, embattled
castles, lofty pinnacles, and sculptured turrets, all standing out bold
and clear in the amazingly thin, translucent air, and visible from
immense distances. Between Omaruru and Okahandja, where hilly country
is found alternating with level plains, some fine landscape views
may be obtained. The falls on some of the rivers after the rains make
picnic spots and pleasure resorts of rare delight. The voice of running
waters, a sound but rarely heard in South Africa, can then be enjoyed
in some of the deep gorges.

In certain portions of Ovamboland there are woodlands, glades, and
clearings that present the aspect of a boundless park. Windhoek, set
in a circle of giant mountains on the slope of a hill, has quite a
picturesque situation.

South-West Africa, too, has all the charm of colour for which southern
Africa is famous the world over. On the uplands the morning and the
evening are times when the eye is filled and completely delighted with
the warmth and richness of tone about the landscape.

“At last morning broke,” says one new to the country, in a description
of the sunrise, “and delicate rosy stripes of light shot up toward the
zenith. The colours grew rapidly deeper, brighter, and stronger. The
red was glorious in its fullness, and the blue beautiful in its purity.
The light mounted and extended itself, ascending as over a new world a
thousand times more beautiful than the old one. Then came the sun, big
and clear, looking like a great, placid, wide-opened eye.”

At night the moon and stars shine with a fire and brilliancy that never
fail to amaze the visitor from the northern lands.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Notes on the Geological Formation of Portions of German South-West
Africa”--_South African Journal of Science_, June, 1911.

[2] Moffat’s “Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa,” p. 76.

[3] Report of Director of Irrigation for period 1st January, 1912, to
March, 1913.--_Cape Times, Ltd._, Cape Town.



CHAPTER II

CLIMATE AND RAINFALL


From what has been said about the diversity of the physical conditions
of the country it will be readily inferred that there is a considerable
variation of climate. When it is remembered, too, that the land lies
within the tropic of Capricorn and corresponds in latitude to the
central provinces of India, between Bombay and Calcutta, the reader
will be prepared to learn that it is excessively hot in the summer
months and very unhealthy. As a matter of fact the climate as a whole
is healthy and the heat much less trying than the traveller from India
expects to find in such a latitude. Various factors account for this,
as we shall see.

There are two seasons, summer and winter; summer lasts from October to
April, and winter from April to September.

The heat is sometimes great on the coast, some little distance from
the sea, where the sea mists do not reach, rising occasionally to 120°
F. in the shade. But at noon the fresh south-west wind blows strongly
from the sea, and the nights are comparatively cool and refreshing. The
sudden fall of temperature at sunset is often a source of danger to
those who have not learned to guard themselves against rapid variations
of temperature. Strangely enough, the hottest day in the year may be
a day in the middle of winter, for it is in the winter that a fierce,
hot, desert wind from the east comes sweeping across the country,
sending up the thermometer with a rush. The winter may thus have the
hottest, as well as the coldest, days of the year. A comparison of the
temperatures of the principal centres of the country with Kenhardt and
Kimberley, two of the hottest districts in the Cape Province, may not
be without interest:

  -------------+---------+---------+-----
               |November.|February.|July.
  -------------+---------+---------+-----
  Windhoek     |   86    |   82    |  68
  Swakopmund   |   58        62    |  55
  Walvis Bay   |   60    |   64    |  57
  Luderitzbucht|   62    |   68    |  55
  Omaruru-     |   82    |   82    |  62
  Rehoboth     |   86    |   86    |  60
  Kenhardt     |   74    |   85    |  57
  Kimberley    |   78    |   82    |  55
  -------------+---------+---------+-----

The feature of the coast climate is the heavy fogs occasioned by the
proximity of the cold waters of the Benguella current to a heated
interior, and the contact of the cool south-west winds with the
north-west air currents. These fogs veil the seaboard in a thick
haze during the night and often last to noon; they supply, however,
a considerable amount of moisture to the coast border of the Namib,
since they are sometimes so heavy that in a single night the sand is
moistened to a depth of one or two inches, and the water flows down
the stems of shrubs into the ground to a depth of six inches. Heavy
rain occurs at very rare intervals. These conditions suggest that
quite a useful supply of water might be obtained by the construction
of dew-ponds, or mist-ponds, as they are now known to be, of which
particulars are given by Mr. E. A. Martin in his recent work, entitled,
“Dew-ponds: History, Observation and Experiment.” A whole year may pass
without a single shower. Walvis Bay has an annual average rainfall
of less than one inch. At such centres as Luderitzbucht, Swakopmund,
and Walvis Bay, water for drinking purposes is condensed from the sea.
Before the condensing plant was erected water had to be brought all the
way up from Cape Town.

In the north and north-east the climate is almost tropical, but on the
central plateau it is temperate, with great fluctuations of temperature
during the day. The great heat of the sun during the summer months
would make it rather trying for Europeans, were it not for the altitude
and the great dryness of the air. As we have shown, the plateau is
from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level, and this is a factor of
considerable importance in determining climatic conditions. The climate
resembles parts of Rhodesia, and while there are hot days in the
summer, for the most part the air is fresh, clear, and like elixir.

Great Namaqualand has a very warm summer; the shade temperature of
the Orange River valley is often 110° F., while on the plains great
fluctuations in the day temperature prevail. In the winter severe
frosts and snow may be experienced, and snow may be seen on the Karas
Mountains. There are also occasional frosts in the Windhoek region in
this cold season.


THE RAINFALL

South-West Africa is really a continuation of the Bechuanaland plateau,
a notoriously dry territory, and the rainfall is even less than in
Bechuanaland, if we except the northern territories, since very little
of the vapour from the distant Indian Ocean can reach the country. The
Eastern slope, which faces the Indian Ocean, receives a fair supply
of moisture. The Windhoek region has an average annual rainfall of
15 inches. Whirlwinds often herald the approach of the rain. In the
warmer north and north-east 24 inches is often registered in a year.
Great Namaqualand is much drier, 6 or 7 inches being about the average.
The rain comes almost invariably in the form of violent thunderstorms
which sweep along in a limited area. It is a common experience to
travel over a stretch of dry and barren land to enter suddenly a tract
of vivid green where the vegetation is in full activity, so local
is the distribution of the rain. Severe hailstorms are sometimes
responsible for much damage, since the hailstones are often as big as
marbles. Within half an hour of the passing of one of these storms,
the thermometer has been seen to drop from 110° F. to 68° F. Droughts
of great severity continue for years together in these regions, but as
soon as the rain comes, the country revives as if by magic; grass and
flowers spring up from the steaming ground with amazing rapidity, and
the once bare and blistered plain is transformed into a vast carpet of
vivid green and brilliant hues.

The Namib has a rainfall of less than an inch, but in places where
the desert borders the inner plateau, three or four inches may be
registered during the year.

One of the journals of the Royal Meteorological Society has printed the
rainfall record of South-West Africa. Dr. Emil Ottweiler is responsible
for it, and the observations extended over periods varying from one
to twenty-three years. This record is of real value, and we give the
average fall at some of the stations mentioned.

  -------------+--------------+----------
    Stations.  | Height above | Rainfall.
               |  Sea Level.  |
  -------------+--------------+----------
               |     feet.    |
  Luderitzbucht|     13       |   0·54
  Swakopmund   |     23       |   1·16
  Windhoek     |  5,350       |  14·07
  Grootfontein |  5,020       |  24·37
  Olukonda     |  3,510       |  22·91
  Keetmanshoop |  3,373       |   5·85
  Bethanien    |  3,068       |   4·52
  Berseba      |  3,490       |   3·11
  Haris        |  6,300       |  11·24
  Otjimbinque  |  3,084       |   5·38
  Karibib      |   ----       |   6·01
  Zesfontein   |   ----       |   2·73
  Gibeon       |  3,700       |   6·82
  Rehoboth     |  4,700       |  10·45
  Oas          |  4,500       |  18·69
  Gobabis      |  4,650       |  18·53
  Omaruru      |  3,800       |  10·85
  Hatsamas     |   ----       |  14·06
  -------------+--------------+----------

The rainfall, scanty as it is, generally descends in sharp storms and
showers, and as the ground is often baked hard by the heats of the
sun, it quickly runs away to the watercourses, but in recent years dams
have been made in order to store the precious liquid, and a well-filled
dam may hold sufficient water to supply a large farm for the space of a
year or two.


HEALTH CONDITIONS

The physical conditions already described determine the healthfulness
of the country; the sun, the elevation, the dryness, being responsible
for the good climate of the interior. The direct rays of the sun are
very strong during the day, for clouds are infrequent; many weeks may
pass without the smallest cloud being visible; but these rays are not
dangerous, and sunstroke is unusual. In India, as Bryce has shown, one
has always to be mounting guard against the sun. “He is a formidable
and ever-present enemy, and he is the more dangerous the longer you
live in the country. In South Africa it is only because he dries up the
soil so terribly that the traveller wishes to have less of him.”[4]

The extreme dryness of the air on the plateaux enables Europeans to
endure heat that would be unbearable in London or New York. A shade
temperature of 108 °F. in either of these cities would be responsible
for many a collapse, but it would pass at Windhoek without anyone being
the worse for it. Even on the Namib some compensation would be afforded
by the sea breezes.

There are people who have lived at Luderitzbucht, one of the driest
parts of the Namib, continuously for eight or ten years, and they are
exceedingly active and healthy, while at Windhoek strong and sturdy
children are developing a splendid physique in the pure, bracing air of
the plateau. Malarial fever, which hangs like a death cloud over many
parts of Africa, is sometimes found in the north and north-west of the
country, but it prevails in a mild form. Last year, for instance, there
were only six deaths from this cause among Europeans, right through
the country. The dreaded black-water fever is occasionally met with
in the tropical north. The diseases common along the coast are mostly
intestinal, due almost entirely to the lack of a good supply of pure
water. Rheumatic troubles are also fairly common on the seaboard. The
death-rate for 1913 was only 11·3 per thousand of the white population,
and 21·75 per thousand among the natives. Inflammation of the lungs,
due largely to unhealthy dwellings and lack of care with clothing,
accounts for the higher mortality among the natives.

The dryness and purity of the air away from the coast account for the
absence of most forms of chest disease. More than one sufferer from
consumption in its earliest stages, who has come from Europe, has found
a new lease of life on the salubrious uplands. There can be no doubt
that in spite of the abnormal heat sometimes experienced, South-West
Africa is well fitted to afford a pleasant home and to maintain in
vigour people drawn from the cooler regions of Europe. That healthy
children can be reared here has been already demonstrated.


FOOTNOTES:

[4] “Impressions of South Africa,” p. 13.



CHAPTER III

THE FLORA OF THE COUNTRY


“South-West Africa,” a writer on the flora of the country has recently
stated, “is distinguished neither by a great variety of its flora nor
by the presence of plants or trees of any singular kind.” How far this
is from the truth will be made clear in this chapter.

For a dry country South-West Africa is fairly rich in vegetation, and
it may be useful to give some slight impression of the part which the
vegetation plays in the landscape and in the economic conditions of the
country, cursory though our examination must be.


THE COAST REGIONS

To begin with the Namib. The general aspect of the vegetation here is
monotonous, since there are but few plants that rise to any appreciable
height from the sandy surface to break the dull level. No tree grows
within a dozen miles of the coast, except in an occasional watercourse
where there is underground moisture.

The Kokerboom, _Aloe dichotoma_, however, often occurs as a solitary
tree, and occasionally forms little groves on the limestone hills of
the eastern portion of the Namib. In the winter, when they bear large
clusters of bright yellow flowers, they give quite a touch of colour to
the drab landscape.

The northern Namib has two plants of singular interest in the
Welwitschia and the Naras. The Welwitschia, _Welwitschia Bainesii_, is
in reality a tree with a fairly thick trunk that terminates abruptly
just above the ground. Two thick, leathery leaves are permanent and
grow continuously at their base until they sometimes reach a length of
10 feet, by which time they are frayed into numerous snake-like thongs.
The plant flowers in January and the cones ripen in May. The roots of
the largest plants may be traced to a very great depth in the sand.
“This plant,” says Dr. Marloth,[5] “is of great scientific interest,
being the most highly developed gymnospermous plant known to us either
in the living or the fossil state. It is not a connecting link between
the gymnosperms and the angiosperms, but the final stage of a separate
line of development of the vegetable kingdom, that, as far as is known
to us, led no further.” The Welwitschia was first discovered by Dr.
Welwitsch in Southern Angola in 1865. It has not been found south of
the Kuisip district.

The curious Naras, _Acanthosicyos horrida_, has been well termed
the “Wonder of the Waste,” for this shrubby, leafless member of the
order _Cucurbitacea_ spreads over the sand dunes in dense straggling
masses, defying all the sandstorms that threaten to bury it. Instead
of tendrils it bears sharp thorns, while the main root may be as thick
as a man’s arm, with a length of 20 to 40 feet. The fruit is about the
size of a very big orange, and the skin encloses a yellow pulp of a
rich flavour and a number of seeds similar in taste to almonds. The
fruit is greatly relished by the natives, and, as it has extraordinary
nutritive value, they almost live on it. The seeds are stored for the
dry season, when no fruit can be obtained. The existence of this plant
always indicates underground moisture. Both the Welwitschia and the
Naras flourish in the vicinity of Walvis Bay, but the Naras has been
found in recent years in several places in the southern Namib. It is
believed that the species does not occur naturally so far south, but
has been introduced by natives. Its true southern limit is not far from
the southern extremity of Walvis Bay.[6]

In the region described as the Upper Kuisip Zone, which embraces the
valley of the Kuisip, among the fairly abundant vegetation, with
camelthorns, ebony trees, and wild figs, the handsome Ana tree,
_Acacia albida_, is found. The fruit of this remarkable tree is a
legume. The beans, when ripe and dry, are used for fodder for cattle,
and they have extraordinary fattening properties. Cattle also relish
the leaves of the tree.

The flora of the desert south of Luderitzbucht is much poorer than that
of the northern portion, and, as Schinz points out, the difference is
probably accounted for by the presence of a more copious supply of
underground water in the northern area. But the Namib has a richer
vegetation than is generally supposed.

“As an illustration,” writes Dr. Marloth, who made a careful
examination of the Lower Namib in 1909, “it may be mentioned that I
have observed over twenty species of _Mesembrianthemum_, five species
of _Pelargonium_ (mostly shrubby), two of _Sarcocaulon_, three of
_Lycium_, two of _Zygophyllum_, two of _Salsola_, three of _Othonna_,
five shrubby Leguminosæ (_Lebeckia_ and _Crotalaria_), five species
of _Euphorbia_, and many other genera represented by one or two
species.”[7]

He distinguishes four formations according to the nature of the ground:
the seashore, the sandy plains, the rocky hills, and the gravel-covered
flats of the rising plains beyond the coast-belt; and we cannot do
better than adopt his convenient division.

_The seashore._--The sand dunes are devoid of vegetation on account of
the ever-shifting nature of the sand, and they present an unforgettable
scene of sterility and dreariness. A few plants specially adapted to
salt water, such as _Salicornia natalensis_ and _Bassia diffusa_, are
found in the shallows or around the lagoons.

_The sandy plains and dunes._--Further inland _Salsola Zeyheri_ is
common. This low, tight-looking shrub, grey in colour, about 2 to 3
feet in height, has considerable value, since it forms good food for
the camels used for transport purposes. Coarse dune-grasses are found
in sheltered patches. The _Mesembrianthemum_ is a characteristic Namib
plant; it grows on rocks as well as sand.

_The rocky hills._--Here we find a more varied vegetation. The
well-known Kokerboom (_Aloe dichotoma_) is a conspicuous feature. It
is interesting to notice that the name Koker or Quiver (D. _koker_, a
case sheath; G. _Kocher_, a quiver) was given to this tree because the
Bushmen and Hottentots used the pithy branches to make quivers for
their poisoned arrows.

Even more numerous than the _Aloe dichotoma_ are several species
of _Euphorbia_. Schinz, it may be noted, has described the eastern
edge of the desert as a Euphorbia-steppe.[8] The _E. gummifera_ is,
perhaps, the most noticeable plant, and in the Garub region this
species abounds. It forms compact bushes, 3 to 6 feet in height, and
its grey twigs have rather an unpleasant scent, while they contain
an unusually rich supply of milk juice. The _E. cervicornis_, the
olifant melkbosch of Little Namaqualand, is found occasionally. A
little plant that crouches behind rocks or isolated stones is the dwarf
shrublet _Pteronia succulenta_, whose main stem is often bent over at
a right angle by the fierce winds as soon as it pushes its head above
the shelter. Other plants, usually forming upright bushes, are here
compelled to bend before the strong winds; notable among these is the
_Pituranthus aphyllus_, a leafless umbellifer.

A plant of peculiar interest found among the many species of
_Mesembrianthemum_ is the _M. rhopalophyllum_, which is remarkable for
its highly-specialised window-leaves. “The plant grows embedded in the
sand, nothing but the flat, slightly convex apex of each leaf being
visible, and even that is covered with more or less sand according to
locality. While the leaf itself is fresh green with a rather delicate
skin, the exposed part is protected by a thick epidermis and cuticula,
and possesses comparatively few stomata. It is through this portion,
which has the functions of a window, the leaf receives its light, being
thus illuminated from within. There are five to ten, or even more,
leaves to each plant, but nothing appears at the surface except these
windows; they peep out of the sand like the eyes of the sand-lizard or
sand-vipers, which often hide themselves in a similar way.”[9]

It is very curious to see the short flowers of these plants in the
spring, for they grow, apparently, straight out of the sand. Only
on investigation are the leaves and stem discovered. The leaves are
club-shaped. Nature has evidently chosen this underground mode of
existence for the plant in order to protect it against the herbivorous
animals. These interesting plants are found only in Africa.

The leaves of the _Augea capensis_ are very strong in sap, but the
plant is so salty that even the camels will turn away from it. This
plant is found in many parts of the Karroo.

An untidy-looking shrublet, the _Sarcocaulon rigidum_, is fairly
abundant. A peculiarity of its structure is the sharp-pointed spines,
which are specially modified stalks of former leaves. Leaves of vivid
green cover these plants in the spring, and at times they are numerous
enough to influence the colour of the landscape. Pink flowers appear on
them in October.

_The gravel plains._--The rising plains of the inner Namib, which have
an altitude of 1,800 feet, some fifty miles from the coast, are swept
by furious sand-laden winds for the greater part of the year. The
sea-fogs rarely reach these areas, and, as the rainfall is a negligible
quantity, no sign of life may be encountered for many miles, only a
vast, monotonous waste of gravel and sand meets the eye. Occasionally
one lights upon the typical _Sarcocaulon rigidum_, the Candle-bush or
Bushman’s candle. This plant has been specially adapted to meet the
conditions of the desert, and it is able to defy the hottest sun and
the fiercest sandstorms. Layers of corky tissue, impregnated with a
mixture of fat, wax, and resin, form the bark. This horny casing is the
plant’s armour against the attacks of its enemies. It burns steadily
like a wax candle with a yellow, smoky flame, even when cut fresh from
the ground.


THE CENTRAL PLATEAU

Beginning with Ovamboland, we find considerable forest tracts of
acacia, with giant baobabs, and palms and fig-trees in the more
open park-like spaces. The palm zone is found some distance south of
the Kunene. Grasses cover the extensive plains after rains. On the
uplands of Damaraland the genus Acacia plays an important part in the
composition of the flora; in many places it predominates among the
bushes and also among the trees.[10] With the acacias are found other
notable species, including _Combretum primigenium_, and the large
_Ficus dammarensis_.

