South-West Africa

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.