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Scaling
Your Startup
Mastering the Four Stages
from Idea to $10 Billion
—
Peter S. Cohan
SCALING YOUR STARTUP

MASTERING THE FOUR STAGES

FROM IDEA TO $10 BILLION

Peter S. Cohan
Scaling Your Startup: Mastering the Four Stages from Idea to $10 Billion
Peter S. Cohan
Marlborough, MA
USA
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-4311-4 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-4312-1
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4312-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930174
Copyright © 2019 by Peter S. Cohan
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the
whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting,
reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other
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and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no
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The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even
if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or
not they are subject to proprietary rights.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the
date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any
legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no
warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
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Printed on acid-free paper
To Robin.
Contents
About the Author ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� vii
Acknowledgments����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ix
Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xi

Part I: Exploring the Scaling Model ����������������������������������1

Chapter 1: Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 3
Chapter 2: Creating Growth Trajectories �����������������������������������������������21
Chapter 3: Raising Capital�������������������������������������������������������������������������53
Chapter 4: Sustaining Culture �����������������������������������������������������������������89
Chapter 5: Redefining Job Functions�����������������������������������������������������123
Chapter 6: Hiring, Promoting, and Letting People Go ���������������������������153
Chapter 7: Holding People Accountable�������������������������������������������������� 179
Chapter 8: Coordinating Processes�������������������������������������������������������201
Part II: Implications for Leaders ������������������������������������ 229
Chapter 9: What’s Next?�������������������������������������������������������������������������231
Appendix A: Notes�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������243

Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������267
About the Author
Peter S. Cohan is Lecturer of Strategy at Babson
College. He teaches strategy and entrepreneurship
to undergraduate and MBA students at Babson
College. He is the founding principal of Peter S.
Cohan & Associates, a management consulting
and venture capital firm. He has completed over
150 growth strategy consulting projects for global
technology companies and invested in seven
startups—three of which were sold for over $2
billion. Peter has written 13 books and writes
columns on entrepreneurship for Forbes, Inc,
and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Prior to
starting his firm, he worked as a case team leader
for Harvard Business School professor Michael
Porter’s consulting firm and taught at MIT, Stanford, and the University of Hong
Kong. Peter earned an MBA from Wharton, did graduate work in computer
science at MIT, and holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Swarthmore College.
Acknowledgments
This book has benefited greatly from the help of many people.
I could not have embarked on this project without the enthusiastic support of
Nan Langowitz, who chairs the Management Division at Babson. My Babson
colleagues Alana Anderson, Renee Graham, Alexandra Nesbeda, and Sam
Hariharhan provided helpful suggestions.
Without Apress this book would not exist. I am most grateful to Shivangi
Ramachandran for her enthusiastic support of the idea for this book and for
the outstanding editing and project management help from Laura Berendson
and Rita Fernando Kim.
Finally, I could not have completed this book without the help of my wife,
Robin, who patiently read and commented on many of the chapters and my
children, Sarah and Adam, who always make me proud.
Introduction
I wrote this book because there is nothing more important to startup success
than a leader’s ability to scale it. I came to this realization while writing Startup
Cities (Apress, 2018) where I saw that what makes the difference between the
few startup hubs and the many that aspire to be is the relatively high propor-
tion of CEOs who can turn a business idea into a large company. More specifi-
cally, I noticed that cities vary in their mix of three kinds of business leaders:

• Amblers (who start and run businesses that employ

friends and family),
• Sprinters (who can turn a business idea into a company
that grows fast and is bought by a larger firm), and
• Marathoners (who turn an idea into a huge, fast-growing,
publicly-traded company that supports the creation of
local startups).
While there are a few marathoners with no prior startup experience, such as
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who reach this pinnacle,
most sprinters and marathoners learn their leadership skills through a series
of corporate and startup jobs that help them gain the skills they need to turn
an idea into a large company. What’s more, within those categories there are
finer gradations of leadership skills. More specifically, startups go through dis-
tinct stages in their growth from an idea into a large company, whether they
are acquired or go public. The three kinds of business leaders relate differ-
ently to the four scaling stages. Amblers are not interested in scaling and are
happy to sustain themselves at stage 1. The sprinter wants to get to stage 3
and then do other things, and the marathoner wants to participate in stages
1 to 4.
But regardless of how leaders define these stages, quite frequently, the found-
ers of these startups cannot lead the company through each stage. In most
cases, founders swallow their pride, realizing that they can either remain CEO
and not raise the capital their company needs to survive, or they can give up
the top job. Sometimes those founders leave the company when a new CEO
joins and sometimes they stick around as chief technology officer and report
to that new CEO. Often such deposed founders learn from the experience,
either by role modeling from the new CEO or by consulting mentors about
xii Introduction

what they could have done more effectively, so they become better leaders.
If that happens, they might become a CEO of another company where their
newfound know-how can help them achieve a successful exit.
Simply put, scaling skills are important and they are in big demand among
entrepreneurs, investors, and cities. As a teacher of entrepreneurship, I need
good material on how to scale effectively to prepare students for the real
world. As we’ll see later in this book, there is good material on parts of the
scaling process, such as how a startup can win its first customers. However,
there is no comprehensive framework that explains all the stages and tools
available to leaders seeking to turn an idea into a large company. Creating such
a framework is the goal of this book.

Who Will Benefit From This Book

Scaling is of primary importance to entrepreneurs, employees, customers,
partners, and capital providers and of secondary interest to government poli-
cymakers and universities. Here are the reasons for scaling’s importance to
each group:

• Entrepreneurs. Founders want to turn their ideas into

companies that change the world. They also want the
economic benefits that come with owning a substantial
piece of a very valuable company. Both goals can only be
realized if the company’s CEO is capable of scaling it.
• Employees. A startup’s employees are generally enthu-
siastic about its vision, want to learn from outstanding
leaders and peers, and according to my interviews with
Silicon Valley executives and investors, are increasingly
impatient about cashing in on their stock options. These
outcomes can only be achieved if the company scales.
• Customers. A startup’s customers may have a mixed
attitude towards scaling. If the startup can lower its costs
and boost the value of its products for customers, then
customers are likely to benefit from the startup’s effec-
tive scaling. Moreover, if the company grows to the point
where it can go public, then the customer may benefit
since the capital provided will increase the odds that the
startup will survive. Scaling could have a downside for
customers if it keeps the startup from developing new
products and delivering excellent service.
  xiii

• Partners, particularly suppliers, may benefit as a startup

scales. In general, the bigger the startup, the more sup-
plies it will purchase. If the supplier can satisfy the grow-
ing demand and become more efficient in the process
of scaling, then it may pass along some of the cost sav-
ings to the startup in the form of lower prices. On the
other hand, if the supplier becomes too dependent on
the startup for its revenues, the startup may use its bar-
gaining power to force the supplier to slash prices.
• Capital providers can only realize a return on their
investment if a startup scales to the point where it is
acquired or goes public. If the acquirer has a record of
boosting the sales of acquired startups’ products, the
investor may be better off accepting the acquirer’s stock.
However, if the startup’s CEO has the potential to be
a marathoner, capital providers will be better off if the
startup can keep scaling after its IPO.
• Universities can benefit from developing courses about
startup scaling, particularly if they already sponsor incuba-
tors and startup competitions or teach entrepreneurship.
If universities can provide scaling skills to more graduates,
their alumni may achieve greater career success. This
would burnish the university’s reputation and potentially
enrich its endowment (if the successful entrepreneurs
donate to the university).
• Government policymakers may benefit if more of
their local entrepreneurs became sprinters or marathon-
ers, an outcome that would be more likely if local founder
were better at scaling.