The handsome Ana tree, _Acacia albida_, is frequently met with. The
mountain valleys have a much more luxurious vegetation than the hills,
since they are watered by the many rivulets that abound after rain.

On the eastern steppes where the country is sandy and poor in
vegetation, that typical product of the Kalahari desert, the tsama
melon, _Citrullus vulgaris_, is found. Both man and beast rejoice in
this juicy melon. In its raw state it has remarkable thirst-quenching
properties, and when cooked it is a satisfying food. The seeds are
oily and very fattening. This fruit often affords the only supply of
water for travellers in this dry and dreary region. That queer little
plant, known as Uyntjes, a kind of sedge, is also found in this region,
and the bulbous roots, not unlike the chestnut in flavour, are used
as food by the natives. In the springtime a species of Brunsvigia, or
Candelabra flower, sometimes covers large areas of the open country.

Great Namaqualand is not so well wooded or so well watered as
Damaraland. The kokerboom is a conspicuous feature on the hills.
North of Warmbad a bush formation is encountered in the vicinity of
the dry river beds, with _Acacia detinens_, _Cadaba juncea_, shrubby
Zygophyllaceæ, _Parkinsonia Africana_, and trees of _Acacia horrida_.
Camelthorns (_Acacia Giraffæ_) are numerous on the higher levels. The
Twagras, or Bushman grass of the Karroo, _Aristida brevifolia_, is a
characteristic feature of the vast plains. Even when dry this grass
retains its nourishing properties, and a period of two years may pass
before it dies. The grey hills that border the Orange River have only a
few kokerboom and chips of the _Euphorbia virosa_, and some straggling
sickly shrubs of _Bauhinia garipensis_.


FOOTNOTES:

[5] “The Flora of South Africa,” Vol. I., by Rudolf Marloth.

[6] Pearson, “The Travels of a Botanist in South-West Africa”--_The
Geographical Journal_, May, 1910.

[7] “The Vegetation of the Southern Namib”--_The South African Journal
of Science_, January, 1910.

[8] Schinz, “South-West Africa,” Leipzig, 1894.

[9] “The Flora of South Africa,” Vol. I. Rudolf Marloth.

[10] Pearson, “The Travels of a Botanist in South-West Africa”--_The
Geographical Journal_, May, 1910.



CHAPTER IV

THE FAUNA OF THE COUNTRY


When first visited by Europeans, South-West Africa was swarmed with
game in unusual number and variety, and the land was a veritable
hunter’s paradise. Lions were a constant source of trouble to
travellers even long after the middle of the last century. Elephants
roamed the country in big herds, and for some years, in the ’seventies
and ’eighties, the trade in ivory from Damaraland was considerable,
many thousands of pounds worth being brought to the coast for export
each year. The black rhinoceros was common. The rare animal known as
the white rhinoceros, _R. simus_, was also found. As stated in a
previous chapter, the first giraffe’s skin ever sent to Europe from
South Africa came from Great Namaqualand in 1763. The buffalo, the
quagga, and the zebra abounded, and the ungainly hippopotamus could
often be seen plunging and splashing in the lower reaches of the
Orange River. But the larger game has been steadily driven to the
north and the north-east, where the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the
hippopotamus may still be found among the nobler South African fauna,
partly as a result of protective measures adopted by the Government
authorities. The Caprivi territory may be regarded as the big game
reserve of the country.

Among the beasts of prey the lion is still found, but only on the
lonely Kalahari border, in the Kaokoveld, and in the far north. The
leopard, _felis pardus_, commonly called the “tiger,” exists in many
parts of the country, and is not by any means a pleasant beast to
encounter. The beautifully-marked cheetah, _Cynoelurus jubatus_, is
sometimes found on the eastern slopes. The red lynx, _felis caracal_,
the Dutch “rooikat,” with the typical tufted ears and short tail, is
fairly numerous. Among the enemies of the stock farmer are several
species of jackals; the powerful spotted hyena, _H. crocuta_, the Dutch
tiger-wolf; and the destructive African wild dog. The wild dogs hunt in
packs, and, as they will pull down anything from a lamb to an eland,
they do a great deal of damage.

The antelopes are well represented. The eland, the largest of all
antelopes, roams the eastern border districts, with the noble koodoo,
_strepsicerous kudu_; the sable antelope, _hippotragus niger_; the
roan antelope, _hippotragus equinus_; the fierce blue wildebeest or
brindled gnu, _connochoetes taurinus_; the handsome oryx, or gemsbok,
_oryx gazella_; and occasionally the giraffe. The giraffe and the oryx
have also been observed on the western plains, and the zebra exists in
the Kaokoveld, north of the Namib.

Large herds of springbuck, _gazella euchore_, roam the inner plains of
the Namib and the open, treeless country to the east. The Waterbuck,
_kobus ellipsiprimnus_, is found in the vicinity of the northern
rivers, while the little Damaraland antelope, _nanotragus damarensis_,
may be seen at rare intervals in the mountain fastnesses near Omaruru.
Among the smaller animals are the fecund steenbuck; the charming little
klipspringer, _oreotragus saltator_, the “chamois of South Africa”;
and the solitude-loving duiker, _cephalolopus grimmi_.

In the order Rodentia there are several hares. The Cape hare, _lepus
capensis_, an animal a little smaller than the English hare, is found
both in open and forest country; the rock hare, _lepus saxatalis_,
is a little larger, and keeps to the hilly country; the spring
hare, _Pedetes capensis_, is really a rodent, and this peculiar
creature, which lives in burrows, has a queer kangaroo-like method of
progression, using its long bushy tail with great skill. The flesh of
all these hares makes good eating.

That strange creature, the ant-bear, or Dutch aard vark, _orycteropus
afer_, which lives entirely on ants and termites, is responsible for
a good deal of damage caused by its burrowing habits. This animal is
confined entirely to Africa. Among other typical African animals are
the porcupine; the dassie, or rock rabbit, _hyrax capensis_, which
very much resembles the guinea-pig in shape; and one or two species of
meercats.


THE BIRDS

Game birds are fairly numerous. The largest bird is of course the
ostrich, which runs wild in many parts of the country. A considerable
trade was done in ostrich feathers from Damaraland for many years;
shooting of the birds has been wisely prohibited under the German
administration. Ostrich-farming has been attempted on a small scale.

There are several species of bustard, notable among them being the big
kori bustard, or Dutch pauuw, _Otis kori_, which sometimes stands as
high as 5 feet and weighs 40 pounds; and one of the lesser bustards
known as knorhaan, _Otis afra_, whose irritating, harsh craak is
all too familiar to the South African sportsman when stalking his
game. The guinea-fowl represents the pheasant tribe, and these fine
sporting birds are very numerous in North Damaraland and parts of
Ovamboland. The so-called Namaqua pheasant is really a francolin
partridge, while the well-known Namaqua partridge is a sand grouse,
_Pteroclurus namaquus_. Soon after sunrise the sand grouse are seen
high in the air in immense flocks, coming from all parts of the compass
to gather around the _vlies_ or pans where they drink. When hunted in
the veld they rise well to the dog and provide excellent sport. It is
a much more difficult matter, however, to flush the bustard or the
guinea-fowl. Several species of snipe and quail are found, but they
are not numerous.

The wild goose, or Egyptian goose, _Chenalopex aegyptiacus_, one of
the most edible of the South African game birds, with several species
of wild duck, frequent the watercourses. Herons, storks, ibises,
flamingos, and spoonbills are among the wading birds; the flamingos are
often in large numbers in North Damaraland and Ovamboland.

Eagles and vultures are among the birds of prey, with owls and
several species of the hawk family. The Secretary bird, _Serpentarius
secretarius_, with its curious quill-like crest of feathers, may
sometimes be seen stalking in characteristic solemn fashion among the
low bush in search of a little animal or a young snake. Those queer
birds, the penguins, with their black coats and white waistcoats,
thickly inhabit the islands off the coast. The gannet, the smaller
cormorant, with the penguin, have been protected by the Cape Government
on account of their importance as yielders of guano, and immense flocks
exist to-day.

Among the smaller birds are the wattled starling, _Dilophus
carunculatus_, two pratincoles, _Glareola melanoptera_ and _G.
pratincola_, all locust birds, which pursue their prey high in the air,
wheeling and darting and turning in wonderfully attractive fashion;
hoopoes, honey-guides, swifts, woodpeckers, hornbills, and weavers.
The honey-guide (_Indicatoridæ_) is a most interesting bird. Its
intelligence is as remarkable as its pertinacity, and it will give the
sportsman no rest until he has followed the twittering creature to the
bees’ nest. The remarkable-looking hornbills, with their huge bills,
very soon attract the attention of the traveller. The social weaver,
_Philetaerus socius_, is famous for its peculiar nest-building habits.
The birds are sociable little creatures and live together in colonies
of several hundreds. The nest, really a bird city, is generally a
huge mass of grass and sticks, cunningly arranged in a camelthorn
tree, and is often as big as a small haystack. A colony of 500 birds
may sometimes be found in the nest. The entrance is from beneath as
a protection against tree snakes, and there are generally several
“doors.” Inside there are a number of “streets” and “compartments,”
with individual nests in rows like little homes on each side of a
street. The nests are added to year by year, and sometimes they become
too heavy for the branches, with the result that the branches give way
and the “city” falls to pieces.


THE SNAKES

The reptile world is represented by a number of exceedingly venomous
snakes, but fortunately they are not numerous, and deaths from
snake-bite are of rare occurrence. There is the ferocious cobra, one
of the most deadly snakes in South Africa, of which there are several
species. Anchietas cobra, _Naia Anchietæ_, attains to an average length
of 5 feet, and the well-known Cape cobra, _Naia Flava_, is about the
same length. These reptiles are as active as they are venomous.

With the characteristic hood raised and eyes glittering with fierce
anger, an enraged cobra is a fearsome sight. A couple of drops of its
venom are quite sufficient to kill a giant. The Ringhals cobra or
Spitting snake, _Sepedon haemachates_, is not quite so long as its
cousin, but is highly venomous and very ferocious when roused. The name
“ringhals” means “ring-neck,” and has reference to the whitish band or
bands across the throat.

Not only has this reptile the power to inflict a deadly bite with its
poison fangs--it is able to spit a stream of venom into the eyes of a
person standing some feet away. Dogs and calves are often blinded in
this way.

The puff-adder, _Bitis arietans_, is an important member of the
viper family. This flat-headed, repulsive-looking creature, with its
thick, dark-brown body, is highly venomous and exceedingly dangerous,
as it coils up and lies quite still in the open until touched or
roused. Although extremely sluggish in nature, it lunges with
amazing rapidity. When its warning hiss is heard a hasty retirement
is expedient. Among the other dangerous adders are the Night adder,
_Causus rhombeatus_, which lays eggs; the small Peringuey’s adder,
_Bitis Peringueyi_; the queer Hornsman or Horned adder, _Bitis
cornuta_, which has two or more erect horn-like scales over each eye,
like little horns; the West African adder, _Bitis gabonica_, which will
bury itself in the sand for hours, with only the head visible; the Berg
adder, _Bitis atropos_, which keeps to the mountain regions; and the
Oviparous adder, _Atractaspis bibronii_, which is rarely found, since
it burrows in the sand after the manner of the blind burrowing reptiles.

All the snakes mentioned above belong to the front-fanged variety,
which are all poisonous. The back-fanged snakes are more or less
poisonous. These include in South-West Africa the Herald or Red-lipped
snake, _Leptodira hotambaeia_, with a speckled body, glossy head, and
red upper lip; the Whip snake, _Psammophis jurcatus_, a thin brown
reptile with a brittle tail; the Spotted Schaapsteker, _Trimerorhinus
rhombeatus_, well-known, too, on the Karroo; the small Damaraland
many-spotted snake, _Rhamphiophis multimaculatus_; the Dapple-backed
sand-snake, _Psammophis notostictus_; and the Namaqualand sand-snake,
_Psammophis trigrammus_.

None of these back-fanged reptiles are to be greatly dreaded; they will
rarely attack a person; but it is not wise to take liberties with them.
Even a snake will turn.

All the solid-toothed snakes are as harmless as worms, and may be
freely handled. Quite a number of these are found in the country.
The remarkable egg-eating snake, _Dasypeltis scabra_, has a
highly-specialised egg-breaking mechanism. A sawing apparatus in the
backbone serves the purpose of teeth. The egg-shell is cast up after
the contents have been sucked down. There are several species of the
small Coppery snake; one or two of the House snake, of the genus
Boodon, often found near dwelling-houses. House snakes can easily be
tamed, and they may become more useful than cats, and much less harmful.

The non-venomous python is found occasionally in the rocky valleys.
Anchieta’s python, _P. anchietæ_, is the only species. This reptile
has an average length of about 16 feet, and kills all its victims by
constriction. The female python lays her eggs and then hatches them
like a broody hen.

The dreaded scorpion is also a habitat of the country. Tortoises are
found. Swarms of the migratory locust cause much damage when they
descend upon the vegetation. Among the smaller but not less troublesome
creatures are the many beetles, spiders, ticks, and mites.

In the coast waters the ungainly seals have their home, and off Cape
Cross they are found in very large numbers. Whales are not so numerous
as in former years, but several whaling stations are in existence along
the shore. Altogether, South-West Africa has an uncommon variety of
individuals in the animal world.



CHAPTER V

THE EARLY DAYS


The only use of war, says a cynical writer, is to teach geography.
Certainly there are many people in South Africa who a few months ago
would have been sorely puzzled to locate Luderitz Bay on the map of
Africa. And how many are aware that this islet-studded inlet is a place
of considerable historic importance? It was here, says Theal, that
“for the first time Christian men trod the soil of Africa south of the
tropic.”[11]

In 1486 Bartholomew Diaz, the famous Portuguese navigator, who
was in search of the way to India, stepped ashore from the little
fifty-ton ship that had brought him from the Tagus, and gave the bay
the name Angra Pequena, the Little Bay. On Serra Parda, or the Grey
Mountain, now Pedestal Point, he set up the first of the three stone
crosses erected on the South African coast. It stood there above the
dreary waste, a striking landmark, well into the nineteenth century,
when vandals from the whaling ships broke it in pieces. Fortunately,
considerable fragments of the monument were recovered and conveyed to
the South African Museum at Cape Town in 1856.

For some 300 years after the landing of Diaz, South-West Africa
remained an Unknown Land, and no one seemed eager to venture into what
appeared to be a most inhospitable region. Early in the nineteenth
century a few whaling ships might have been seen off the coast taking
heavy toll of the many whales that abounded. Walvis Bay, with its
sheltered harbour, became a base for the seamen, and from the few
Hottentots who lived in the vicinity the men purchased their supplies
of fresh meat.

The first European to cross the Orange River was one Jacobus Coetsee,
who proceeded northward from his farm at Picketberg in 1760, with
a number of Hottentots, to shoot elephants. He hunted in Great
Namaqualand, and while there heard from the Namaquas of a tribe of
strange, black people living ten days further north, called the
Damrocquas, who had long hair, and wore clothes made of linen cloth.
This was the day when queer tales lost nothing in the telling. On his
return Coetsee related what he had heard to Hendrik Hop, a Captain of
the Burgher Militia; Hop reported to Governor Ryh Tulbagh, and offered
to conduct an exploring expedition in order to seek out these strange
people. Tulbagh had a zeal for knowledge surpassed among the early
Governors of the Cape only by the Van der Stels; he readily acquiesced
in the proposal, and in 1761 Hop set out on his adventurous journey
with a caravan of no less than fifteen wagons. The expedition was
well-equipped, since it included a botanist, a surveyor, a surgeon,
who also acted as a mineralogist, and a number of European volunteers,
with quite a little army of Hottentots. The journey extended from July
16th, 1761, to April 27th, 1762. It deserves to be remembered as one of
the most notable journeys connected with early African exploration.
The result is the “New Accounts of the Cape of Good Hope, etc.”--one of
our earliest books of travel in South-West Africa, an exceedingly rare
octavo, published in Amsterdam, both in Dutch and French, in 1778. A
German edition was published at Leipzig in 1779.[12] The book is the
work of several hands: it contains, among other things, the journal of
C. F. Brink, the surveyor, the reports of T. Roos and P. Marais, two
volunteers, on the native tribes encountered, and some excellent plates
depicting such rare animals, as they were then, as the zebra, the
gemsbuck, the koodoo, and the gnu.

The party crossed the Orange, passed the hot springs now known as
Warmbad, pushed along the western base of the Karas Mountains; and
penetrated to the borders of Damaraland. Some valuable prizes were
secured in the shape of several giraffes, animals that were among
the rarities at the time. Governor Tulbagh sent the skin of one of
these animals to Leiden, the first of its kind to be sent to Europe
from South Africa. Hop did not succeed in reaching the country of the
Damrocquas, as he was compelled to turn back owing to the loss of
cattle and the failure of water. The Orange River, placed on the map
from hearsay by the elder Van der Stel, was now definitely located, and
a fair knowledge obtained of the sterile wastes of Great Namaqualand,
and the mountainous region that lay to the north.

Lieutenant William Paterson, a gifted botanist and explorer, next
reached the Orange River; in company with Colonel Gordon, the Scotch
Commanding Officer of the troops of the Dutch East India Company, and
Jacobus van Reenen. “On the 17th of August, 1779,” says Paterson, “we
launched Colonel Gordon’s boat, and hoisted Dutch colours. Colonel
Gordon proposed first to drink the States’ health and then that of the
Prince of Orange and the Company, after which he gave the river the
name of the Orange River, in honour of that Prince.”[13]

Up to this time the river had been known as the Braragul, the name
given to it by the elder Van der Stel. We owe a debt to the gallant
Gordon, who could hardly have found a more appropriate name for these
yellow muddy waters; and as Pettman points out in his “South African
Place Names,” this is the only royal name in the place names of the
period.

Le Vaillant next appears upon the scene. This romantic and picturesque
traveller assures us that he journeyed “into the interior parts of
Africa in the years 1783, 1784, and 1785,” leaving the house of his
friend Mr. Slabert, near Saldanha Bay, in the middle of 1783; but,
unfortunately, Le Vaillant was much given to romancing, and doubts have
been thrown on the authenticity of his journeys. That he travelled
somewhere in the regions north of the Orange River, “in search of rare
birds and new hordes,” “suffering much from the reverberations of the
sun,” seems clear from his descriptions of the country and people. His
many adventures make delightful reading, and he was a wonderfully keen
observer of objects of natural history.

The quest for gold next led a party into the northern wilds. In
1791 Willem van Reenen set out from his farm on the Elephant River,
accompanied by a number of burghers, in the expectation of discovering
gold, about the existence of which rumours had reached him. The party
passed the farthest point reached by Hop thirty years before, and
pushed northward until they probably penetrated into what is now
Damaraland. One Peter Brand travelled fifteen days further than the
main party, and was the first European to come into contact with
the mysterious Damrocquas, the Berg Damaras. These natives had the
appearance of Kaffirs, they spoke the Hottentot language, and they
lived like Bushmen.

