only o f the African two-horned rhinoceros. It differs from it
in color, which is a pale carnation, infize, which is confiderably
larger, and in the thinnefs of its ikin ; all of which may perhaps
be the effedts of age. Thefe people feemed to live very
happily together. They had horfes, and cattle, and iheep, and
gardens of no inconfiderable extent, well flocked with pumpkins,
onions, and tobacco.
We met alfo, at this kraal, one of the nation above mentioned
under the name of Damaras. From his appearance I
took him to be a Kaffer, and he was unqueftionably of that race
of people. He reprefented the Damaras as a very popr tribe ;
that their country along the fea-coaft produced nothing for the
fupport o f cattle ; and that their whole exiftence depended on
exchanging eopper rings and beads, which they themfelves
manufactured, with the Briquas to the eaft, and the Namaaquas
to the fouth. From the Grange river to the Tropic, under
which thefe people live, runs a chain of mountains, that, from
the various accounts of travellers, are fo abundant in copper ore,
that it is every where found upon the furface. From this ore,
it feems, the Damaras are in pofleflion of the art o f extradting
the pure metal. This man’s account of the procefs o f fmelting
the ore was as fatisfadtory as fimple. They make a kind of
charcoal from the wood of a certain mimofa, of which he gave
me a large bean, by fmothering it when burning clear, with
■fand. They break the ore into fmall pieces. Thus prepared,
they lay the materials in alternate ftrata, within a fmall'enclo-
fure of ftones, on a clayey bottom. They fet fire to the charcoal,
and blow it with feveral bellows, each made from the ikin
• o f
o f a gemfbok converted into a fack,- with the horn of the fame
animal fixed to one end for the pipe. This is all that is necef-
iary to procure the metal from the fort of ore they make ufe of;
being that fpecies called by mineralogifts vitreous copper ore.
It is in fait mineralized with fulphur, which a moderate heat
will dilfipate, and leave the copper in its pure metallic ftate.
Such fort of ore is even more fufible than pure copper. The
metal thus obtained is then manufadtured into chains, rings, and
bracelets, by means o f two pieces o f ftone that ferve as a
hammer and anvil, and the workmanlhip would be no dilgrace
to an artizan furniihed with much better tools. The links of
the chains, however, are all open, as well as the rings, which
ihew that they have not yet difcovered the art of foldering, or
joining together pieces o f the fame metal by the interpofition of
a fecond, or a compofition o f a fofter nature than thofe to be
united.
As a nation o f artifts, and acquainted with metallurgy, they
are, from all accounts, the pooreft on the face of the earth. They
kpep no kind of cattle. Their country, in fadt, is fo totally
barren and fandy, that no cattle could exift upon it. Though
the Damaras are obvioully the fame race o f people as the Kaffers,
and thefe, as has in a former chapter been conjedtured, o f Arabic
origin, yet there is no neceflity o f tracing them back to a more
refined nation, in order to account from whence they might have
obtained the art of reducing copper ore into a metallic ftate.
The accidental difcovery is full as likely to have happened, as the
Phenician ftory of the invention of glafs related by Pliny.