Scaling Research
To gain a deeper understanding of how to scale successfully, I set out to answer
the following questions:

• Are there specific traits typical of CEOs who will become

sprinters or marathoners?
• How do such CEOs define the revenue tiers that their
startup will reach as it scales? (My interviews with CEOs
revealed that each CEO has different revenue tiers.
Therefore, I reframed the question to focus on the prin-
cipal business goals of each scaling stage.)
xiv Introduction

• How should CEOs create and sustain a culture that helps

their startup to scale?
• What growth trajectories are most likely to turn an idea
into a large company?
• What are the best sources of capital for each of a scaling
startup’s revenue tiers and how do the most effective
CEOs persuade these capital providers to invest?
• How do effective CEOs redefine jobs as their startups
scale?
• How do they decide whom to hire, promote, and let go
at each revenue tier?
• How do effective CEOs set goals as a startup scales and
hold everyone accountable for achieving those goals?
• How do CEOs change the way they coordinate processes
as their startup scales?
• How do CEOs decide whether they should continue to
lead their company as it scales?
To investigate these questions and refine my scaling model, I interviewed 88
CEOs and 6 venture capital investors in Boston/Cambridge, Silicon Valley, Tel
Aviv, and Munich. I sought founders and investors who could describe their
experience with the seven startup scaling levers. For each lever, I looked for
successful and unsuccessful case studies at each of the four scaling stages.

The Scaling Roadmap

This book presents the findings of this research in two sections.
Part I. Exploring the Scaling Model
Chapters 2 through 8 examine more deeply each of the seven startup scal-
ing levers: creating growth trajectories (Chapter 2), raising capital (Chapter 3),
sustaining culture (Chapter 4), redefining job functions (Chapter 5), hiring,
promoting, and letting people go (Chapter 6), holding people accountable
(Chapter 7), and coordinating processes (Chapter 8).
For each of these chapters, Section I covers the following topics
• Definition of the startup scaling lever
• Summary of the chapter’s key takeaways
• Case studies of successful and less successful efforts to use
the startup scaling lever at each of the four scaling stages
 Introduction xv

• Lessons learned from the cases about what to do and

what to avoid
• Questions to spur action
• Conclusion
Part II. Implications for Leaders
This second section of the book consists of its concluding chapter which sum-
marizes the key insights from the preceding chapters to help leaders decide
whether they should continue as CEO and if so, what they should do to take
it to the next staging scale. Chapter 9
• Presents the seven principles of scaling
• Describes how founders can assess their company’s read-
iness to scale by calculating its scaling quotient
If you want to turn your idea into a $10 billion company, read on.
 PA R T

Exploring the
Scaling Model
 CHAPTER

Introduction
Scaling is how leaders transform a business idea into a large company. Leaders
accomplish this transformation by positioning the company to capture growth
opportunities while reinventing the company as it grows.
A startup draws resources from outside stakeholders, and the relationships
with those stakeholders vary depending on the startup’s stage of development.
This is depicted in Figure 1-1.

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Figure 1-1. Scaling stages and startup stakeholders

© Peter S. Cohan 2019

P. S. Cohan, Scaling Your Startup, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4312-1_1
4 Chapter 1 | Introduction

Before describing how startup’s relationships with these stakeholders evolve

as it scales, it is worth exploring the seven levers available to a startup CEO
seeking to hurdle each of the stages, as depicted in Figure 1-2.

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Figure 1-2. Seven startup scaling levers

Startup scaling works most effectively if each of these processes changes as

the company grows. To be sure, some of the processes must change more
radically than others. For example, if the founder remains CEO, a startup’s
culture, which infuses the other processes, remains largely unchanged. And
what changes as the company grows is how the CEO keeps the culture alive.
However, the other six processes must be uprooted and transformed at each
scaling stage. What follows is a description of each process:
• Creating culture: Culture is what a company’s CEO
and leadership team value most and how the company
uses those values to select, motivate, reward, and let go
people who work there. Companies that scale successfully
 Scaling Your Startup 5