For some months the party remained among the Damaras gleaning
information about the various clans. Game was abundant; they accounted
for no less than sixty-five rhinoceroses, six giraffes, and small game
without number. What was more important to them, they dug up large
quantities of “gold ore,” and transported it with much joy to Cape
Town. Their chagrin can be imagined when they were assured that the
“gold” ore was really copper ore.

But belief in the existence of gold north of the Orange seemed to
persist, as in 1793 another party left Cape Town, with Chevalier Duminy
as a guide, in the packet _Meermin_, for a bay somewhere up the coast,
where a train of wagons, sent overland, was to meet them on landing.
The wagons, however, were not at the rendezvous, so the _Meermin_
sailed north until Walvis Bay was reached. Here, in February of 1793,
the prospectors set up a stone beacon, engraved on one side with the
arms of the States, and on the other with the monogram of the Dutch
East India Company. Hottentots were found living along the shore, and
Peter Brand sought their guidance for a trek into the interior. He was
away about a month; during which time he traversed a portion of the
Damara country, and was somewhat surprised to find an abundance of
trees and many rich grazing tracts. Elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceroses,
lions, and giraffes were numerous, but there were no traces of the
desired gold. Pienaar was probably the first European to penetrate into
the country from the west coast.

The early years of the nineteenth century bring us to the beginning
of the missionary era in South-West Africa, and we now turn to the
missionaries who came to evangelise the heathen inhabitants. These men
have played no small part in the political life of South Africa, and
the dust of the many controversies in which they were concerned ought
not to be allowed to obscure the high value and romance of the early
missionary enterprise. As pioneers, explorers, geographers, no less
than as philanthropists, they have done a great deal for knowledge.

As early as 1802 the London Missionary Society--that stormy petrel
of African Missionary Societies--had its agents north of the Orange
River. The brothers Christian and Abraham Albrecht were probably the
first Europeans to reside in Great Namaqualand; they founded a mission
station at Warm Bath (now Warmbad) in 1807. Warm Bath was so named
because of the hot springs found there. Another station was established
at Bethany in 1814 by J. Henry Schmelen. Robert Moffat, who was
destined to leave his name indelibly impressed on African history, took
charge of the Warm Bath station in 1818. At this time Titus Africaner,
the outlaw Hottentot Chief, was at the height of his career as a
marauder and desperado; a cloud of dust in the distance was sufficient
to drive the peaceful tribes that lived along the course of the Orange
River frantic with terror, since it might herald the approach of the
ferocious raider. Africaner came under the benign influence of the
missionary, and a complete change of character was effected in him.
Acting on a sudden impulse, Moffat took him to Cape Town when on a
visit. An immense sensation was created. The people at the Cape could
scarcely credit the fact that this man, once the terror of farmers and
natives, was a reformed character. Lord Charles Somerset “expressed
his pleasure at seeing thus before him one who had formerly been the
scourge of the country,” and made him the present of a wagon. Moffat’s
stay in Great Namaqualand, though brief, was certainly notable.

The agents of the London Missionary Society were withdrawn from the
country by 1821, and the Wesleyans appeared on the scene. With their
early efforts is bound up one of the most tragic stories of missionary
enterprise. William Threlfall, a young minister from Yorkshire, was
seeking an opening for philanthropic labours among the Hottentots in
the region of Warm Bath in the year 1825. He lay down to rest upon
the ground one night after a long trek; while he slept his Bushman
guide drew near with two accomplices, fell upon the defenceless man,
and dealt him blow after blow until he lay dead at their feet.[14]
William Threlfall is thus the missionary martyr of Namaqualand. In
1834 the only European resident in Great Namaqualand was Edward Cook,
who had charge of the Warm Bath station, renamed by Cook Nisbett Bath,
in honour of Mr. James Nisbett, a generous supporter of the Mission.
He laboured among the Bondelswaarts. Cook was the first white man to
take his wife into the wilds of Damaraland. The two people had a most
adventurous journey northward to the Windhoek Valley, to Gobabis, and
then across to Walvis Bay, and they actually had their young children
with them. Lions proved a great source of anxiety to Mrs. Cook. The
following extract from Cook’s journal affords an interesting glimpse of
the amenities of travel in those days. “During the night we came across
a rhinoceros grazing, the snorting of which frightened our servant
girl, who was riding an ox. She threw herself off and ran to take
shelter in the wagon. The oxen, being accustomed to be chased by wild
beasts, took fright at her screaming, and furiously galloped off. Those
who had not heard the rhinoceros thought a lion had attacked us, and
the greatest terror prevailed until an ox, getting his leg entangled in
the harness, fell, and the wagon was stopped.”[15]

Sir James Alexander was the first traveller to explore the country
who possessed the scientific attainments essential to extensive and
accurate observation. The Scottish knight journeyed slowly through
Great Namaqualand and Damaraland in 1836-7, covering, from the time he
left Cape Town till his return, a distance of 4,000 miles. It is rather
surprising, in view of what we have recorded, to read in more than
one “reliable résumé of the history of the country,” that Sir James
Alexander “was the first European to explore the unknown land.” Even
Francis Galton assumes that Alexander was the pioneer. Doubtless Sir
James was proud to emphasise the fact “that up to this day the whole of
the western region of southern Africa to the north of the Orange River
has hitherto remained a blank on our maps,” but it was hardly the
unknown land he imagined it to be. Sir James did a good deal of hunting
in the country; he spent some time in the vicinity of Walvis Bay; where
the “climate was healthy and good”; he gathered a large number of
zoological and other specimens, many of which were unknown to the world
of science, and he gleaned much useful information about the social
condition of the Bushmen, Namaquas, and Damaras. He was the first white
man to secure an exclusive interview with the headman of the Berg
Damaras, who told the knight that he had never before looked upon a
white man; all his people had run away on hearing that such a fearsome
creature was approaching. At Warm Bath Sir James “set up his staff to
wait for the thunder rains,” and while there “took the waters,” and
thereby “set the natives the example of ablution.”[16]

For a few years after Alexander’s visit, Wesleyan missionaries occupied
stations in Damaraland, and the Rev. J. Tindall was the first white man
to reside at Gobabis, although the Rev. Edward Cook and his wife had
spent three months there in 1840; but these stations were at length
handed over to the German missionaries who belonged to the Rhenish
Missionary Society. With the entry of these men into the country in the
’forties we note the forging of the first link in the chain of events
which had its end in the establishment of a German Protectorate.

Francis Galton made a notable journey through, the country in 1850-2,
in company with the Swedish naturalist and trader, Charles J.
Andersson. Galton proceeded from Walvis Bay through regions hitherto
almost unknown into Ovamboland and arrived at a point within seven days
of Lake Ngami. He was much pleased with the fertility of Ovamboland and
the quiet, sociable disposition of the Ovambo people. His “Narrative of
an Explorer in Tropical Central Africa” affords the fullest description
of the land and the people. For many years the career of Charles J.
Andersson was identified with Damaraland and the adjacent countries.
He was the first European to travel across South-West Africa to Lake
Ngami. This feat he accomplished in 1853. He discovered the Okavango
River, and as a result of his many hunting and trading expeditions
added much to our knowledge of the country. His books of travel are
richly instructive and alive with stirring incidents.

The names of travellers and explorers like James Chapman, Thomas
Baines, Frederick J. Green, bring us to the ’fifties and ’sixties of
the nineteenth century, to what may be termed the closing days of the
No Man’s Land era. The consideration of the events which led up to the
German occupation we leave to another chapter.


FOOTNOTES:

[11] Theal’s “History of South Africa” (1486-1691), p. 2.

[12] Mendellssau’s “South African Bibliography,” Vol. I., p. 185.

[13] Paterson’s “Narrative of Four Journeys,” 1789, p. 113.

[14] Cheeseman’s “William Threlfall, the Missionary Martyr of
Namaqualand,” 1911.

[15] Cook’s “Modern Missionary,” 1849, p. 136.

[16] Alexander’s “Expedition of Discovery,” 1838.



CHAPTER VI

THE LATER HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT


The red tide of war surged backward and forward over the land in the
’sixties, and deeds of appalling cruelty were perpetrated. The Hereros
fought to secure their independence from the Hottentots, and they
were at length victorious, but a guerilla war again broke out in the
’seventies, and the country was in a state of chronic unsettlement. In
1868 the harassed missionaries connected with the Rhenish Missionary
Society, whose stations were either plundered or destroyed during these
wars, sent an urgent appeal to the British Government for intervention
and requested that the whole of Hereroland should be “declared British
territory, under British protection.” The appeal was backed up by
Bismarck, but the Secretary of State for the Colonies was “unable to
adopt the German views on the subject.” Efforts were made, however, to
restore peace among the tribes by a special commissioner sent up from
the Cape. The matter of annexation was not allowed to rest, and in 1875
the Cape Parliament passed a resolution in favour of the extension
of the limits of the Colony so as to include Walvis Bay and as much
country inland as it was considered expedient to acquire. With a view
to ascertaining the feelings of the native chiefs in Namaqualand and
Damaraland, Mr. W. C. Palgrave was sent on a commission of inquiry. He
was cordially received by the chiefs, with whom he made treaties which
placed the country under British jurisdiction, and he also arranged
that a European magistrate or diplomatic adviser should reside among
the people at Okahandja. The missionaries were in hearty agreement, as
were the German and Swedish traders. Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor
at the Cape, strongly favoured annexation, and urged it upon the Home
Government, but all that they would agree to was the acquisition of
Walvis Bay with some 400 miles of land around it. Formal possession of
this area was taken in 1878. The Guano Islands off the coast, which
had enjoyed an odorous celebrity for some time, had been annexed in
1867. Sir Bartle Frere renewed his representations at a latter time,
but the British Government still adhered to the opinion that it was
inexpedient to encourage any scheme of extension of territory in
South-West Africa.

When war broke out again in 1880 between the Namaquas and the Damaras,
Palgrave was recalled from the country where he had resided for a
time, and Major Musgrave, who had been acting as diplomatic adviser
at Okahandja, was removed to Walvis Bay. This outbreak of hostilities
led to correspondence between the British Government and Germany. In a
memorandum presented to Earl Granville by the German Ambassador it was
stated (and the admission is significant in view of subsequent events)
that “since there could be no question as to an independent proceeding
on the part of Germany for the protection of life and property of its
subjects in those regions,” it was the wish of the German Government
that “the British Government would direct that any measures ordered or
intended for the protection of life and property of English subjects
might be extended likewise to the German missionaries and traders
living there.” This drew from the British Government the admission that
“Her Majesty’s Government could not be responsible for what might take
place outside British territory, which only included Walvis Bay, and a
very small portion of country immediately surrounding it.” That careful
note was taken of this reply is evident from later events.

Meanwhile the Berlin _Geographische Nachrichten_, of November 1879,
had printed an article by Ernst von Weber in which the writer had made
a cogent and powerful plea in favour of a plan for a German Colony
in South Africa, and it is not without significance that, early in
1883, the German Embassy politely inquired of the British Foreign
Office whether British protection would be extended to a factory about
to be established by a Bremen merchant north of the Orange River at
Angra Pequena, intimating that if this could not be done they would
do their best to extend to it the same measure of protection which
they gave to their subjects in remote places, but without any design
to establish a footing in South Africa. This was rather a disturbing
inquiry to Earl Derby; probably he called to mind the reply given to a
previous question, in which a definite statement as to the extent of
British territory had been made, so he immediately communicated with
the Cape Government asking if they had any prospect of undertaking
control of Angra Pequena in the event of the place being declared
British. Unfortunately no reply was forthcoming from the Cape for some
months, and the matter dragged on. But it is evident that Germany was
not idle: one Vogelsang, acting as agent for Herr F. A. E. Luderitz,
the Bremen merchant, landed at Angra Pequena, got into touch with the
German missionary at Bethany and Chief Joseph Frederick, produced
treaty forms, and soon had the satisfaction of annexing some 200 miles
of land around the Bay. In a report of an official visit paid to Angra
Pequena in October 1883, on behalf of the British Government, by
Captain Church, of Her Majesty’s Navy, it is definitely asserted that
“it was through the influence of the Rhenish missionary at Bethany that
Herr Luderitz obtained this extraordinary purchase of coast land.” The
cession is dated 25th August, 1883. So Germany obtained a place in the
African sun.

This action on the part of Luderitz was keenly resented by British
traders, for Captain Sinclair had obtained on behalf of De Pass, Spence
& Co. a cession of the coast territory from Angra Pequena to Baker’s
Cove from the chief of the Bondelswaarts in 1863, and for twenty years
the company had enjoyed undisturbed and undisputed possession of the
area. Luderitz, however, assumed proprietary rights.

Germany now made another move in the game. In November 1883 the British
Foreign Office was asked by the German Ambassador whether Her Majesty’s
Government claimed any rights of sovereignty over Angra Pequena and
adjacent territory. The reply was made that while Great Britain
only laid claim to certain specified areas, any claim to sovereignty
or jurisdiction by a foreign Power would “infringe their legitimate
rights,” since the country north of the Orange River had been viewed as
a kind of commercial dependency of Cape Colony. But this did not deter
Bismarck, who had evidently resolved on a definite course of action.
Accordingly he instructed the German Consul at Cape Town to announce
that Herr Luderitz and his establishments were under the protection of
the German Empire, and the announcement was made on April 25th, 1884.
Then the Cape Government woke up. In the following month the Governor,
Sir Hercules Robinson, telegraphed to the Home Government that
“Ministers have decided to recommend Parliament to undertake control of
the coast-line from the Orange River to Walvis Bay.” Earl Derby also
seems to have been aroused about this time, for in June he announced
that arrangements would be made for giving protection under the
British flag to any persons, German and English, who had duly acquired
concessions or established commercial enterprises on the coast-line. In
the following month the Cape Parliament passed a resolution in favour
of the annexation of the whole coast-line from the Orange River to the
Portuguese frontier; but the matter had been too long delayed--the
prize had been grasped by other hands; for before the Cape resolutions
could reach England a German gunboat had appeared at Angra Pequena,
the German flag had been hoisted, and a German Protectorate formally
proclaimed.

This was an act of state on the part of Germany, for the territory
was vacant in the eye of International Law. Britain had done nothing
to enforce her claims over the territory, though she had ample
justification. So early as 1796 Captain Alexander of the _Star_ sloop
landed at Angra Pequena and “took possession in His Majesty’s name by
hoisting the King’s colours, firing three volleys and turning over the
soil.” Unfortunately, Great Britain had persistently neglected all
opportunities to place the matter beyond reasonable doubt, so there
was nothing left for her but to acquiesce in the German expansion
with the best grace possible, and a reluctant recognition was given
to the German claims, although European Colonial opinion in South
Africa recognised the action of Germany as nothing less than an
unnecessary and unwelcome intrusion. An Anglo-German Commission,
consisting of Sir Sidney Shippard and a German representative, was
appointed to investigate the claims of British subjects who had secured
concessions on the coast in the vicinity of Angra Pequena before the
German occupation and to discuss the interests of the various parties
involved in the annexation. Matters were at length adjusted in a
fairly satisfactory manner. The Report of the Commissioners was never
published, twenty-five copies only being printed, of which twelve were
sent to Berlin, twelve to London, and one was retained by the High
Commissioner for South Africa.

In a statement made to the Reichstag on June 23rd, 1884, Bismarck
said it was the intention of the Government to issue for Angra
Pequena (renamed Luderitz Bay by Herr Luderitz) an Imperial Letter
of protection similar to the Royal Charter granted by England to the
East India Company. When defining his colonial policy at a later
time he affirmed that it was not to found provinces but “mercantile
settlements which would be placed under the protection of the Empire.”
The subsequent history of South-West Africa affords a striking
commentary on what proved to be a characteristic Bismarckian utterance.
Unfortunately, Great Britain took the declaration at its face value.

Angra Pequena was but a starting point for large extensions of
territory, and German eyes were soon turned in the direction of
Damaraland. When rumours of designs on the country reached Cape Town,
Mr. W. C. Palgrave was sent to Walvis Bay to make inquiries and to
learn what measures, if any, should be taken in order to protect
colonial interests and the rights of Her Majesty’s subjects north of
the Orange River. On arriving at Walvis Bay Mr. Palgrave was requested
by Kamaherero to visit him at Okahandja, and there, without inducement
of any kind, the Herero Chief handed the Commissioner a Deed of
Cession of Damaraland dated December 29th, 1884, giving “our whole
country” over to Great Britain. Mr. Palgrave accepted the cession
for transmission to England, but the British Government subsequently
declined the offer and stated that it would have no objection to the
extension of the German Protectorate “inland as far as the 20th degree
of East longitude.” Was not Germany a “friendly Power”? Kamaherero then
appealed to the Aborigines Protection Society, and stated that he had
given his country to the British in 1876 and in 1884, yet the Germans
threatened to seize it and bring war and destruction upon his people.
But no help was forthcoming from Great Britain, and accordingly in the
following year Germany seized the country.

These developments were viewed with considerable pride in Germany, for
the early period of colonisation was characterised by immense national
enthusiasm. The perfervid Pan-Germanists and the sword-rattling
Chauvinists fanned the flame, and for a time the whole nation was
“Colony mad.” No consideration whatever was paid to the fact that the
newly acquired possessions in South-West Africa had long been widely
recognised as British commercial dependencies. Small wonder that the
startled colonists in South Africa rubbed their eyes in amazement at
the displays of German high politics.

Among the events which call for brief notice during this period mention
must be made of a characteristic Boer trek which took place from
the Transvaal into Damaraland in 1873. A party of farmers journeyed
with their families and stock across the waterless wastes of the
Kalahari Desert to seek out a new home. They endured the most horrible
sufferings and their line of march was a line of the graves of their
dead. A relief expedition went up from Cape Town to their assistance
in 1879, and some 300 of them were found in great straits in North
Damaraland. They subsequently trekked into Portuguese territory.

In 1885 W. W. Jordan, a trader, attempted to establish a Republic in
South Ovamboland. He purchased land from a Chief, cut it up into
farms, secured the co-operation of a few other Europeans, established a
Council and named the area Upingtonia in honour of Sir Thomas Upington,
the Cape politician; but in the following year Jordan was murdered by
natives, and the “Republic” came to an end.



CHAPTER VII

THE GERMAN OCCUPATION


During the early years of the German occupation the seat of Government
was at Otjimbingue, where Dr. Goering, the Imperial Commissioner, had
a handful of soldiers to assist him in the work of administration. In
1890 K. von François was appointed Commissioner and Military Commander,
and as the few troops in the country had been reinforced, he proceeded
to seize the territory around Windhoek, and two years later the first
settlers from Germany arrived to make their homes at Windhoek, destined
to be the new capital. François set about the task of subjugating the
natives in typical Prussian fashion, and apparently adopted a policy
of colonisation by the Mauser. In 1893 he stormed the stronghold of
Hendrik Witbooi, the Hottentot leader, and the country was forthwith
plunged into prolonged and costly wars. Even after Witbooi’s defeat
other tribes carried on a most harassing guerilla campaign. In 1902 the
Bondelswaarts rose, and in the following year the Hereros revolted.
The farms of white settlers were devastated, and men and women were
cruelly murdered, but, significantly enough, British and Boer farmers
were not molested. In 1904, General von Trotha, who had done his
utmost to suppress the rising, greatly exasperated at the failure
of many of his “drives,” entered on a campaign of extermination. He
issued a proclamation in which it was stated that “within the German
border every Herero, with or without a rifle, with or without cattle,
will be shot.” The record of the period which followed is a most
sanguinary one. Thousands of Hereros were destroyed, and thousands
more were driven out into the parched desert wastes, where they died
of thirst, and where for several years after long lines of white bones
lay bleaching in the sun, marking the track the stricken people had
tried to follow across the wilderness. In “Peter Moor,” a narrative of
the campaign written by a German soldier, some significant sidelights
are thrown on the methods adopted in this campaign. Dealing with one
incident the writer describes the foodless, waterless condition of the
country, and how the soldiers stealthily surrounded a party of the
enemy, men, women and children; and he proceeds: “We then led the men
away to one side and shot them. The women and children, who looked
pitiably starved, we hunted into the bush.” It is said that no less
than 40,000 Hereros were destroyed in these wars.

