Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/198

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Bakone country to the north, where, say they, their footmarks are still to be seen in the indurated which was at that time sand." This is Dr. Moffat's account.[1] Dr. Moffat could not believe the wondrous tale, but then the natives could not believe his version of creation, thinking it, as he says, "fabulous, extra-agant, and ludicrous." But Dr. Moffat not being in the neighbourhood of Paradise, could not produce such evidence as his Bushman opponent, who said, "I will show you the footsteps of the very first man." This was not the magician who said candidly to the same missionary, "It needs wisdom to deceive so many; you and I know that."

Neighbours of the Bushmen, but more fortunate in their wealth of sheep and cattle, are the Ovaherero. The myths of the Ovaherero, a tribe dwelling in a part of Hereraland "which had not yet been under the influence of civilisation and Christianity," have been studied by the Rev. H. Reiderbecke, missionary at Otyozondyupa. The Ovaherero, he says, have a kind of tree Ygdrasil, a tree out of which men are born, and this plays a great part in their myth of creation. The tree, which still exists, though at a great age, is called the Omumborombonga tree. Out of it came, in the beginning, the first man and woman. Oxen stepped forth from it too, but baboons, as Caliban says of the stars, "came otherwise," and sheep and goats sprang from a flat rock. Black people are so coloured, according to the Ovaherero, because when the first parents emerged from the tree and slew an ox, the

  1. Missionary Labours, p. 263.