Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to enclose the body of a beast as big as a large colt of a twelve month
old.
25
Zebras had been written of before in bestiaries, along with uni-
corns and griffins. Dampier was one of the first to essay a more sci-
entific description.
The local people were equally fascinating though, in Dampier's
opinion, far less attractive:
The Hottentots do wear no covering on their heads, but deck their
hair with small shells. Their garments are sheepskins wrapped about
their shoulders like a mantle, with the woolly sides next their bod-
ies. The men have beside this mantle a piece of skin like a small ap-
ron, hanging before them. The women have another skin tucked about
their waists, which comes down to their knees like a petticoat; and
their legs are wrapped round with sheeps-guts two or three inches
thick, some up as high as to their calves, others even from their feet
to their knees, which at a small distance seems to be a sort of boots.
These are put on when they are green; and so they grow hard and stiff
on their legs, for they never pull them off again, till they have occasion
to eat them; which is when they journey from home, and have no other
food; then these guts which have been worn, it may be, six, eight, ten
or twelve months, make a good banquet: this I was informed of by the
Dutch. They never pull off their sheepskin garments, but to louse them-
selves, for by continual wearing them they are full of vermin, which ob-
liges them often to strip and sit in the sun two or three hours together
in the heat of the day, to destroy them
.
26
Captain Heath's problem was hiring enough seamen to make up
his depleted crew. He hoped to obtain some from other homeward-
bound vessels but they were in as dire a case as the
Defence.
Eventu-
ally, he had to resort to stealth, contracting with outward-bound men