Probably very few natives would have been left alive in the country
had von Trotha been permitted to continue his work of destruction, but
the repeal of his famous proclamation was ordered by Bismarck, and he
was superseded by Herr von Lindequist in 1905. Von Lindequist issued a
general amnesty to the Hereros, and wisely set aside reserves for those
who surrendered. This conciliatory policy had an instant effect on the
Hereros; but the Hottentots continued the struggle until 1907. The
land of the Hereros was appropriated by the Government and made fiscal
domain.

The campaign was a costly one for Germany, since it involved the loss
of many hundreds of lives and an expenditure of some £30,000,000. At
the height of the campaign there were 19,000 Germans in the field,
with a large number of Dutch auxiliaries responsible for the transport
arrangements.

There is no doubt that the main causes of the native risings were the
bureaucratic methods of the colonial administration and the behaviour
of the white traders. “Germany has nothing to learn from England,”
said the colonial party’s official organ in Africa at the beginning of
the enterprise, “or any other colonising nation, having a method of
handling social problems peculiar to the German spirit.” Beginning in
this temper, it is hardly a matter for surprise that their policy in
South-West Africa has been marked by all the defects of the “German
spirit.”

They failed utterly to appreciate the significance of the fact that
England had achieved her success as a great colonising Power by
adopting the twin principles of liberty and diversity in her dealings
with subject or conquered races. With characteristic arrogance
the Germans proceeded to apply the typical Prussian principles of
compulsion and uniformity to all their methods of administration, and
the “mailed fist” became the most appropriate symbol of German colonial
rule. A ready-made system of Prussian bureaucracy was established;
Berlin and Potsdam had their replicas on a small but exact scale in
the little settlements where officialism flourished, and the cast-iron
rules “made in Germany” were applied to the peculiarly flexible
problems of colonial administration. The “system” was infallible!
It had wrought miracles with home administration. It had only to
be applied in Africa, and it would inevitably work the miracle of
colonisation. Little regard was paid to native customs and traditions
of life. Officialism rode roughshod over the ancient ways of life,
tribal laws, and native susceptibilities in a manner that aroused the
keenest resentment among the people. In a word the attempt was not to
colonise but to Germanise.

“We started with a wrong conception of colonial possibilities,” said
Professor Bonn, of Munich University, in a striking address before the
Royal Colonial Institute on “German Colonial Policy,” early in 1914.
“We wanted to concentrate on Africa the emigrants we were losing at
the beginning of the colonial enterprise. We wanted to build up on
African soil a new Germany and create daughter states as you have done
in Australia and in Canada. We carried this idea to its bitter end.
We tried it in South-West Africa and produced a huge native rising,
causing the loss of much treasure and many lives. We tried to assume
to ourselves the functions of Providence, and we tried to exterminate
a native race whom our lack of wisdom had goaded into rebellion.
We succeeded in breaking up the native tribes, but we have not yet
succeeded in creating a new Germany.”

Worse still, some of the officials sent out were guilty of excesses
and crimes which left a most evil odour. There were not wanting,
of course, men who brought to their posts a sense of public duty
and a high standard of personal honour, but “stories of slavery,
violence, cruelty, illegality, and lust, committed both by officials
and planters, were sent home too frequently by missionaries and
clean-handed men in the colonial service, who could not see these
things and be silent, and disciplinary proceedings at home generally
confirmed the imputations of report, and frequently proved that the
half had not been told.”[17]

Among the traders there was little or no sense of obligation towards
the native races; their policy was entirely one of exploitation. No
stronger words of condemnation of the ill-treatment of the people
have been written than those which have come from German writers.
At the time of the Herero insurrection the _Cross Gazette_ stated:
“Unscrupulous traders have been allowed to exploit the inexperience and
the recklessness of the Hereros. The debts contracted with the white
traders had enormously increased during recent years, while villages
had mortgaged their cattle and their entire land with their creditors.”

A white resident who wrote home from Outjo did not hesitate to affirm
that “most of the white traders are said to have been murdered, and in
their fate one can only see a not unjustifiable act of vengeance on
the part of the natives, who have avenged the unscrupulous outrages
and plundering of the traders. The traders plundered the natives
systematically. Every one took what he wanted.”

Pastor Meyer, a missionary, stated that “the traders took from the
Hereros their land, though they had paid their debts four or five
times over, since no receipts were given, and 400 per cent. was
charged.”

In 1904, Herr Schlettwein, a Government expert who has had the honour
of being called in to instruct the members of the Budget Committee of
the Reichstag on the principles of colonisation, wrote in a pamphlet a
characteristic German exposition of the policy of “frightfulness” as
applied to the colonies. “In colonial politics,” states this disciple
of Nietzsche and Bernhardi, “we stand at the parting of the ways--on
the one side the aim must be healthy egoism and practical colonisation,
and on the other exaggerated humanitarianism, vague idealism,
irrational sentimentality. The Hereros must be compelled to work and,
to work without compensation and in return for their food only. Forced
labour for years is only a just punishment, and at the same time it is
the best method of training them. The feelings of Christianity and
philanthropy with which the missionary works must for the present be
repudiated with all energy.”

These words are a sufficient commentary on an emphatic statement made
in the Speech from the Throne with which the Reichstag was opened
sixteen years before, when colonial enthusiasm was at fever heat, when
it was affirmed that it must be a solemn duty of the Empire to “win the
Dark Continent for Christian civilisation.”

The use of force as the method of civilisation has had its inevitable
result on the natives. In some districts it is not safe for a German
to venture to-day, and no German settler who valued his life would
presume to make a home anywhere near these areas without the protection
afforded by the presence of armed soldiers. There has also been a
steady exodus of Hereros into British territory for many years, for, as
one of the Hereros wrote to his kinsmen, “the land of the English is a
good land.”

The Ovambos were never conquered. As recently as July of 1914, the
Luderitzbucht newspaper, the _Lüderitzbuchter Zeitung_, stated: “If you
were to tell an Ovambo despot in the far north that he was under German
protection, he would laugh himself to death.” The mailed fist is a poor
coloniser.

Herr Dernburg, the versatile ex-general manager of the Dresden Bank,
who was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1907, made
a determined attempt to cleanse the Augean stables of administrative
irregularity, and initiated many useful measures of reform. In 1908 he
paid a visit of inspection to South-West Africa, and the years which
followed his tour saw considerable progress. There is something more
than irony in the fact that when war broke out Germany was beginning to
profit by the lessons learned in the hard school of experience, and had
peace continued, slow but certain progress would have been witnessed.
On South-West Africa, in annual subsidies, administrative expenses,
and warlike operations, it is estimated that Germany has spent nearly
£50,000,000.

Officialism has been the bane of the country; the whole system of
government has been altogether too elaborate and costly. At one time
every third male adult was an official, and, apparently, the main
occupation of these men was the compilation of voluminous records
of all that pertained to the life of the civilians. Even the German
settlers have been moved to protest at times against the petty
restrictions imposed upon them by the dominant military caste. Taxes
have been heavy; little encouragement has been given to the prospector;
favouritism has been manifest in the apportioning of land; persistent
attempts have been made to Germanise the non-Germans, notably the Dutch
settlers, and the whole population has been weighed down with a burden
of ordinances and regulations altogether out of proportion to the needs
of a young colony.

The local government was vested in a Council of forty members, which
had advisory functions only. The Governor, appointed by the Kaiser, had
the supreme authority. Twenty members were elected by the Districts,
and twenty were nominated by the Governor. All bills were first
submitted to the Governor, and only such measures as had been laid
before him, or suggested by him, could be passed into law.

Protests against such autocratic rule for a young country were
numerous, and many appeals were made for a more representative form of
government, but all were in vain. The “system” could not be weakened,
and the last of the German Governors kept it inviolate to the end.


GERMAN INTRIGUE IN AFRICA

The recent rebellion within the Union of South Africa may be viewed as
the culminating point of forty years of intrigue in South Africa, for
German emissaries have been at work in the country seeking to undermine
British authority since the ’seventies of the last century.

“Would to God,” exclaimed Karl Mauch, the traveller and explorer,
on his return to Germany from the Transvaal in 1873, “that this
fine country might soon become a German colony.” A year or two later
Bismarck was urged by Germans in the country to send a “steady stream
of Germans through Delagoa Bay to secure future domination over the
Transvaal, and so pave the way for a great German Empire in Africa.”
When in 1884 the German flag was hoisted over Angra Pequena the
perfervid Treitschke went into ecstasies of delight. This was but
a beginning to the advocate of a greater Germany. He postulated a
“natural tendency for a Teutonic population to take over South Africa,”
and painted in rosy colours a picture of a great confederation of
German possessions in Africa. South-West Africa was regarded as a
_point d’appui_; its real value lay in its proximity to the coveted
lands in the possession of the “dis-affected” Boers. With his usual
prescience Sir Bartle Frere saw the danger, and warned the Boers that
“the little finger of Germany might be heavier than the loins of the
British Government.” When the Anglo-Boer war broke out a Press campaign
was inaugurated in Germany in favour of the “downtrodden Boers,” and it
is highly probable that the Kaiser’s famous telegram sent to President
Kruger after the Jameson raid was not the impulsive message it was
thought to be at the time, but part of a carefully planned scheme of
conspiracy against England.

As far back as July of 1895, _Die Grenzboten_, an important political
weekly published in Berlin, wrote as follows: “For us the Boer States,
with the coasts that are their due, signify a great possibility. Their
absorption in the British Empire would mean a blocking-up of our
last road towards an independent agricultural colony in a temperate
climate.” The same newspaper wrote two years later: “The possession
of South Africa offers greater advantages in every respect than the
possession of Southern Brazil. If we look at the map, our German
colonies appear very good starting points for attack.” In the same year
the following appeared in the _Koloniales Jahrbuch_: “The importance
of South Africa as a land which can receive an unlimited number of
white immigrants must rouse us to the greatest exertions in order to
secure there the supremacy of the Teuton race. The greater part of the
population of South Africa is of Low German descent. We must constantly
lay stress upon the Low German origin of the Boers, and we must, before
all, stimulate their hatred against Anglo-Saxondom.”

More remarkable still is the speech made in the Reichstag by the
unsentimental Herr Lattman, when discussing the railway line from
Luderitzbucht to Keetmanshoop. “The line,” he boldly stated, “is not
of very great importance for the transport of war material or for
commercial purposes, but it gives us the solution of a much more
important problem, namely, the position of the colony if war should
break out between us and Great Britain. In this case the line would
facilitate considerably our attack on Cape Colony.”

That a Pan-German propaganda has been carried on in South Africa for
some time is now evident, and, as recent events have made abundantly
clear, the seduction of men of “Low German descent” from their
allegiance to the Union Government, was a main part of the propaganda.
Happily, the majority of the Dutch Africanders were too wise to attach
any importance to the specious promises of a Republic, and with their
fellow citizens of British extraction they have played an honourable
part in the breaking up of the German rule in South-West Africa.


FOOTNOTES:

[17] Dawson’s “The Evolution of Modern Germany,” p. 370.



CHAPTER VIII

THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY


THE NATIVE RACES

The native races represented in South-West Africa are the Bushmen,
Hottentots, and Bantu people, and they vary not only in physical
appearance and language, but also in character and habits.

The Bushmen, so-called because of their preference for places abounding
in bushes, were probably the earliest inhabitants of the land, since
members of this race roamed the entire country south of the Zambesi
at a time of remote antiquity. These people were nomads of a most
primitive type, and lived on wild animals, wild plants and fruits,
the roots of plants, locusts, and even the larvæ of ants. Small in
stature, yellowish brown in colour, with queer, fox-like face, slender
limbs, and a language abounding in strange clicks and deep guttural
sounds, the Bushman did not seem far removed from the animals upon whom
he preyed. The people lived in small societies after a most primitive
fashion, with no religion, and no fixed abode. Though incapable of
protracted labour, they possessed marvellous keenness of vision and
fleetness of foot, and could travel immense distances in pursuit of
game without taking rest. Savages though they were, they had artistic
gifts of no mean order: on the walls of caves and the sheltered sides
of great rocks in various parts of the country there are found to-day
rude but spirited and clever pictures in profile of wild animals, in
red, and yellow and black. But they have been so ruthlessly hunted
down and destroyed by successive intruding races, that these keen-eyed
children of the wilds have almost entirely disappeared from the vast
territory which at one time was their exclusive hunting-ground. Some
of them linger yet on the Kalahari border, and some thousands of
half-breeds are found in the districts of Grootfontein, Outjo, and
Gobabis.

How and whence the Hottentots came no one can say with certainty.
Some affirm that their origin is to be sought in the intermarriage
of men of light brown or yellow colour with women of Bushmen blood,
while others incline to the view that they came from North Africa
somewhere about the end of the fourteenth century. Compared to the
Bushmen they are but recent dwellers in the land. They called
themselves the Khoi-Khoin, or men of men, and they probably travelled
slowly southward and westward, dispossessing the Bushmen of their
lands here and there, until they covered considerable areas of the
country. They were small men, but greatly superior to the Bushmen
both in physique and intellect. They lived in tribes under hereditary
chiefs, but the chief’s authority was very limited. On the whole they
were a good-natured sort of people, merry, thoughtless, and indolent.
Various tribes of Namaqua Hottentots roamed over the southern portion
of South-West Africa for many years prior to the German occupation.
They had an abundance of horned cattle, sheep, and goats, and most of
their rather frequent tribal conflicts were about flocks and herds.
Their descendants have shown themselves capable of adopting civilised
habits of life, and they have learned to cultivate the soil, and
even to act as rough handicraftsmen. More pure Hottentots are found
in Great Namaqualand to-day than in any other part of South Africa.
When the last census was taken a year or two ago they numbered some
15,000. Until brought under German rule, after the various unsuccessful
conflicts which they waged against the Germans, they enjoyed a life of
independence.

To the great Bantu family, or Kaffir races, belong the Ovahereros, or
Damaras--better known as Hereros--and the Ovambo people, but there
are well marked distinctions between these two neighbours. The name
Herero, it is said, is an attempt to reproduce the whirring sound of
the broad-bladed assagai used by these people in its flight through
the air. “The meaning of the name Ovaherero,” says G. W. Stow, “is the
men of the whirring assagais.” The Hereros migrated from the north or
north-east, and for some time they occupied the territory north of
the Namaquas, living in communities under the government of chiefs.
Their riches consisted of cattle, and they have always shown a great
reluctance to part with any of their animals. Among early travellers
they won an unenviable notoriety on account of their cruelty, filthy
habits, and degenerate tastes. In their conflicts with the German
forces they revealed remarkable and unexpected powers of resistance.
About 15,000 to 20,000 of these people are found in the country at
present.

The Ovambo people in the far north were practically unknown until the
’fifties of the last century, when travellers discovered them to be
a rich, industrious, and hospitable tribe, skilled in the working of
metals, and possessed of a real love for agriculture. They live under a
fairly strict tribal government in large communities, and for some time
have carried on trade with the Portuguese; they have even supplied such
articles as knives and iron pearls to their southern neighbours, the
Hereros. It is estimated that there are at least 80,000 of these people
in the northern territory, while the total population of Ovamboland and
the Caprivizipfel may be anything between 150,000 and 200,000.

The Bergdamaras, who for many years inhabited the mountainous district
of Western Damaraland, constitute a fascinating ethnological problem.
They are Bantu by blood, Hottentot by language, and Bushmen by habit.
Whence these strange affinities?

It is probable that the Bergdamaras were at one time connected with
the main stream of Bantu people that spread southward over the
country, but who by an eddy in the tide were left stranded in what is
now Damaraland. Enslaved there by the more powerful Hottentots, they
adopted the enemy’s language, and at length escaped from bondage to
make their home in the fastnesses of the mountains, where no other
means of subsistence remained for them but that of the Bushmen. They
number about 18,000 to-day.

South-West Africa presents then a deeply interesting microcosm of
native life, and affords glimpses of the migratory movements of the
native people in far-off days. There are the Bushmen, the descendants
of the aboriginal hunters who dwelt in the land unknown ages ago; the
Hottentots, who are the sons of the yellow-skinned people that intruded
into the hunting-grounds of the pigmy Bushmen; the Bergdamaras, who
probably represent the pioneer tribes of the virile black-skinned races
that early followed upon the trail of the yellow-skins; while in the
Ovambos are exhibited some of the best traits of the most advanced
native tribes in the whole country.

The number of natives actually counted when the census was taken in
1913 was 69,003, but the total estimated native population, excluding
Ovamboland and the Caprivizipfel, was 78,810. A few thousands of
the Ovambos have been attracted to the mines, but the Hottentots,
Bergdamaras, and Hereros find employment on the farms and as domestic
servants. About 2,500 natives from the Cape work as labourers at the
diamond fields.


THE WHITE PEOPLE

In the year 1880 the white population of South-West Africa consisted of
300 trek-Boers and 150 Europeans in Damaraland, and a dozen whites at
Walvis Bay: in 1900, that is, six years after the German annexation,
there was a total white population of 3,388, made up of 2,146 men, 452
women, and 790 children. The last census, taken on January 1st, 1913,
showed a total population of 14,830. Including the 1,819 members of
the military forces, the males numbered 10,147, the females 4,683, and
the children 1,625. There was an increase of 250 women against the
preceding year, and this is a healthy sign, since it goes to show
that existence is becoming more stable in the colony, and that social
conditions are improving.

The Windhoek district has the largest population, as it claims 2,871
people; Luderitzbucht is second with 1,616; Swakopmund third with
1,463; Karibib has the fourth place with 1,170; while Keetmanshoop is
not far behind with 1,155.

The nationality of the population was, of course, largely German;
there were only 272 Englishmen, but there were 1,630 “other British
subjects.” The percentage of other nationalities to the population was
very small.

There has been a slow but steady increase in population since the close
of the native wars in 1906; but the increase is small in proportion to
the size of the country; it should be noted, however, that the many
native wars have had a most unsettling effect for years, and only a
comparatively brief period has elapsed since they were brought to a
close. There is no doubt that colonists will find their way to the
country in increasing numbers in the near future, for the large areas
in the central region constitute a fine “white man’s country.”

Up to the present the land has only claimed the labours of 24 per cent.
of the adult males, while the commercial community has been responsible
for 18 per cent., and “other professions” no less than 45 per cent.

It is evident that mining activities have absorbed the energies of the
great number of whites, and that the farming profession has not yet
been brought into the position of prominence that it must have before
permanent success can be assured to the country.

It is somewhat surprising to learn that of 2,368 adult females, only
1,761 were married. Boys and girls exist in about equal numbers.

The majority of the people are Protestants in religion; Roman Catholics
number 17 per cent., while “other religions” claim 2 per cent.