reward employees who take responsibility for building

and sustaining customer relationships as technology,
customer needs, and the competitive landscape evolve.
By contrast, companies that do not scale either have
the wrong culture or fail to sustain the right one. For
example, when a company is small, its first employees
implicitly understand the culture and are in frequent
communication.When a company starts to grow and hire
new people, the culture will only survive if the CEO takes
time to formalize it by explicitly defining the company’s
values, telling stories about each value, communicating
the stories to the company, and using the values to hire,
reward, and let go people. While the company’s culture
is likely to stay the same as long as the CEO remains in
place, the process of sustaining its culture requires the
CEO to formalize and communicate it in a disciplined
way as the company scales.
• Building growth trajectories: As I wrote in my 2017
book, Disciplined Growth Strategies, companies seeking
to sustain their growth must build growth trajectories.
Leaders create growth trajectories by creating chains
from five dimensions of growth: customer group (current
or new), product (built or acquired), geography (current
or new), capabilities (current or new), and culture
(current or new). Companies that scale successfully
excel at planning to jump on a new growth curve in a
new dimension even as their current source of growth
is peaking. By contrast, startups that fail to scale wait
too long to invest in a new dimension, pick the wrong
one, or are simply unsuccessful when they attempt to
expand because their skills do not enable them to win
new customers there.
• Raising capital: Once a startup has figured out its
growth trajectory, the CEO is better positioned to
persuade capital providers to invest. But as I wrote in my
2012 book, Hungry Start-up Strategy, the source of startup
capital varies depending on its stage of development,
which corresponds to the next revenue tier it aspires to
reach. During the prototyping stage, when a company is
trying to fit the features of its product to a specific unmet
customer need, CEOs may want to seek out financing
from founders, friends, family, or possibly crowdsourcing.
In the customer base stage, when a company is seeking
6 Chapter 1 | Introduction

to reach revenues of $25 million to $50 million by adding

many new customers, angel investors may be the best
source of capital. And in the expansion stage, where the
startup may be seeking to reach $100 million in revenue,
venture capitalists may be the best source of funding.
CEOs who can raise capital from the right sources at
each stage of development often scale successfully, while
startups with CEOs who lack this ability often run out of
money before they scale.
• Redefining job functions: As startups grow, leaders
must change their organizations to adapt to the
evolving needs of customers, employees, partners, and
investors. Leaders do this by adding new jobs, changing
existing ones, and eliminating others. For example,
when a startup has a team of 10 or 20 people, they
have a clear idea of the startup’s mission and take it
upon themselves to perform many job functions. As the
company grows, leaders define jobs more narrowly, for
example, by separating the role of the head of human
resources into more specific jobs for recruiting, benefits
administration, and compliance, and adding a chief
people officer role staffed by someone who excels at
leading people in these specific jobs. Successful CEOs
anticipate how job functions must change as a company
scales while less effective leaders wait until a crisis hits
before recognizing the need to change.
• Hiring, promoting, and letting people go: As
startups scale, leaders must fit the right individuals into
these evolving job functions. To do this well, leaders
must hire talented people who have succeeded in
these roles before or promote current employees into
these jobs. At the same time, leaders must part ways
with people who no longer fit within the redefined
organization, which can be particularly painful for
founders who must let go people with whom they have
worked for years. Successful CEOs constantly monitor
how well people are performing in their evolving roles,
are actively engaged in recruiting and training key
talent, and firing those who no longer fit, while less
effective leaders resist the need to evaluate how well
people are performing and are reluctant to replace
long-time colleagues.
 Scaling Your Startup 7