CHAPTER IX

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY


It must not be concluded from what has been written about the blunders
of the colonial administration in dealing with the native people that
little or nothing has been done in the way of developing the country’s
resources, for many solid achievements stand to the credit of Germany.

While many and grievous mistakes have been made, it must be remembered
that success in the difficult sphere of colonial enterprise rarely, if
ever, comes save with experience. To provide in South-West Africa a
home for German emigrants and a market for German trade, considerable
effort and large sums of money have been expended, and that success is
not more marked is partly due to the fact that so much energy has been
devoted to warlike operations rather than to the task of colonisation.

For purposes of administration the country was divided into fifteen
districts (excluding Ovamboland and the Caprivizipfel), Grootfontein,
Omaruru, Outjo, Okahandja, Karibib, Windhoek, Gobabis, Rehoboth,
Gibeon, Maltahoehe, Bethanien, Keetmanshoop, Warmbad, Luderitzbucht,
and Swakopmund. There are no very large towns in existence, but the
few small towns and villages compare very favourably with those
of similar size in the Union of South African, while several of
them are considerably in advance as regards public buildings and
modern improvements. The principal towns are Windhoek, Swakopmund,
Luderitzbucht, and Keetmanshoop. Windhoek has a picturesque situation
in the best part of the territory, 180 miles from Swakopmund in a
direct line. As the seat of Government and the military headquarters,
it has long been the most important town in the country. About a
thousand Europeans resided here, and 800 natives. The principal
thoroughfare is a wide street nearly two miles in length. There are
substantial churches, a park, a public library, a museum, Government
buildings, clubs, fort, barracks, a fine marble monument to the
soldiers who perished in the native wars, and the inevitable brewery.
Houses nestle among the trees in pleasing fashion, and there are many
well-cultivated gardens.

Swakopmund, at the mouth of the Swakop River, is the principal port,
and for some years it has been the busiest town in the country, but it
has a poor harbour, lying as it does on the open Atlantic seaboard.
Immense sums of money have been spent in order to provide good landing
accommodation, but Swakopmund has too many natural disadvantages to
make it a safe and satisfactory harbour. Thousands of tons of sand
are deposited yearly in the bight by the Benguella current, and the
pounding of the big Atlantic waves would destroy any but the strongest
and most massive jetty. A new jetty was nearing completion when the
war broke out. Some very fine Government buildings have been erected,
as well as hospitals and churches and business establishments; the
streets are wide, with wood-paved footpaths, and the town has an air
of solidity and neatness quite unusual to a young colonial township.

But the natural entry into the country is the spacious and sheltered
harbour at Walvis Bay, twenty-five miles to the south of Swakopmund,
which though undeveloped has enormous possibilities as a naval base,
and a port for the hinterland. A good railway from Walvis Bay to
Swakopmund will go far to solve the problem of the future of a town
which is a good monument to German industry and enterprise.

Luderitzbucht was formerly nothing more than a dilapidated trading
station for the interior, but with the discovery of diamonds in the
vicinity the settlement grew into a town with almost magical swiftness.
It had a white population of 800 in 1914. Many substantial and even
handsome buildings have been erected. The town has a fine harbour, an
electric power station, a powerful plant for condensing sea-water, and
a good telephone system, but the roads are merely tracks in the sand,
and when the wind blows; as it often does, the sand is everywhere,
indoors and out. Goggles are a necessity for every one.

Keetmanshoop was the capital of the southern territory, and was
important on account of its position as a military headquarters. The
town is small, but well laid out, and has a church, a Government
school, a number of hotels, stores, and some neat residences.

Other centres of population, of more or less importance, are Karibib,
some 125 miles from Swakopmund, a busy railway centre, which has grown
very rapidly since 1901; Omaruru, about 150 miles from Swakopmund,
with rich grazing lands; Okahandja, north of Windhoek, noted for its
good water supply; Gobabis, the chief town on the eastern border;
Grootfontein, in North Damaraland, founded by Boer settlers in the
’eighties of the last century; Tsumeb, the centre of the valuable
copper mining industry; Outjo, a military station in the Kaokoveld;
Bethanien and Warmbad, old mission stations in Great Namaqualand; and
Gibeon, the centre of some good farm lands.

Recent years have seen marked progress throughout the country, mainly
owing to the extension of the railways. It is true that the railways
have been built with a view to their strategic importance, and
altogether in advance of the population, but they have been a most
important factor in increasing the economical value of the territory. A
line from Swakopmund, managed by the Otavi Mining and Railway Company,
connects the port with the copper mining districts at Otavi and Tsumeb,
and is some 419 miles in length. It is of approximately two-foot
gauge. A branch extends from Otavi to Grootfontein. A second railway,
managed by the State, extends from Swakopmund almost parallel with the
narrow-gauge line to Karibib, then curves south to Windhoek, from which
place it proceeds due south to Keetmanshoop and Kalkfontein.

From Luderitzbucht a line of the standard South African gauge, 3 feet
6 inches, worked by the Lenz Company, has been laid to Keetmanshoop
via Seeheim, so all the important districts have been linked up. A
branch line, 66 miles in length, runs parallel with the coast, from
Kolmanskuppe to Bogenfels, and intersects diamondiferous country
practically all the way. The locomotives on this line are driven by
electricity generated on the engines. In all there are some 1,400 miles
of railways, 780 of which are narrow gauge, while the rest are of Cape
gauge.

Kalkfontein is 172½ miles from Upington, in the Cape Province, and
since the war broke out the two places have been linked up by rail as a
result of magnificent record construction work by the engineers and men
of the Union Railways. From De Aar to Windhoek it is now 876 miles by
rail, and 1191 from Luderitzbucht to Johannesburg.

Roads have been improved between some of the larger centres of
population, but in many places they are nothing more than mere tracks
across the country. In regard to the telegraph and telephone service,
the colony is well in advance of many parts of the Union of South
Africa, since many of the farm settlements are linked up with the
villages and towns, and many of the military stations and police posts
are similarly joined. At Windhoek, a high-power wireless station,
consisting of five towers, 360 feet high, was erected in 1914, to
form a link in the chain of stations between Germany and her overseas
possessions, stretching from Nauen to East Africa. Wireless stations
were also erected at Swakopmund and Luderitzbucht. There are seventy
post offices in the country, and fifty of these are also telegraph
offices. The schools for European children have increased of late, but
the medium has been compulsory German, even for the children of the
Dutch settlers. Numerous wells have been sunk, dams made, irrigation
work undertaken; and it is estimated that in addition to the natural
springs, there are now 1,613 wells, 130 dams, and 59 water-boring
holes. The Windhoek district is favoured with no less than 12 springs,
231 wells, 35 dams, and 20 water-boring holes.

Trade has shown some advance, and the traffic of the two ports has
steadily increased. In 1913 the imports were valued at £2,171,200, and
they consisted mainly of foodstuffs, liquors, coal, building materials,
textiles, galvanised iron, and rails. No less than 81 per cent. of
the imports came from Germany, while less than 1 per cent. came from
England, and about 12 per cent. from British South Africa. Far more
coal came from Germany than from the coalfields of South Africa. The
exports for 1913 were valued at £3,515,100, but the diamond production
was responsible for no less than £2,945,975. Other exports were
copper, £396,436; tin, £31,568; wool, £5,500; cattle, small stock,
meat, hides, skins, and ostrich feathers. Germany received 83 per cent.
of the articles.

The finances of the colony show improvement. The revenue, accruing
mostly from railways, harbours, and taxes on minerals, showed a surplus
for 1913; and in budgeting for the year 1915, revenue and expenditure
were estimated to balance at £2,081,157. Public works of some
importance were contemplated for 1914-15.


MINERALS

One of the immediate results of the German occupation was an influx
into the country of mining prospectors who were eager to secure
concessions. Mineral rights over large areas were bought from native
chiefs, and prospecting was actively carried on. The concessions were
in many instances transferred to third and sometimes fourth parties,
until at length the mining rights of the whole country were held by
the following: The Deutsche Kolonial Gesellschaft, the Kaoko Land und
Minen Gesellschaft, the South-West Africa Company, the Otavi Minen und
Eisenbahn Gesellschaft, the Hanseatische Land und Minen Gesellschaft,
the Gibeon Schuerf und Handels Gesellschaft, the South African
Territories Company, and the Government. For some years each of these
parties kept to its own laws, which regulated or prohibited prospecting
operations. The Government recognised the need for greater uniformity,
and in 1913 the various companies, with the exception of the South-West
Africa Company, entered into agreements with the Government. The
royalties payable to the different companies were fixed by these
agreements.

Next to the valuable diamond fields, the copper mines rank in
importance. The rich deposits in the Otavi district were known to South
Africans some years before the German occupation. They were worked by
the Bushmen, who quarried and smelted the metal, using as a flux the
ash of a tree, and by the Ovambos, who adorned themselves with heavy
copper ornaments. The fine outcrop at Tsumeb was discovered in 1892.
The Otavi Company is a German concern with issued capital which has
been fully paid up in cash, of £1,000,000 in 200,000 £5 shares. The
Company took over from the South-West Africa Company 1,000 square miles
of mining rights and 500 square miles of freehold rights contained
therein, in order to work the group of copper mines in the Otavi area,
but by virtue of its shareholding the South-West Africa Company holds
an interest in the Otavi Company of about 55 per cent. This holding
is the chief asset of the South-West Africa Company. The ore mined is
divided into a high-grade copper product, principally copper glance,
which has been exported to America, and lead ores, largely galena, and
low-grade carbonate copper ores, which have been smelted at the mine.
Since the completion of the Company’s railway from Swakopmund in 1908,
the yearly output has averaged 36,000 tons. Other deposits are found
at Grootfontein, Grossotavi, and Gochab, while recent discoveries
include finds in the Bobos Mountains in the Tsumeb district, and at
Okatumba, north-east of Windhoek. The Khan mine has been opened up
to a considerable depth, and development work was proceeding in other
promising mines when war was declared.


TIN

Large deposits of tin ores have been found, mostly in alluvial
deposits, situated in the neighbourhood of outcrops of pegmatite and
quartz, which occur in the hinterland of Swakopmund.


MARBLE

There are immense layers of good quality marble in the Karibib
district. The quarrying rights are held by the Afrika-Marmor-Kolonial
Gesellschaft.

Gold has been found at several places in the South-West Africa
Company’s territory, and occasional nuggets have been unearthed in the
Neineis tinfields, but as yet there are no discoveries of the precious
ore in payable quantities. Coal has not been found.


AGRICULTURE AND LIVE STOCK

There is a surprisingly small proportion of the land of the country
under cultivation, since only 13,000 acres have been treated.
Four-tenths of this total is in the well-watered Grootfontein district,
while the Windhoek region has another three-tenths. Mealies, potatoes,
lucerne, vegetables and melons are the principal articles grown, but a
good beginning has been made with fruit and tobacco.

There are 1,330 farms, and they cover an area of over 32,000,000 acres;
they vary in size from 6,000 to 50,000 acres. In 1913 they carried
205,643 cattle, 53,691 woolled sheep, 17,171 Persian sheep, 472,585
Afrikander sheep, 485,401 goats, 13,340 Angora goats, 18,163 half-bred
Angoras, 15,916 horses, 13,618 mules and donkeys, 7,772 pigs, 709
camels, and 1,507 ostriches. All these figures, with the exception
of those relating to the camels, show a considerable increase on the
preceding year, and while they may be of no value in estimating the
quantity of stock in the country at the close of the war, on account
of the inevitable slaughter following on a siege, they serve to show
how much advance has been made in pastoral development, in spite of the
rinderpest of 1896-7, the droughts of more recent years, and diseases
such as anthrax and lamziekte.

Great improvements have been made in the stock since the German
occupation. The cattle owned by the natives, while hardy and useful,
were of little value as sources of milk, and the meat was of an
inferior quality. Goats and fat-tailed sheep were the other animals
possessed by the natives. But the Germans have imported stock of the
best quality and of every description.

Cattle and horses have come from Germany and the Argentine, Karakul
sheep from Russia, merino sheep from Australia, and Angora goats from
Cape Colony. Animals purchased abroad by farmers have been imported at
the expense of the Government, and considerable encouragement given
to stock-rearing. Much good work was expected from an Agricultural
Advisory Board organised at the end of 1913, and a staff of Government
experts had been collecting information on such matters as water
laws, fencing rights, and animal diseases; these experts were to have
assisted the members of the Board in drafting useful measures. A Land
Bank with a capital of £500,000 was established in 1913, and some
advances were made to farmers in the following year. The object of
the Bank was to supply the farmer with capital at a reasonable rate
of interest under a bond which could not be called up as long as the
interest and other charges were duly paid, and to provide easy terms
for repayment of the principal. The Bank was also expected to assist
in providing fresh capital for effecting farm improvements, making the
increased value of the farm security for the advances made, to foster
the establishment of co-operative societies for the sale of produce
and the purchase of certain articles in bulk. It would appear that the
first grants were made to the farmers in one particular area, and the
farmers in other parts were highly incensed at what they affirmed to be
favouritism. Shortly before the war broke out the Bank was notified
from Berlin that the proposed remittance of one and a half million
marks for advances had been cancelled.

Among other industries are those connected with sealing, guano export,
whaling, and brewing. The export value of seal skins has averaged about
£2,000 per year for several years, but in 1913 little profit was made
by the sealers on account of the low price received for the skins.
Whaling has not yet been a great success. The breweries at Windhoek and
Swakopmund have proved highly lucrative; and they have been successful
in driving imported beer out of the market.

Then it should be remembered that much valuable research work has
been done in the country, and that the characteristic German virtue
of thoroughness has been manifest in the systematic labours of such
men as H. Hahn, Rath, Schenck, G. Hartmann, Lotz, Range, Schinz,
Schultze and Rohrbach, who have done much for knowledge in the realms
of history, ethnology, geology, philology, and economics. The peculiar
problems of the country have been most diligently studied, and maps
dealing with geological features, rainfall, vegetation, distribution
of wild animals, etc., have been compiled with great skill and most
careful attention to detail.

On the whole Germany is able to give a fairly good account of her
stewardship so far as the development of the colony is concerned.
Thirty years is a short period in which to look for broad and
beneficial results in a land that has many natural disadvantages; that
so much has been achieved is a tribute to the patience and persistence
of the settlers.



CHAPTER X

THE DIAMOND FIELDS


The discovery of diamonds near Luderitzbucht in 1908 was an event
of great importance to the country, and in view of the value of the
diamond fields, and the powerful influence they have had on the
economical development of the country, we shall give some account
of their discovery, probable origin, and the nature of the mining
operations connected with them.

There can hardly be a more dreary place on earth than the strip of
desert land that borders the coast of South-West Africa, and it is
hardly a matter for surprise that geologists tramped leisurely over
the wind-blown sand dunes, making careful note of the geological
features of the country, without for a moment suspecting that the
gravel beneath their feet was thickly studded with the hard and
brilliant little “stones of fire” known as diamonds. Somehow or other
it is not the lot of the geologist to discover gems and gold in South
Africa. A child playing with the pebbles on a river bank; a poor Dutch
farmer lazily sifting gravel through a coarse wire sieve; a prospector
sinking a well in search of water; a kaffir shovelling sand--in such
unromantic ways have Nature’s chiefest treasures come to light in this
land.

One day in April of 1908, a kaffir working on the Kolmanskuppe railway
line, not far from Luderitzbucht, picked out of a shovelful of coarse
sand a small, rough, whitish stone that sparkled in the sunlight.
Little did the “boss” to whom he showed it dream that in the tiny
stone lay the promise of an increase in the revenue of the country of
nearly seven million sterling in half a dozen years, and the conversion
of the tin-shanty settlement at Luderitzbucht into a substantial and
progressive little town in the same period. But so it proved.

As luck would have it, the native had worked in the De Beers diamond
mines at Kimberley; he knew the difference between a rough diamond
and a white pebble. Had he not received a substantial bonus from the
compound manager as a reward for his honesty whenever he discovered a
“fire stone” in the blue ground and handed it over to the official?
But his “boss” laughed at him when he said it was a diamond, and told
him to “get out!” The railway contractor, however, a gentleman named
Stauch, laughed after another fashion when the gem came into his hands.
He hurried off to Swakopmund, and there sought an interview with the
owners of the land, the Deutsches Kolonial Gesellschaft. He came back
with half a dozen licences in his pocket which gave him the right to
peg certain extensive areas. It was not long before little parcels of
the gleaming gems were in his possession. The wise Herr Stauch is now a
diamond magnate.

The news of the wonderful discovery quickly spread, and before many
months had passed companies were exploiting the gravel occurrences. It
is amusing to recall to-day the ridicule heaped on these “discoveries”
by financial and other journals. The gems were “dolls’ diamonds,”
“diamondettes”; it was “financial folly” to pick up these little
glittering, weather-beaten specks. With a characteristic display of
journalistic wit, one well-known weekly affirmed that “he would be an
ass indeed to allow himself to be imposed upon by such ‘carats’ as
these.” But the carats recovered last year, for instance, were valued
at the nice little sum of £2,945,975.

The diamondiferous area is an extensive one. It is a strip of
sandy country near the coast, from 2 to 12 miles wide, extending
intermittently from Conception Bay (100 miles south of Swakopmund) to
Angra Juntas, some 60 miles north of the Orange River, a total distance
of about 250 miles. The strip is broken by a chain of hills and rocky
ridges running mainly from north to south. In the wide valleys and
depressions thus formed, ranging from 2 to 3 feet above sea-level
to over 500 feet, the diamondiferous gravel is found. The deposits
are by no means uniform. Large stretches of ground may not contain a
single stone, while a rich “pocket” may hold scores of the glittering
gems. The patch, too, that is so rich in diamonds may have a surface
view precisely similar to that of the barren areas around. Such freaks
of deposit seemed to some of the early prospectors to be the work of
whimsical genii.

The precious stones lie among tiny fragments of banded agate, red
garnet, red jasper, chalcedony, milky quartz, and sand.

The deposit varies in depth from 6 inches to 15 feet. Over the mixture
the furious trade winds from the south rage for eight or nine months
in the year. A process of natural concentration proceeds apace. The
light particles are caught up and whirled away to the sand dunes,
until in many places nothing is left but the heavy diamonds and a thin
layer of coarse particles. Naturally, the little depressions here and
there, especially those on the windward side of obstacles, have a
good concentration of rich detritus. The gems are never found in any
quantity in the valleys that run from east to west, but in those that
lie in the line of the prevailing wind.

The diamonds found in this sand are peculiar to the country. They are
wholly unlike any other known African stones. When in 1901 some natives
professed to have found certain small stones in the alluvial diggings
on the Vaal River, the experts knew at once they were not river stones.
The boys had stolen them from German South-West Africa. All shades
of colour are found among them, but the stones of a clear white
appearance, with a barely perceptible yellowish tinge, predominate.
Pale pinks and lemon yellows are fairly common. Impure shades are
remarkably few, and fully 85 per cent. of the gems are fit for cutting.
They are said to resemble the stones derived from Brazil. In size they
are small; it takes six or eight to make a carat as a rule, but a few
large stones have been found. One weighed 34 carats and another 17
carats. These large stones, however, are very exceptional.

How did the diamonds get there? That these lustrous gems should
sprinkle the sand so thickly in this dreary region may well give cause
for wonder. Geologists differ as to their probable source of origin.
Dr. Wagner, in his exhaustive work on “The Diamond Mines of Southern
Africa,” summarises the main theories as follows:

 (1) The diamonds were released by weathering from the crystalline
 rocks of the basement system.

 (2) The diamonds were derived from the denudation of the primary
 deposits of British South Africa, carried down to sea by the Orange
 River and distributed along the coast by the agency of the Benguella
 current.

 (3) A modification of the second hypothesis, according to which the
 diamonds were carried down to the sea from sources believed to exist
 within the interior of German South-West Africa.

 (4) The parent rock of the diamonds lies submerged off the present
 coast.

Dr. Wagner dismisses the first three, and advances arguments in
favour of the fourth. He concludes that they have been derived “from
a primary deposit, or from primary deposits, which now lie buried
beneath the sea somewhere off Pomona,” as there is a steady--if not
quite persistent--increase in the average size of the stones as one
proceeds from north to south, until the Pomona area is reached, where
the average weight is greater than anywhere else. On this supposition
the lighter stones have been swept northward by a strong ocean current
when the coast was still submerged. To this we may add the statement of
Dr. Marloth that among “the prospectors who know the country south of
Prince of Wales Bay, the belief is quite common that Pomona diamonds
came from some volcanic fissures that occurred there.” Kimberlite
“pipes” and dykes occur in the Keetmanshoop, Gibeon and Bethany
districts, but they contain no diamonds.

Dr. Versfeld, however, is of the opinion that the diamond-bearing
gravel is not of marine origin, but debris from diamond “pipes” which
has been concentrated by the strong winds. It is quite possible, he
argues, that the stones may have been transported hundreds of miles,
but he recognises the futility of laying down hard-and-fast theories.
He ventures to affirm, however, that the discovery of diamond-bearing
pipes “much nearer to the Luderitzbucht deposits than those at present
known seems well within the bounds of probability.” And with that
pleasant probability we leave the matter of the origin of the stones.

All the mineral rights of the diamond fields have been held by the
German Colonial Company, and their “sphere of influence” extends
for over 300 miles along the coast and about 60 miles inland. Six
companies--each with a fifty years’ concession from the Colonial
Company--practically monopolised the industry. These are the Pomona
Diamantminen Gesellschaft, the Koloniale Bergbaugesellschaft, the
Diamanten Pachtgesellschaft, the Deutsche Diamantengesellschaft, the
Vereinigte Diamantminen, Luderitzbucht, and the Kolmanskop Diamond
Mines, Ltd. The Kolmanskop Company is registered in the Cape Province,
and they have a valuable holding of about 10,000 acres, 6 miles from
Luderitzbucht.

The first stage in exploitation is rather picturesque, from the
spectator’s point of view. You plod up the side of a sand dune and,
on gaining the top, look down into the depression below and see,
perhaps, a dozen natives crawling about the sand on all fours as if
in search of coins or gems which some one has dropped. You watch them.
One man is using the flat of his hand as a scoop, running it slowly
through the sand; another is “harrowing” with his fingers; a third
squats on his haunches native fashion and gazes intently at a little
heap of particles in his hand, while another, by a hoarse exclamation,
draws attention to something in the palm of his hand. These boys are
“sampling” the ground. It is a laborious and most trying task in the
fierce summer sun. The top layer of diamondiferous gravel is invariably
richer than any underlying deposit, so it is possible to get a fairly
accurate idea of the value of the detritus by this primitive picking.
“Washing” tests are sometimes made instead of hand sampling. Should
the boys succeed in finding a fair number of gems, the second stage
is entered upon, This is very prosaic. The deposit is shovelled into
swinging sieves (the “babies” of the Vaal River diggings, slightly
improved), set in a rectangular frame. The sieve is swung backwards
and forwards in order to eliminate the fine sand, which falls to the
ground. The screened gravel is then conveyed to the concentration plant
for further treatment. On some of the claims the deposit is excavated
by dredgers which use large electric shovels.

The jigging plant--highly specialised machinery--receives the gravel in
capacious hopper mouths, a process of digestion goes on to the sound of
much crunching and groaning, the useless tailings are thrust out, while
the diamonds are ingeniously hustled into a place of security from
which they can be easily removed at intervals. Fully 90 per cent. of
the gems in the gravel are recovered in this way. Immense sums of money
have been spent on machinery. Huge structures have sprung up on the
sandy waste; and it is claimed that on some properties the equipment
is even superior to that of the highly elaborated plant at Kimberley.
Certainly this lavish expenditure on central concentration plant shows
a great faith in the future possibilities of the industry.

Several of the mining properties are linked up to Luderitzbucht
by light railways, and the companies in the vicinity of the town
draw their electric power for the machinery from the well-equipped
power-station at Luderitz Bay. Oil engines are in use on the distant
claims. The entire coastal belt is practically a desert, and the
little water found here and there in the wells that have been sunk is
too brackish for human consumption; so water, both for drinking and
diamond-washing purposes, is derived from the sea. Large condensers
have been erected on the coast; the water is conveyed along pump lines,
and also transported to the distant claims by water-carts and in tanks
carried by camels. The pump line from Elisabeth Bay to Kolmanskuppe
is no less than 17 miles in length. Some 5,000 natives and coloured
men were in the employ of the various companies before the war; the
majority of the natives were Ovambos, but Cape boys were found in large
numbers. The pay for the Ovambos was at the rate of £1 5s. per month,
with rations, while the more satisfactory Cape boys received £3 per
month, with rations.

Working costs vary considerably. The factors which determine them are:
the situation of the claims, the richness of the deposit, and the scale
of operations. In the case of five companies, we give the figures for
1913:

  --------------------------------+-------------+---------
                                  |Average Cost |Average
                                  | Per Carat.  | Value.
  --------------------------------+-------------+---------
                                  |    s. d.    |   s. d.
  Pomona Diamantminen Gesellschaft|    1  6     |    50 0
  Koloniale Bergbaugesellschaft   |    8  0     |    40 0
  Deutsche Diamantengesellschaft  |   15  0     |    45 0
  Diamanten Pachtgesellschaft     |     --      |    40 0
  Kolmanskop Diamond Mines, Ltd.  |   10  6     |    23 6
  --------------------------------+-------------+---------

These figures compare most favourably with those of the South African
diamond mines. The average cost per carat from the Premier Mine, for
instance, is 11s., while the average value is only 22s. But it must
be remembered that operations begin on these fields at what may be
called the middle stage of the Kimberley activities. Underground
mining, flooring, and washing, in connection with the Kimberley mines,
involve enormous expenditure, so it can readily be understood that the
working costs of exploiting a gravelly surface deposit will be, other
things being equal, considerably less than the mining of underground
diamondiferous rock.

The German Government derived a good revenue from the fields, as they
imposed a tax of 66 per cent. of the output value, less 70 per cent.
of the working costs. Prior to 1912, the heavy taxation and royalties
absorbed from 45 to 50 per cent. of the gross value of the output, but
the scheme of taxation was amended as above. In addition to the tax the
Government enjoyed a monopoly in the sale of the stones. Producers were
compelled to sell them through a Government organisation in Berlin,
called the Diamant Regie, and a commission of 2 per cent. was charged
on all sales made. On presenting his diamonds to the representative of
the Regie at Luderitzbucht, the producer received 12 marks (a little
less than 12s.) per carat on account. He had to wait until the Regie
had disposed of the gems; then the Government tax and the Regie’s
commission were deducted from the amount paid for them, and the balance
came at length into his hands. Early in 1914 the Regie was reorganised
and came under the management of the parties directly interested in the
revenue derived from the sale of the diamonds. Half the shares were
held by the Government and half by the mining companies. The Government
also had large interests in the Fiskus block of claims, which during
1913 produced an average of about 12,000 carats per month, so even if
the Government should make no change in the present law in South-West
Africa, they stand to reap a rich harvest from the fields. The areas
owned by private companies cannot, of course, be confiscated.

In view of the fact that South-West Africa may now be regarded as
a part of the British Empire, the probable life of the fields is a
matter of very real interest and importance. The experts differ, but
there is reason to believe that they will yield diamonds in good
number for many years. There are some who fix the limit at fifteen
years. Writing in 1913, Dr. Wagner states that “a long and prosperous
career may confidently be predicted” for the industry. Probably they
will last another twenty years. It is true that certain rich claims
have already been worked out, but vast areas of low-grade gravel yet
remain to be exploited. It is estimated that no less than £20,000,000
sterling worth of gems are in sight on the 10,000 acres held by the
Kolmanskop Company. During 1913 areas considered unworkable were dealt
with at a good profit owing to the introduction of modern plant; the
northern fields in the neighbourhood of Conception Bay and Spencer
Bay, which had been neglected for some time, were added to the list
of profitable propositions. It is not at all unlikely that new
deposits will be discovered. It is believed that diamonds were found
off Pomona as a result of dredging operations, but these activities
were abruptly terminated by an Imperial Decree. Diamonds have been
found on Possession Island and Halifax Island (British possessions
for many years), but the cost of the prospecting operations, which
was considerably in excess of the value of the stones found, did not
encourage the Union Government to follow up the discoveries. As the
gems are found along the coast and on the islands off the coast, it is
not unreasonable to infer that they lie in the sand of the sea-bed,
unless they have been dropped from the clouds. Here is an opportunity
for an enterprising syndicate. Then it must be remembered that the war
has seriously affected the diamond trade. The market will take years
to recover. Even when conditions swing back to normal it will be some
time before the market will be able to absorb the existing stock of
stones. To continue working these fields at the rate of output shown
by the figures for 1914, for instance, would be worse than folly.
Wisdom will dictate a considerable lessening of the output, and this,
of course, will have the effect of prolonging the life of the fields,
an altogether desirable state of affairs, since the revenue may then be
used to develop the agricultural resources of the hinterland. Whether
the many German shareholders will consider this wise or pleasant is
another matter. Up to the present the main portion of the profits has
gone into Government revenue to pay for the civil administration of the
country, but the bulk of the dividends paid to shareholders has gone
into the pockets of men who reside out of the country. The investors,
except in a few instances, have had the satisfaction of drawing some
fat dividends. The Koloniale Bergbaugesellschaft paid out in 1912 the
nice little dividend of 3,800 per cent.; the year before it was 2,500.
The Pomona Company paid out at the rate of 175 per cent. in 1913, while
the Kolmanskop Company paid 30 per cent. in 1912.

  DIAMONDS PRODUCED IN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA SINCE 1908.
  ----------+------------+------------+------------
    Year.   |  Carats.   |   Value.   |  Value
            |            |            | per Carat.
  ----------+------------+------------+------------
            |            |      £     |   s. d.
  1908      |    39,762  |     53,842 |   27 1
  1909      |   519,190  |    704,123 |   29 0·5
  1910      |   792,642  |  1,015,779 |   25 7
  1911      |   766,465  |    968,418 |   25 3·1
  1912      |   992,380  |  1,408,738 |   28 4·7
  1913[18]  | 1,470,000  |  2,953,500 |   40 1·9
  ----------+------------+------------+------------
     TOTAL  | 4,580,439  | £7,104,400 |
  ----------+------------+------------+------------


The figures given in the last Consular Report (1913) differ slightly
from the above, which are from Dr. Wagner’s volume, “The Diamond Mines
of Southern Africa.” The Consul’s figures are as follows:

          Carats.
  1908     39,375
  1909    483,268
  1910    867,296
  1911    747,152
  1912    985,882
  1913  1,570,000

The Consul also appends a statement showing the output of diamonds
during the last three years from mines in the Union of South Africa,
and the sales of German South-West African stones during the same
period. These figures are deeply significant, and serve to show how
important a factor in the diamond market these stones have become.

  -----+---------------------+-----------+-----------
  Year.|      Country.       |  Carats.  |   Value.
  -----+---------------------+-----------+-----------
       |                     |           |    £
  1911 |Union of S. Africa - | 4,891,998 |  8,746,724
    ”  | German S.W. Africa  |   816,296 |  1,019,444
  -----+---------------------+-----------+-----------
  1912 |Union of S. Africa - | 5,071,882 | 10,061,489
    ”  |  German S.W. Africa |   902,157 |  1,303,092
  -----+---------------------+-----------+-----------
  1913 |Union of S. Africa - | 5,163,546 | 11,389,807
    ”  |  German S.W. Africa | 1,284,727 |  2,153,230
  -----+---------------------+-----------+-----------


FOOTNOTES:

[18] Of the 1913 production only 1,284,727 carats were sold.



CHAPTER XI

THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF THE COUNTRY


After a visit paid to South Africa in 1895, Mr. (now Viscount) Bryce
published a volume of “Impressions,” in which he made the following
reference to South-West Africa: “Great Namaqualand and Damaraland
constitute an enormous wilderness, very thinly peopled, because the
means of life are very scanty ... the country taken all in all, and
excepting the little explored districts to the north-east, towards the
Upper Zambesi--districts whose resources are still very imperfectly
known--is a dreary and desolate region, which seems likely to prove of
little value.”[19]

That this was the prevailing opinion of the country for many years
there can be no doubt to the student of South African history, but with
the development of the territory by the Germans opinion has undergone
a radical change, and it is now recognised that South-West Africa is a
valuable mineral and agricultural country.

What is the future of the country to be under British rule? Herr
Dernburg had no doubt what it would be under German rule. He regarded
it as the most promising of the German overseas possessions, and saw
in it a “potential Argentina or Canada,” and anticipated the day
when the “tide of immigration will turn thither from the channels
which in the past depleted the home country, without helping towards
the consolidation of a new Germany abroad,” and he points to the day
when “3,000,000 cattle and 10,000,000 sheep will pasture upon its
vast inland prairies.” But according to his critics Herr Dernburg
was a colonial enthusiast who “juggled with millions and balanced
himself with percentages.” One has more than a suspicion that he was
in the habit of holding out to his countrymen brilliant pictures of
a prosperous colonial empire in the effort to keep warm the colonial
breast. His favourite story is “of a box of dates that was lost several
years ago on the way, and now offers to the sight of the wandering
traveller date palms 10 feet high bearing fruit.”

Dr. Karl Peters, on the other hand, roundly affirms that South-West
Africa “does not equal the poorest part of South Africa.” But while
Herr Dernburg is probably guilty of over-adulation, Dr. Karl Peters is
certainly at the opposite extreme of undue depreciation. South-West
Africa is not a land of milk and honey; and there is no immediate
prospect that it will become a Canada or a second edition of the
Rand. The many German Commissioners who have carefully investigated
the natural conditions of the colony have held out no brilliant hopes
of a colonial Atlanta; they have simply described a possible land of
settlement in which some thousands of white settlers may live in health
and comparative prosperity, and this is an eminently reasonable view of
the country.

The three great natural sources of wealth in the country are: minerals,
pasture land, and agricultural land.

The mineral wealth is the most considerable source of prosperity, and
is likely to exercise a most important influence on the immediate
future of the colony. The diamond fields will not be exhausted,
perhaps, for another twenty years; and should there be a considerable
restriction of the output on resuming operations, as is likely, the
fields may be a source of wealth for a much longer period. Development
work in the existing copper mines has greatly improved the prospects
of the mining companies, since the continuity of the ore to greater
depths has been definitely proved. It has also been ascertained that
the copper ores in the Otavi Valley belong to the same formation as
the rich Tsumeb occurrence, and there is reason to hope that the Otavi
Valley mines will prove payable to greater depths and that fresh mines
may be opened up between the Otavi Valley and Tsumeb. The Khan mine,
which is now connected to the Otavi railway by a branch line, has
lately been equipped with up-to-date machinery, including a powerful
concentration plant, and this mine is certain to be a factor of
importance in the industry. Other discoveries go to show that for many
years to come South-West Africa will export copper in large quantities.

“The copper-bearing ‘quartz mica diorite’ of O’okiep (Little
Namaqualand) has not yet been discovered,” says Dr. Versfeld, who has
made a close study of the geology of Southern Namaqualand, “but the
possibilities are very much in favour of this rock being found.”

Increase in the tin and marble production may be anticipated, while
the galena and wolfram deposits in the area of the South African
Territories Company, and the iron ore deposits in Kaokoland, still
await development. Mica will probably be a payable proposition in
Southern Namaqualand before long. Hopes are entertained by prospectors
that gold will be found in payable quantities, but a dearth of capital
and official restrictions have prevented the thorough investigation
of many promising deposits. Dr. Versfeld is of the opinion that it is
not likely that gold will be found in the primary formation in Great
Namaqualand, as he had examined numerous quartz reefs and conglomerates
and found them particularly poor in that metal, but, he writes, “there
is every possibility of valuable deposits of minerals being discovered,
particularly in the Great and Little Karas Mountains, which are the
contact zones between intrusive plutonic and volcanic rocks and
sedimentary rocks.”[20] The possibility of finding coal, however, seems
to grow more remote, though the formation of the country is analogous
to that of the Cape Province.

The concessions system does not seem to have been the success it was
anticipated to be, since of the eight companies with an original total
capital of about £4,300,000, six companies appear to have spent about
£400,000, half of which represented a loss from which no benefit
accrued to the colony. With an efficient and sympathetic administration
capital should be attracted to the country; a rich mineral treasure
house may then be unlocked. There are vast areas in Ovamboland which
have not even been prospected in the most cursory fashion.

Dr. Paul Rohrbach, the Imperial Emigration Commissioner, in “Die
Deutschen Kolonien” (1914), expects much from the mineral wealth of the
country. With only the diamond fields and the copper mines of Otavi and
Tsumeb in operation, he finds the prospect distinctly encouraging, and
in the likely event of other large deposits of valuable minerals being
discovered, he anticipates that a strong development would set in. Even
if no extraordinary discoveries are made he is convinced that the total
value of the imports will be easily doubled in the course of the next
decade.

Herr Grotefeld, in “Unser Kolonialwesen,” describes the trackless
wildernesses of sand in the coastal regions, and the desolate nature
of some parts of the country, but he states that the colony will be
able to support a large mining population, and he admits that the
mountains are “rich mineral treasure houses.”

As a stock-raising country South-West Africa has great possibilities.
Dr. Rohrbach writes: “In spite of the varied nature of the land, from
the Orange River in the south to the Kunene in the north, and from
the Namib in the west to the Kalahari in the east, its vegetation
and conformation are those of a sub-tropical steppe and grazing
country, which is marked out by Nature herself for cattle raising.”
Herr Hermann, in “Viehzucht und Bodenkultur in Deutsch Süd-West Africa”
(1914), confirms this estimate, and states that “the whole country
is open to cattle breeders. Every blade of grass, every leaf, every
shoot possesses unusual nourishing properties. This is proved by the
fat, good condition and strength of cattle, mules, horses, etc., fed
on this dry but extraordinarily nourishing fodder, even after a ten
months’ drought. One district is best for cattle breeding, another for
small stock, and yet another for horse raising, but cattle can be bred
everywhere, and even the most desolate, desert-like districts can be
turned to account by grazing the cattle over a large area.”

After thorough examination of the territory Dr. Rohrbach estimated that
the grazing land was equal in area to that of the German Empire in
Europe, and capable of carrying 3,000,000 head of cattle and 2,000,000
sheep and goats.