• Holding people accountable: As a company adds

business functions, it becomes more difficult for a leader to
give each person specific goals and hold them accountable
for achieving those goals. For example, to scale a startup,
the CEO may seek to increase its revenues in a given year
from $25 million to $50 million. And while it may be easy
to assign a portion of that desired revenue growth to
each sales person, it is more challenging to determine the
specific goals for people in product development, human
resources, customer service, and other non-revenue-
generating functions. Successful CEOs establish and apply
rigorous processes that hold all people accountable for
contributing to the startup’s growth goals. Such processes
assure that each person is willing to strive toward their
goals, and the CEO must be confident that achieving
the targets will boost the startup’s scale. Less successful
leaders lack such formal processes or do not implement
them rigorously. As a result, their startups are at higher
risk of stagnation.
• Coordinating processes: CEOs organize people
into departments by function and hold them
accountable for corporate goals. While such functional
specialization boosts efficiency in each department, it
can also motivate leaders of each function to gain more
resources by taking them from other departments.
Unless CEOs create and manage processes to encourage
departments to work together, the disadvantages of
specialization can overwhelm the advantages. Simply
put, leaders make the best use of a company’s talent
by first differentiating and then integrating. And to
scale their companies, the most successful CEOs
achieve corporate goals through business processes
such as adding new customers, increasing revenue per
customer, hiring and motivating top talent, and scaling
the culture globally. Less successful leaders struggle to
create such formal processes as their companies scale,
which makes their companies less efficient and slower
to adapt to change.
Let’s examine now how startups use the seven scaling levers to interact with
stakeholder at each stage.
8 Chapter 1 | Introduction

Stage 1: Winning the First Customers

Every startup begins with an idea, and the best startup ideas alleviate customer
pain better than any other product available to those customers. In this first
scaling phase, the founder has no employees, investors, or partners and may have
brought on a cofounder or two from among the pool of potential employees.
To boost the odds for success, the founder should bring on cofounders who
complement their strengths, performing well the specific activities that are
important to the venture’s growth but are not the founder’s strengths.
Once a startup has an idea, it should seek its first customer. To do that, the
founder must build a prototype, share it with potential customers, get feedback,
build a better version, and repeat the process until the first customer finds the
product worth buying. Once the startup has its first customer and customer
research suggesting that more will buy, the founder should
• Develop a growth trajectory and raise capital by
seeking out seed investment, possibly from the founder’s
capital, friends, family, or crowdfunding. To raise capital,
the founder must articulate a growth trajectory and
develop and execute a capital-raising strategy.
• Create a culture, define job functions, and develop
a hiring process. Once raised, the founder should use
the capital to hire employees with skills in fields such as
product development, sales, and marketing. Before hiring
those employees, the founder must articulate the firm’s
culture, define general job functions, and create a process
for hiring and motivating talent.

Stage 2: Building a Scalable Business Model

In Stage 2 of the scaling process, the founder seeks to generate tens of millions
of dollars’ worth of revenue by selling the first product to many customers
while developing repeatable processes that will lower the startup’s costs and
increase the company’s value to customers as the startup grows. To do this,
the founder must

• Refine the company’s growth trajectory. The

founder must next develop a more specific growth
trajectory, making clear choices about its revenue and
market share goals. The founder should decide which
customer groups the startup will target; how it will make,
sell, and service its product; and how it will identify and
manage supply and marketing partnerships. Finally, the
founder must estimate how much capital the startup will
need to achieve its goals.
 Scaling Your Startup 9

• Raise more capital. The founder must gather additional

capital from investors who have achieved success in
industries similar to the startup’s and are eager to help
prepare the company for rapid growth.
• Articulate culture. Since the company will begin hiring
many new employees, the CEO, who may still be the
founder, must articulate and communicate the culture
more formally.
• Define specialist jobs. In addition, the CEO must define
all jobs more specifically, recognizing that the company is
transitioning from mostly generalists to more specialists.
• Refine hiring processes. The CEO must assess
and improve the hiring process to keep the company
competitive in the battle for talent.
• Set and monitor goals companywide. The CEO
should create processes and systems that encourage
people to agree to meet and measure goals, the
achievement of which will help the company grow.
• Introduce coordinating processes. Finally, the
CEO must create processes that coordinate the work
of specialized functions such as product development,
marketing, selling, service, and order fulfillment in a
way that boosts efficiency and increases customers’
perception of the value of the startup’s products as the
company scales.