But although large areas may be suitable for live stock it must be
remembered that this does not by any means imply a large population.
The pasturage is thin, droughts are frequent, and small farms are
practically useless. A farm capable of giving any adequate return
should be at least 20,000 acres in extent. Two or three white men on
such a farm would be quite able to attend to the stock with the help of
a few natives. South-West Africa is not a country for close settlement,
and the efforts made to start settlers near the towns with small
farms have not been attended with much success. An inquiring would-be
colonist was told by the emigration department of the German Colonial
Society that “in South-West Africa, which is chiefly suited for cattle
breeding, at least £1,000 or £1,250 has hitherto been regarded as
necessary.” It may be urged that Boer settlers with considerably less
than £1,000 have found it profitable to take up farming in the country,
but none the less the small farmer is not likely to find much success
in the colony. When “carefully developed,” Dr. Rohrbach estimates that
the country will be able to maintain a population of several hundred
thousand European settlers, but in making this estimate Dr. Rohrbach
would appear to be slightly infected with the rosy optimism of Herr
Dernburg.

The Karakul fur industry is likely to prove an asset of increasing
value. Karakul sheep, which supply the “Persian” lamb fur, or the curly
black Karakul, were first imported into the country from Bokhara in
1907, and they have been bred on a Government farm near Windhoek with
most satisfactory results.

The Karakul has been crossed with the Afrikander, and many thousands
of the half-bred animals are now in existence. On the heights of
Damaraland and Namaqualand the Karakuls find most congenial climatic
conditions, and they seem to thrive on the pasturage of the country.
Sample skins sent to Europe have sold for as much as £2; but it is
stated that the industry can be carried on at a profit if the skins
realise from 10s. to 15s. each. The mutton of these animals is of a
superior kind.

It may be predicted with safety that frozen meat will be one of the
chief exports in the coming years. Walvis Bay is comparatively near to
Europe, and with a direct steamship service to British ports, it will
be possible to establish a lucrative industry in slaughtered cattle and
sheep. Germany was hoping to profit considerably by the development
of the pastoral lands of the territory, but the stream will now be
diverted to Great Britain and the Union of South Africa.

The third source of wealth is the agricultural lands. As already
stated, there are only 13,000 acres under cultivation, and this fact is
explained by the dryness of the climate. The rainfall is too scanty,
and the soil of too sandy a nature, to permit of extensive cultivation
without artificial aids. Much might be done by the introduction of
improved methods of farming and by means of irrigation, since the soil
is amazingly fertile. Dr. Rohrbach maintains that the land is much
better and more fertile than most parts of Cape Colony.

The rich silt lands of the Kuisip River, and the alluvial loams of the
Kuisip Valley, for instance, wait for exploitation by the man who will
tap the underground stores of water and send them out over the fertile
tracts. A good start has been made in this connection by some of the
farmers in the northern districts, and further developments may be
anticipated.

It is significant that owing to drought the crops of 1913 were a total
failure, with the exception--and the exception is important--of those
under irrigation. There should be no great difficulty in the way of
developing the water supply, since the country seems to have a good
supply of underground water. Even in the Kalahari nine artesian wells
were struck last year by boring in the valley of the Auob River. Fresh
boreholes have developed an ample supply for the town of Windhoek,
with more than sufficient to meet the need for an underground drainage
system. The two perennial streams of the country--the Kunene and the
Orange--are of little economic value, since the channels are too deep
to serve the purposes of extensive irrigation. According to the report
made in 1913 of the irrigation possibilities along the banks of the
Orange, by Mr. A. D. Lewis, the Government engineer, the irrigable
patches found here and there on the northern bank are less than 3,000
morgen; there are about 4,000 morgen on the south bank. Until wells
are dug, dams made, large irrigation works executed, and markets for
produce opened up, agriculture will play only a subordinate part in
South-West African industry, and the energies of the whites will be
devoted to the exploitation of the mineral wealth and the raising of
cattle and sheep.

The progress of the country has been retarded by a shortage of native
labour. Some farmers affirm that they can make no progress whatever
owing to the scarcity and unreliability of native workmen, but, as the
ex-Consul shrewdly observes in his last Report on the Trade of German
South-West Africa (1913), “As a rule a farmer who knows how to manage
his servants and understands their limitations has no difficulty in
getting his work done. On some farms there are sufficient labourers for
every emergency, while on others there are a few dissatisfied servants,
who take the first opportunity they can of changing their master.”

The difficulty of obtaining labour has hampered the exploitation of the
mineral resources of the colony, and during recent years Cape boys have
been imported in considerable numbers. The Germans, however, have only
themselves to blame for this shortage, as in decimating the Hereros
they destroyed the best material for developing the resources of the
country. Forced labour was tried with the Herero and Hottentot captives
after the wars, and even in 1913 the police were kept busy collecting
stray natives and apportioning them to masters in need of servants.

Efforts have been made by the mining authorities lately to attract more
labourers from Ovamboland by effecting improvements in respect to the
feeding, clothing, housing, and transport of men, and in the hospital
arrangements, and the standard wage has been raised 25 per cent.
With a more sympathetic administration and an influx of settlers who
understand the native, the problem of the native labour supply might
find a partial solution, but it will probably continue to be a source
of anxiety for some time to come. In many parts of the Union of South
Africa the farmers are confronted with a similar difficulty.

Will South-West Africa ever become a manufacturing country? Certainly
there is no prospect of it at present. The requisites for producing
manufactured articles, such as a big market, cheap sources of
mechanical power, and cheap and efficient labour, are all wanting,
and they are not likely to be available, at any rate in the present
generation. Such demand for manufactured goods as there is can easily
be met by importation from Europe. The lack of a good port has been a
drawback to German enterprise, but Walvis Bay will now take its proper
place as the natural harbour of the country, and its importance is
certain to grow.

In regard to the immediate future of the country, Mr. A. Wyatt Tilby
has suggested recently in the _Nineteenth Century_ that the land
required by the Union Government of South Africa for the _bijwoners_ or
“poor whites” lies now at the very door of the Union in Namaqualand and
Damaraland. But as we have shown, this is not the country for the small
farmer. Very substantial help would have to be forthcoming from the
Government before the unenterprising _bijwoners_ could make a living
out of the soil. Many parts of South Africa are far more suitable for
close settlement schemes than Namaqualand and Damaraland. Germany made
many efforts to get the right kind of settler into the country. To the
22,000 soldiers who took part in the native wars the Government made an
offer of £300 to each man who wished to establish himself as a farmer
in the colony. Only 5 per cent. remained.

Experience has shown that no scheme of colonisation has much chance
of success by which men are bribed to become settlers: it is only by
making it worth their while to settle, by affording encouragement
to energy, initiative and resource, that the right stamp of men are
attracted.

To sum up the facts then and state our conclusions; South-West Africa
is a country rich in mineral wealth, that needs exploitation; it is a
fine grazing country that will carry hundreds of thousands of cattle;
it is a comparatively poor agricultural land, whose principal need is
irrigation; and it shows no sign of becoming a manufacturing country
even on a small scale. The white population will remain scanty in
proportion to the area of the country.

That in the course of the next twenty-five years it will become the
home of 25,000 white families is as much as a reasoned optimism can
expect. The intrusion of the unexpected in the shape of a discovery
of valuable minerals in payable quantities would, of course, upset
our calculations, but all that we can do is to point out the probable
result of present conditions.

A word may be added about the disposal of the country. Sir Harry H.
Johnston has raised the question in a recent article contributed to
the _Edinburgh Review_. He expresses the opinion that “at the present
time it would not be advisable unduly to increase the area under the
Union Government of South Africa where it embraces a large native
population,” since “the British and Dutch colonists of temperate
South Africa are unwilling to concede to their black and brown
fellow-countrymen that equality before the law which England with her
larger imperial experience regards as the necessary basis of peaceful
government”; so he suggests that the “more negro portions of which
are Ovamboland and northern Damaraland,” should, “at any rate for the
present, either be governed by the Administrator of Rhodesia or by some
other British official appointed from London.”

Without going into the matter of the fitness of the people to govern
the natives, it can hardly be expected that South Africans would view
such a proposal with equanimity should it be made with any seriousness.
To South Africa was given the task of conquering the territory, and in
addition to the fact that the country will appropriately “round off
the Union,” powerful sentimental considerations will have to be taken
into account. A country in which Afrikanders have fallen in war and
have been buried will have more than a material value in the eyes of
Africa’s sons. For the first time in history British and Dutch have
fought side by side on African soil to overthrow the common enemy, and
the land won amid such conditions will always have peculiar value to
those who have made sacrifices to secure it. No: South-West Africa must
drop into its natural place as an integral part of the Union of South
Africa.


FOOTNOTES:

[19] Bryce, “Impressions of South Africa,” p. 37.

[20] _South African Journal of Science_, March, 1915.



BIBLIOGRAPHY


HISTORY AND GENERAL DESCRIPTION

           History of South Africa.            _Theal, Dr._

  1796.    Second Voyage.                      _Le Vaillant, François._

  1838.    Expedition of Discovery.            _Alexander, Sir James._

  1840.    Memorials of South Africa.          _Shaw, Barnabas._

  1849.    The Modern Missionary.              _Cook, Edward._
           Missionary Labours and Scenes
             in South Africa.                  _Moffat, Robt._

  1852.    Interior of South Africa.           _Galton, Francis._

  1853.    Tropical South Africa.              _Galton, Francis._

  1855.    Explorations in South Africa.       _Andersson, C. J._

  1856.    Great Namaqualand.                  _Tindall, Henry._

  1858.    Travel and Adventure in
             Ovampoland.                       _Andersson, C. J._

  1860.    Travels in the Interior of South
             Africa.                           _Chapman, James._

  1860.    Journey to Ovampoland.              _Green, Fred. J._

  1883.    Great Namaqualand.                  _Ridsdale, Benj._

  1891.    Deutsch-Südwest Afrika.             _Schinz, Hans._

  1896.    Nama and Damara.                    _François, Hugo von._

  1903.    Deutsch-Südwest Afrika.             _Dove, Karl._

  1905.    Between Cape Town and
             Loanda.                           _Gibson, Alan._

  1907.    Südwestafrika.                      _Rohrbach, P._

  1908.    Deutsch-Südwestafrika.              _Leutwin, T._

  1914.     Süd-West Afrika.                    _Schultze, L._

            British Foreign Office Yearly
              Consular Reports, and publications
              of the German
              Colonial Society.

            Imperial Blue Books.

            Blue Books of the Cape of Good
              Hope.


PHILOLOGY

  1854.     Namaqua Sprache.                  _Wallman, J. C._
  1856.     Great Namaqualand.                _Tindall, H._
  1857.     Grammatik des Herero.             _Hahn, C. Hugo._
  1857.     Namaquasprache.                   _Wallman, J. C._
  1870.     Sprache des Nama.                 _Hahn, Theo._
  1883.     Herero and Bantu Dictionary.      _Kolbe, F. W._


BOTANY, &C.

  1891.     Geography  of  South-West
              Africa.                           _Schlichter, Henry._

  1896.     Nama and Damara.                    _François, Hugo von._

  1900.     Pflanzenwelt. Deutsch-Südwest
              Afrika.                           _Schinz, Hans._

  1910.     Travels of a Botanist in South-West
              Africa.                           _Pearson, H. W._

  1910.     Vegetation of the Southern
              Namib.                            _Marloth, R._

  1914.     The Flora of South Africa,
              Vol. I.                           _Marloth, R._


ANNEX D.--EXPORTS DURING THE YEARS 1911-13.

 -----+----------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------
 Item.|          Articles.         |   1911.   |   1912.   |  1913.[21]
 -----+----------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------
  I.  | Products of agriculture    |   Marks.  |   Marks.  |   Marks.
      | and forestry and articles  |           |           |
      | pertaining to these        |     4,345 |    28,368 |     3,662
      |                            +-----------+-----------+-----------
  II. |Animals and animal products:|           |           |
      | (_a_) Livestock            |    45,515 |    53,414 |   112,632
      | (_b_) Animal products      |   525,795 |   739,515 |   419,288
      |                            +-----------+-----------+-----------
      |       Total, Item II.      |   571,310 |   792,929 |   531,920
      |                            +-----------+-----------+-----------
  III.|Raw minerals and fossils    |27,173,079 |37,215,380 |28,238,263
  IV. |Manufactures, curios, etc.  |   824,510 |   998,663 |   394,462
      |                            +-----------+-----------+-----------
      |       Total Exports        |28,573,244 |39,035,340 |29,168,307
 -----+----------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------


CHIEF ARTICLES OF EXPORT DURING THE YEARS 1911-13.

  ------------------+-----------+-----------+------------
     Articles.      |   1911.   |   1912.   |  1913.[22]
  ------------------+-----------+-----------+------------
                    |    Marks. |   Marks.  |   Marks.
  Cattle            |    21,600 |    16,519 |     6,300
  Small Stock       |     1,890 |    18,345 |    28,882
  Meat              |    14,544 |    28,974 |    73,850
  Horns             |    24,536 |    24,003 |    20,695
  Hides, goat and   |           |           |
    sheepskins      |   246,417 |   297,787 |   195,318
  Skins of wild     |           |           |
    animals         |    34,051 |    29,575 |    12,550
  Sealskins         |    43,543 |    41,569 |     3,330
  Ostrich feathers  |    79,804 |    97,012 |    40,769
  Wool              |    74,172 |   149,658 |    46,944
  Marble            |     1,232 |    19,968 |    10,214
  Other earths and  |           |           |
    stones          |     9,184 |     5,485 |     5,821
  Rough diamonds    |23,034,146 |30,414,078 |24,620,968
  Copper            |   325,000 |   229,850 |   200,040
  Copper ores       | 1,428,703 | 6,293,408 | 2,975,022
  Other ores        |    28,946 |    15,064 |    33,545
  Lead              |   345,868 |   228,127 |    --
  Leather and       |           |           |
    leatherware     |    14,863 |    18,535 |     5,020
  Photographs       |    27,158 |     8,671 |     3,913
  Curios and        |           |           |
    miscellaneous   |           |           |
    articles        |   115,378 |   154,397 |    33,249
  Packing cases and |           |           |
    materials and   |           |           |
    such-like       |           |           |
    articles        |           |           |
    re-exported     |   667,111 |   807,060 |   352,280
  Mohair            |     --    |    17,617 |     8,785
  Wood and forestry |           |           |
    products        |       779 |    14,154 |       330
  Tin ore           |     --    |     9,400 |   332,350
  ------------------+-----------+-----------+------------



ANNEX E.--STATEMENT SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF
GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA.

RESULT OF CENSUS TAKEN JANUARY 1, 1913, AS COMPARED WITH CENSUS TAKEN
JANUARY 1, 1912.

  -------------+------------------------------------------
               |                  1912.
               +------+-----------+---------------+-------
               |      |Natives of |  Natives and  |
               |White.| Protec-   |Coloured People|Total.
               |      |torate.[23]|  from Abroad. |
  -------------+------+-----------+---------------+-------
  Grootfontein |   811|  14,996   |       70      | 15,877
  Outjo        |   356|   7,902   |        6      |  8,264
  Omaruru      |   832|   6,563   |        2      |  7,397
  Karibib      | 1,197|   5,610   |       73      |  6,880
  Okahandja    |   573|   3,723   |      187      |  4,483
  Gobabis      |   342|   5,840   |       21      |  6,203
  Windhoek     | 2,895|   8,784   |      192      | 11,871
  Rehoboth     |   605|   9,808   |      361      | 10,774
  Gibeon       |   993|   2,285   |    1,116      |  4,394
  Maltahœhe    |   337|   1,153   |        3      |  1,493
  Keetmanshoop | 1,559|   6,467   |      360      |  8,386
  Hasuur       |   -- |    --     |      --       |   --
  Warmbad      |   851|   2,024   |      118      |  2,993
  Bethanien    |   395|   1,417   |       91      |  1,903
  Luderitzbucht| 1,676|   3,356   |    1,326      |  6,358
  Swakopmund   | 1,394|   2,021   |      247      |  3,662
  -------------+------+-----------+---------------+-------
    Total      |14,816|  81,949   |    4,173      |100,938
  -------------+------+-----------+---------------+-------

  -------------+-----------------------------------------
               |                 1913.
               +------+-----------+---------------+------
               |      |Natives of |  Natives and  |
               |White.| Protec-   |Coloured People|Total.
               |      |torate.[23]|  from Abroad. |
  -------------+------+-----------+---------------+------
  Grootfontein |   988|  11,409   |       57      |12,454
  Outjo        |   269|   7,392   |        1      | 7,662
  Omaruru      |   926|   6,907   |        7      | 7,840
  Karibib      | 1,170|   5,628   |       23      | 6,821
  Okahandja    |   648|   3,933   |       47      | 4,628
  Gobabis      |   409|   3,645   |        7      | 4,061
  Windhoek     | 2,871|  11,098   |      140      |14,109
  Rehoboth     |   453|   9,295   |       20      | 9,768
  Gibeon       |   922|   2,680   |       33      | 3,635
  Maltahœhe    |   304|   1,372   |        4      | 1,680
  Keetmanshoop | 1,115|   5,910   |      231      | 7,296
  Hasuur       |   351|     752   |       14      | 1,117
  Warmbad      |   912|   1,999   |       68      | 2,979
  Bethanien    |   373|   1,446   |       71      | 1,890
  Luderitzbucht| 1,616|   3,268   |    1,706      | 6,590
  Swakopmund   | 1,463|   2,076   |      219      | 3,758
  -------------+------+-----------+---------------+------
    Total      |14,830|  78,810   |    2,648      |96,288
  -------------+------+-----------+---------------+-------

IMPORTS AND EXPORTS.

  -------+------------+-----------
   Year. |  Imports.  | Exports.
  -------+------------+-----------
         |      £     |     £
  1908   |  1,619,800 |    80,800
  1909   |  1,735,650 | 1,103,550
  1910   |  2,217,200 | 1,734,550
  1911   |  2,265,100 | 1,428,650
  1912   |  1,624,900 | 1,951,750
  1913   |  2,171,200 | 3,515,100
  -------+------------+-----------


MINERALS EXPORTED IN 1913.

                     £
  Diamonds      2,945,975
  Copper          396,436
  Tin              31,568
  Marble            1,452
  Other Ores        2,956
  Base Minerals       360
                __________
         Total  3,378,747


CULTIVATED LAND IN 1913.

                              acres.
  Windhoek District           4,535
  Grootfontein District       3,702
  Omaruru District            1,567
  Okahandja District          1,267
    Small areas in other districts.


THE WATER SUPPLIES.

  -------------+-------+--------+------+------+------
   Districts.  |Land in|Springs.|Wells.|Water |Dams.
               |acres. |        |      |Holes.|
  -------------+-------+--------+------+------+------
  Windhoek     | 11,445|   12   |  231 |  20  | 35
  Luderitzbucht| 34,750|    1   |   13 |   4  | --
  Swakopmund   | 25,000|   --   |    1 |   2  | --
  Gibeon       | 16,945|   19   |  128 |  --  | 17
  Rehoboth     | 13,473|   30   |  119 |   1  | 18
  Maltahohe    | 12,832|   13   |  139 |   8  |  6
  Outjo        | 11,930|   16   |   52 |  --  |  1
  Okahandja    | 11,855|    2   |  125 |   4  |  8
  Gobabis      | 11,445|    1   |  155 |  --  |  3
  Omaruru      |  6,757|    6   |  216 |   9  | 13
  Bethanien    | 28,035|   --   |   31 |  --  |  5
  Warmbad      | 32,130|    1   |   63 |   4  |  4
  -------------+-------+--------+------+------+-----


FOOTNOTES:

[21] January 1 to June 30.

[22] January 1 to June 30.

[23] Estimated.



INDEX


  Aard vark, 75.

  Aborigines Protection Society, 126.

  Acacia, forests of, 65, 66, 68.

  Adder, varieties of, 82-84.

  Administrative divisions, 174.

  Agricultural Advisory Board, 191.

  Agriculture, 189-192; future of, 239.

  Ana tree (_Acacia albida_), 57, 58;
    beans of, 58, 66.

  Andersson, C. J., explorer and author, 108.

  Anglo-German Commission, 124.

  Angola, 19.

  Angra Pequena, correspondence concerning, 118, 119;
    secured by Luderitz, 119;
    German Protectorate formally proclaimed, 122, 123;
    known as Luderitz Bay, 124, 149.

  Ant-bear, _see_ Aard vark.

  Antelopes, 73-75.

  Albrecht Bros., missionaries, 100.

  Alexander, Captain, takes formal possession of Angra Pequena in 1796,
  123.

  Alexander, Sir James, explorer, 105-107.

  Artesian wells, 240.


  Bantu races, 161, 164.

  Baobab trees, 65.

  Benguella current, 39.

  Berg Damaras, 106, 163-165.

  Bethanien, springs at, 29,

  Bibliography, 250, 251.

  _Bijwoners_, 245.

  Birds, 76-81.

  Bismarck, appeals to Great Britain to annex Hereroland, 114;
    declares Luderitz under Imperial protection, 121;
    his policy, 124, 125, 136;
    is urged to swamp South Africa with German settlers, 149.

  Boer War, the, 150.

  Boer trek to Damaraland, 128.

  Boers as “Low Germans,” 151, 152.

  Bondelswaarts, cede territory to Sinclair, 120;
    rise against the Germans, 134.

  Bonn, Professor, on Germany’s Colonial policy, 139, 140.

  Brand, Peter, explorer, 97.

  Braragul, old name of Orange River, 95.

  Brewing, 193.

  British South-West Africa, position of, 13;
    boundaries, 14;
    a “white man’s country,” 49;
    a “potential Canada,” 226;
    future of, 246-249.

  British Government, _see_ Great Britain.

  Budget for 1915, the, 189.

  Buffalo, 72.

  Bushman grass, 68.

  Bushmen, the, 157-159, 165.

  Bustard, great and lesser, 76, 77.

  Bryce, Lord, his “Impressions,” 225, 226.


  Camelthorn tree, 57, 68.

  Candelabra flower, 67.

  Candle-bush, 65.

  Cape Government acquires Walvis Bay, 115;
    negotiations with a view to further annexations, 118-121;
    in favour of annexation, 122.

  Capital required by settler, 236.

  Caprivizipfel, the, 13, 14;
    a great game reserve, 72, 163, 165.

  Cattle, 189, 234-237.

  Census of 1913, 166.

  Central Plateau, the, 19-21;
    vegetation of, 65-68.

  Cheetahs, 73.

  Chest diseases, climate favourable to, 49.

  Christian feelings, to be energetically repudiated by German
  officials, 164.

  Climate, 37-49;
    healthy nature of, 37;
    seasonal, 38;
    in the north, 41;
    on the plateau, 41.

  Coal, improbability of finding, 183, 232.

  Coast, the, 15-19;
    temperature of, 39.

  Cobras, 81, 82.

  Coetsee, Jacobus, crosses the Orange River, 91.

  Colonial methods of England and of Germany, 138-140.

  Colonial methods “peculiar to the German spirit,” 134-137.

  Concessions system, 232.

  Cook, Mr. and Mrs., missionaries, 103, 104;
    Cook’s “Modern Missionary,” 104, 107.

  Copper mines, 186, 229.

  Coppery snake, 85.

  Cormorants, protected, 79.

  _Cross Gazette_, quoted, 142.

  Crosses erected by Diaz, 90.

  Cultivated land, 255.


  Dam, at mouth of the Orange River, the, 25.

  Damara antelope, 74.

  Damara many-spotted snake, 84.

  Damaraland, 13, 19, 20, 71, 76, 78;
    ceded to Great Britain and refused, 126;
    seized by Germany, 127;
    Boers trek to, 128.

  Damaras, first seen, 98, 116.

  Damrocquas, 91, 99;
    men, 97.

  Dams, use of, 46, 183.

  Dassie, the (rock-rabbit), 76.

  Dawson’s “Evolution of Modern Germany,” 141.

  Death-rate, the, 48.

  Derby, Lord, 118-122.

  Dernberg, Herr, 145, 220-227.

  Desert, the coastal, _see_ Namib.

  Deutsches Kolonial Gesellschaft, 200, 207, 208.

  Development of the country, 173-194.

  Dew-ponds, 40.

  Diaz, lands and erects crosses, 89, 90.

  Diamond fields, 197-221;
    great extent of, 201;
    methods of working, 208-211;
    cost of working, 213;
    life of, 216, 217;
    value of, 217.

  Diamonds, exports of, 183, 186;
    discovery by a native, 198, 199;
    character of, 203;
    theories of origin, 205;
    tax on, 214;
    Government monopoly of sale, 214, 215;
    production of, 220, 221, 229.

  Diamant Regie, 215.

  Diseases, prevailing, 48.

  Dogs, wild, 73.

  Drinking water, condensed, 41, 212.

  Droughts, 44, 240.

  Dryness of climate, 47.

  Duiker, 75.

  Duminy, Chevalier, early explorer, 98.

  Dunes, 15, 16;
    formation of, 18;
    vegetation, 60.


  Eagles, 78.

  Ebony trees, 97.

  Economic future of the country, 225-249.

  Egg-eating snake, 85.

  Eland, 73.

  Electric power at Luderitz Bay, 178.

  Elephants, 71, 72.

  Etosha, Lake, 28.

  _Euphorbiae_ in desert, 61, 68.

  Exports, 184;
    tables of, 252, 253.


  Farming, _see_ Agriculture.

  Farms, size of, 189.

  Fauna, 71-86.

  Female population, white, 169.

  Figs, wild, 57, 65.

  Finances, 184.

  Fish River, 27.

  Flamingos, 78.

  Flora, 53-68;
    of the coast, 54-63;
    of the plateau, 63-68.

  Fogs, on coast, 40.

  _Fonteins_ or springs, 28, 29.

  Force as a civilising method, results of, 144, 145.

  Forced labour, 243.

  Foreign Office, _see_ Great Britain.

  François, K. von, 133.

  Frederick Joseph, chief, 119.

  Frere, Sir Bartle, favours annexation, 115;
    warns Boers against Germany, 150.

  Frosts, 42.

  Fruit, 184.


  Galena, 230.

  Galton, Francis, 105-108.

  Game, early abundance of, 98, 99;
    _see_ Mammals, Birds.

  Gannet, protected, 79.

  Gemsbok, 74, 93.

  _Geographische Nachrichten_, proposes German annexation, 117.

  German South-West Africa, position of, 13;
     Government of, 147, 148.

  German occupation, the, 133-153;
    native risings under and their suppression, 134, 135;
    atrocities committed during, 140, 141;
    cost of, 146;
    effort to attract settlers during, 245, 246.

  Germans, first missionary efforts, of, 107.

  Germany begs Great Britain to annex the country, 114, 116, 117;
    further negotiations, 120, 121;
    takes formal possession, 122, 133;
    casts eyes on Damaraland, 125.

  Giraffe, 74, 74, 94.

  Gnu, the, 74, 93.

  Goats, 189, 190.

  Gobabis, springs at, 29, 179.

  Goering, Dr., 133.

  Gold, early search for, 97, 98;
    scanty, 188, 231.

  Goose, Egyptian, the, 74, 93.

  Gordon, Colonel, early explorer, 95.

  Gravel plains, vegetation of, 64.

  Great Britain, refuses to annex the country, 114-117;
    but objects to the German annexation, 121;
    refuses Damaraland, 126.

  _Grenzboten, Die_, advises German penetration of all South Africa,
  150-152.

  Grootfontein, farming in, 189.

  Grotefeld, Herr, on mineral wealth, 234.

  Grouse, sand, 77.

  Guano, 79.

  Guano Islands, 115, 193.


  Hailstones, 43.

  Halifax Island, 218.

  Harbours, natural, 18.

  Hares, various species, 75.

  Hawks, 78.

  Hereros, their wars against the Hottentots, 113;
    revolt against Germany, 134;
    destruction of, 134-136;
    their land taken, 136;
    exploited by traders, 142, 143;
    Schlettwein’s policy, 143, 144;
    exodus into British territory, 145;
    origin of the name, 161.

  Hermann, Herr, on stock-raising, 234, 235.

  Herons, 78.

  Hills, vegetation of the, 60-64.

  Hippopotamus, 72.

  History, early, 89-109;
    later, 113-129;
    of the German occupation, 137-153.

  Honey-guide, the, 79, 80.

  Hoopoe, the, 79.

  Hop, Hendrik, early explorer, 93, 93.

  Hornbill, 79.

  Horses, 190.

  Hottentots, 113;
    rebel against German rule, 134-136, 159-161, 165.

  House-snakes, 85.

  Hyena, the, 73.

  Hyrax, the (rock-rabbit), 76.


  Ibis, the, 78.

  Imports, 183, 255.

  Insect pests, 86.

  Intrigue, German, in South Africa, 150-153.

  Iron, 231.

  Irrigation, 182, 183, 240, 241.

  Ivory, 71.


  Jackals, 73.

  Johnston, Sir Harry, opposed to annexation by the Union, 247, 248.

  Jordan, W. W., attempts to found a Republic, 128, 129.


  Kaiser’s Telegram to Kruger, 150.

  Kalahari Desert, the, 15, 21;
    marshes of the, 27;
    lions in, 72, 128;
    artesian wells, 240.

  Kalkfontein, 181.

  Kamaherero, cedes Damaraland to Mr. Palgrave, 126.

  Kaokoland, iron in, 231.

  Kaokoveld, 72, 74.

  Karibib, 167, 168.

  Karakul fur industry, 237, 238.

  Karas Mountains, 21, 94;
    possibly gold in, 231, 232.

  Keetmanshoop, 167, 168.

  Khan copper mine, 230.

  Kimberley, 39.

  Klipspringer, the, 74.

  Kokerboom tree (_Aloe dichotoma_), 54, 60.

  Koodoo, the, 73, 93.

  _Koloniale Bergbaugesellschaft_, 219, 220.

  Kruger, President, telegram to, 150.

  Kuisip River, 26, 27;
    flora of, 57, 58;
    silts of, 239.

  Kuisip Valley, 239, 240.

  Kunene River, 15, 19.


  Labour, shortage of, due to massacres of natives, 242, 243.

  Land Bank, 191-193.

  Lattman, Herr, on strategic value of railway, 152.

  Le Vaillant, explorer, 96, 97.

  Lead, 187.

  Leopards, 73.

  Lewis, A. D., on the Orange River, 25, 241.

  Lindequist, von, Governor, 136.

  Lions, 71, 72, 104.

  Live stock, 189-191, 234, 235.

  Locusts, 86.

  Locust-birds, 79.

  London Missionary Society, 100, 102.

  Lucerne, 189.

  Luderitz, Herr, 119, 121, 124.

  Luderitz Bay, 18, 19, 59, 124.

  Luderitzbucht, temperature of, 47, 48;
    description of, 177, 178;
    railway from, 180, 181;
    wireless station at, 182;
    diamonds discovered near, 197.

  Lynx, the red, 73.


  Malaria, rarity of, 48.

  Mammals, 71-76, 86.

  Manufactures, no future for, 244.

  Marble, 188.

  Marloth, Dr., on the “Flora of South Africa,” 55, 58, 59.

  Martin, E. A., on “Dewponds,” 40.

  Mauch, Karl, 148.

  Mealies, 189.

  Meercats, 76.

  Melons, 189.

  Minerals, 184-189, 229;
    exports of 255.

  Mining royalties, 186.

  Mist-ponds, 40.

  Missionaries, 100.

  Moffat, Dr., 21, 22, 30, 101;
    converts Titus, 101, 102.

  Mountains, 20, 31, 66.

  Musgrave, Major, 116.


  Namib, the, 15-19, 29;
    rainfall, 44;
    flora, 54-57.

  Namaqua pheasant, the, 77.

  Namaquas, the, 116.

  Namaqualand, Great, 13, 21-23;
    climate of, 42;
    rainfall, 43;
    vegetation, 67, 68.

  Naras, the (_Acanthosicyos horrida_), 56;
    fruit and seeds of, 56, 57.

  Native races, 157-166.

  “New Accounts of the Cape of Good Hope,” 93.


  Officialism, rampant, 146, 147.

  Okahandja, 31, 178.

  Omataho, Mount, 20.

  Omaruru, springs at, 29, 31;
    temperature of, 39, 178.

  Orange River, 13-15;
    basin of, 22-26;
    course of, 23;
    fauna, 24;
    bar at mouth, 25;
    no economic value, 26;
    temperature of valley, 42;
    hippo in, 72;
    first crossed, 91, 94;
    irrigation possibilities of, 241.

  Oryx, the, 74.

  Ostrich, the, 76.

  Otavi, copper mines, 186, 229.

  Otavi Hills, 19.

  Otavi Railway, 180.

  Otjimbingue, 133.

  Ottweiler, Dr., 44.

  Ovambos, the, 161-163, 165.

  Ovamboland, 13, 19, 32, 65, 78, 108;
    never conquered, 145.

  Owls, 78.


  Palgrave, W. C., 114-116, 125.

  Palms, 65, 66.

  Partridges, 77.

  Paterson, William, explorer, 94, 95.

  Pedestal Point, 90.

  Penguins, 78, 79.

  “Peter Moor,” 135.

  Peters, Dr. Karl, 227, 228.

  Pettman’s “South African Place Names,” 95, 96.

  Physical features, 14-33.

  Pienaar, early explorer, 99.

  Plateau, the, 19-21;
    formation of, 21;
    climate, 41.

  Pomona, diamonds in, 206, 217;
    Diamond Co., 220.

  Population, _see_ Native Races, White People;
    possible European, 237, 246, 247;
    distribution of, 254.

  Porcupines, 76.

  Possession Island, 217.

  Post Offices, 182.

  Potatoes, 189.

  Pratincoles, 79.

  Prussian civilising methods, 134, 138, 139.

  Puff-adder, the, 82, 83.

  Pump-line on coast, 212.

  Pythons, 85.


  Quagga, 72.

  Quail, 78.


  Railways, 179-181.

  Rainfall, 42-49;
    table of, 45.

  Red-lipped snake, 84.

  Reenen, Jacobus van, 95.

  Reenen, William van, 97.

  Rehoboth, temperature of, 39.

  Religious creeds, 169.

  Revenue, 184.

  Rhenish Missionary Society, 107, 113, 129.

  Rhinoceros, 71, 72.

  Rinderpest, 190.

  Rivers, 26-30.

  Roan antelope, 73.

  Robinson, Sir Hercules, 121.

  Rock-rabbit (_dassie_), the, 76.

  Rohrbach, Dr., 237;
    on stock-raising prospects, 234, 235, 237.


  Sable Antelope, the, 73.

  Salt, 30.

  Sand-snakes, 84.

  Sandstorms, 16.

  Scenery, 30-33.

  Schaapsteker, the, 84.

  Schlettwein, on civilising natives, 143, 144.

  Schmelen, missionary, 101,

  Schools, 182.

  Scientific research, 194.

  Scorpions, 86.

  Sealing, 193.

  Seals, 86.

  Seashore, vegetation of, 59, 60.

  Secretary birds, 78.

  Sheep, 189.

  Sinclair, Captain, 120.

  Snakes, 81-83.

  Snipe, 78.

  Snow, 42.

  South African Territories Co., 231.

  South-West African Co., 187.

  Somerset, Lord Charles, 102.

  Spoonbill, 78.

  Springbuck, 74.

  Stapff, Dr., 15.

  Starling, wattled, 79.

  Stauch, Herr, 200.

  Steenbuck, 74.

  Stel, Van der, 94, 95.

  Storks, 78.

  Sun, not dangerous, 46.

  Swakop Boy, 19.

  Swakop River, 26, 27.

  Swakopmund, temperature of, 39;
    population, 167;
    description, 176, 177;
    railways from, 179-180;
    wireless station at, 182.

  Swifts, 179.


  Telegraph service, 181, 182.

  Telegraph, wireless, 182.

  Telephone service, 181, 182.

  Temperature, _see_ Climate.

  Theal’s “History,” 89.

  Threlfall, murdered, 102, 103.

  Thunderstorms, 43.

  Ticks, 86.

  Tilby, A. Wyatt, in the _Nineteenth Century_, 245.

  Tin, 188.

  Titus Africaner, conversion of, 101, 102.

  Tobacco, 159.

  Tortoises, 86.

  Towns, 175.

  Traders, German, 141, 142.

  Treitschke, prophesies a German South Africa, 149.

  Trotha, von, General, issues infamous proclamation, 134-136.

  Tsama melon, 67.

  Tsumeb, copper at, 186.

  Tulbagh, Governor, 92.


  Union of South Africa, rebellion in, work of Germany, 148, 149.

  Upingtonia, rise and fall of, 129.

  Uyntjes, edible root, 67.


  Valleys, 20.

  Vermin, 86.

  Versfeld, Dr., 17, 207, 230.

  Vleís, 16, 29.

  Vogelsang, procures treaties, 119.

  Vultures, 78.


  Wagner, Dr., on diamond-fields, 205, 206, 220.

  Walvis Bay, 15, 17, 18;
    temperature of, 39;
    rainfall, 41.

  Warmbad, 29, 65, 93, 179.

  Warm springs, 28, 29.

  Water, where found, 29, 31, 32, 183, 255.

  Waterberg, 31.

  Waterbuck, 74.

  Weaver-birds, 79, 80;
    nest of social weaver, 80, 81.

  Weber, Ernst von, suggests annexation, 117, 118.

  Welwitsch, Dr., 56.

  _Welwitschia Bainesii_, 54-56.

  Wesleyans, 102, 103, 107.

  Whales, 86.

  Whaling-trade, 86, 91, 193.

  Whip-snake, 84.

  Whirlwinds, 43.

  White inhabitants, 166-169.

  Wild dogs, 73.

  Wildebeest, 74.

  Windhoek, 20, 26, 28, 32;
    temperature, 39;
    rainfall, 43;
    health of, 47, 48;
    first settlers at, 133;
    population, 167;
    description, 175;
    wireless station at, 182.

  Witbooi, Hottentot leader, 134.

  Wolfram, 231.

  Woodpeckers, 79.


  Zebras, 72, 74, 93.


_Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London and Reading._



Transcriber’s Notes

A few minor errors in punctuation and accentuation have been fixed.

Page 78: “Chenalopex agyptiacus” changed to “Chenalopex aegyptiacus”

Page 79: “honey-guide (_Indicatoridoe_)” changed to “honey-guide
(_Indicatoridæ_)”

Page 145: “the _Luderítzbuchter Zeitung_” changed to “the
_Lüderitzbuchter Zeitung_”

Page 233: “in Under Kolonialwesen” changed to “in Unser Kolonialwesen”

Page 234: “Viehacht und Bodenkultur” changed to “Viehzucht und
Bodenkultur”

The spelling of “Francois” throughout was changed to “François”.



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