Stage 3: Sprinting to Liquidity

In Stage 3, the CEO seeks to reach at least $100 million in revenue and a
valuation of over $1 billion, which can generally give the startup’s investors an
exit through acquisition, if the CEO is a sprinter, or going public. To expand
rapidly, the CEO must be confident that the startup’s positioning and processes
will lower its costs and boost the value of its products to customers as the
company accelerates. To that end the CEO must

• Build a global growth trajectory. To achieve rapid

expansion, the CEO must next develop a growth
trajectory that sets specific revenue goals and makes
clear choices about sources of revenue from current
and new customer groups, current and new geographies,
built and acquired products, and current and new
capabilities.
10 Chapter 1 | Introduction

• Raise more capital. The global growth trajectory

should help the CEO develop an investor pitch deck
which includes revenue and market share goals; choices
about sources of revenue; how the company will make,
sell, and service its product; how it will develop and
manage supply and marketing partnerships; how much
capital the startup will need to achieve its goals; and how
it will provide a return for investors. The CEO should
meet and pitch venture capital investors who embrace
the CEO’s vision and can offer capital, contacts, and
advice to help achieve the vision.
• Articulate its culture. When the company goes global,
it must pick a global language for communicating and then
articulate the culture in that language while telling stories
that global employees find compelling.
• Define global jobs. The CEO must focus on hiring and
motivating global general managers and help them to
define the mix of specialist and generalist jobs that will
be needed to achieve the startup’s goals in each country.
As the company adds new products, the CEO must hire
people to build those products and/or acquire companies
that have done so already.
• Refine global hiring processes, set and monitor
goals globally, and introduce global coordinating
processes. The CEO must adapt the company’s processes
for hiring, setting, and monitoring the achievement of goals,
and coordinating work to satisfy the cultural and other
differences across each country in which the startup operates.

Stage 4: Running the Marathon

In Stage 4, the CEO seeks to keep the company growing rapidly after it goes
public. For the CEO to be a marathoner like Jeff Bezos, rather than a founder
like Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel, whose company struggled following its IPO, the
CEO must

• Build a high-speed growth trajectory. To continue to

expand rapidly after its IPO, the CEO must set ambitious
growth goals and chain together growth trajectories
including current and new customer groups, current
and new geographies, built and acquired products,
and current or new capabilities. Often such growth
trajectories depend on capabilities and culture that lead
 Scaling Your Startup 11

to high customer retention coupled with adding adjacent

products that loyal customers want to buy and expanding
into new customer groups.
• Raise more capital. By going public, a company will
have easier access to the capital it needs to build its
growth trajectories; it will be able to sell more stock if
needed or borrow money to finance acquisitions.
• Formalize its culture. As Jeff Bezos has done with
Amazon, CEOs must define clearly their company’s values
and apply formal processes for key activities ranging from
hiring, rewarding, and firing people to structuring meetings
in order to motivate employees to act according to the
company’s values. Because a public company has so many
employees, the CEO must hold meetings virtually through
electronic, video, and one-to-many dialogues.
• Create and manage cross-functional teams. To keep
a public company growing, the CEO must create dozens of
cross-functional teams to take charge of specific business
challenges, such as developing new products, sustaining
high customer satisfaction, expanding into new countries,
integrating acquisitions, and recruiting and motivating top
talent. To keep growing, a public company needs functional
experts who can lead the execution of key repeatable
processes such as closing sales and creating financial reports.
• Lead formal planning and reporting processes.
The CEO must adapt the company’s processes for
hiring, setting, and monitoring the achievement of goals
and coordinating work to satisfy the cultural and other
differences across each country in which the startup
operates.To that end, CEOs must lead long-term strategic
planning processes that encourage teams to buy into the
company’s financial targets and strategic initiatives; to
prepare annual budgets; to meet quarterly to compare
actual progress with budget results; and to take corrective
action where needed.

Case Study: ThoughtSpot Grows to Over

250 People
This scaling model seems to be applicable to real startups. An example is Palo
Alto, California-based ThoughtSpot, a provider of operations information to
help companies cut costs and boost revenues. ThoughtSpot CEO Ajeet Singh
has the distinction of founding another company, Nutanix, a publicly traded
12 Chapter 1 | Introduction

information storage company, and his 4% stake was worth $280 million as
of March 6, 2018, the day I interviewed him. As we’ll see in Chapter 3, such
success is very helpful for a founder’s efforts to raise capital for a new startup.
In 2012, Singh started ThoughtSpot “to help him realize his vision to deliver
analytics at human scale to 20 million users by 2020.” ThoughtSpot grew
quickly. In the 12 months ending in November 2017, its customer count grew
227%, including 32 Fortune 500 companies and 12 Fortune 100 companies.
Customers willing to share publicly that they worked with ThoughtSpot
included Amway, De Beers, Chevron, Miami Children’s Hospital, Bed Bath &
Beyond, and Capital One.ThoughtSpot’s headcount increased 67% to over 250
and it opened new offices in Seattle and Bangalore to add to its headquarters in
Palo Alto and its EMEA headquarters in London. At the time,ThoughtSpot was
continuing to grow. As Singh said in a March 2, 2018 interview, “We exceeded
our plan for the year ending January 30 and we’re growing at an excellent rate.
We are selling well with the largest 5,000 global companies, who make up 70%
of the spend on analytics and business intelligence technology.”
The secret to ThoughtSpot’s growth was that Singh thought in terms of four
revenue growth tiers that stepped up by a factor of 10. And reaching the next
tier was such an ambitious undertaking that many aspects of the company
needed to be rethought. “I think in terms of four growth tiers: from $0 to $1
million in quarterly revenue; from $1 million to $10 million per quarter; from
$10 million to $100 million per quarter; and from $100 million to $1 billion
per quarter.” To scale ThoughtSpot, Singh followed six principles:
• Maintain a growth culture but change the way it
is communicated. If a company achieves initial success,
there is value in maintaining its culture as it scales. Singh
believes that the founders’ values determine a company’s
culture but as the company grows, new employees will
not intuitively grasp those values unless the company
communicates those values in a systematic way.
• Change the mix of people as you scale. Early in a
company’s development it needs builders—people who
are willing to take on many different roles and are eager
to do whatever necessary to get the company off the
ground. At some point, such people are no longer useful
because they resist formal processes, so the CEO must
replace some of them with scalers or formal process
experts. As Singh said, “In the $1 million to $10 million
growth tier, a company needs builders. But as it goes from
$10 million to $100 million, the company needs a mixture
of builders and scalers. And as it goes from $100 million
to $1 billion, it needs more maintainers who help keep
customers happy.”
 Scaling Your Startup 13

• Replace generalists with specialists. Along with

changing the mix of people, companies must hire more
specialists as they grow, while encouraging them to team
up to make decisions and take action. “Some generalists can
specialize. But usually they have to be replaced by executives
with specific functional expertise. For example, the executive
in charge of Administration may need to be replaced by a VP
of Finance,VP of Human Resources, and a CFO,” said Singh.
• Make functions accountable for growth. When a
company sets its sights on the next growth tier, different
functions must figure out how their contribution to the
goal should be measured. “It is easy for different functions
to have metrics but not get to the right place. You need
to ask how each function can contribute to the growth
target. For example, customer service might set specific
customer retention targets, sales will have revenue goals,
and country managers will have their own metrics,” said
Singh. “And functions should have leading indicators, such
as the sales pipeline or leads generated by marketing. It’s
important to be realistic about how each function can
contribute to the goal. It is so easy to have a bad metric.”
• Stay connected to global team members. To
grow from, say, $10 million to $100 million and beyond,
companies must expand into new countries. And to
make those country leaders effective, the CEO must
keep them feeling connected. As Singh said, “You have to
empathize with them and realize that it’s a lonely job. You
should give them the flexibility to optimize locally. And
you should set a time for an all-hands meeting that works
for the schedules of those around the world.”
• Keep being CEO if you love the job. It is rare that a
CEO can keep running a company as it scales beyond its
initial public offering. Such marathoners, who can keep a
company they founded growing after it goes public, are
more valuable to a region and to investors than sprinters
who take an idea and build it into a company that gets
acquired. Marathoners like Jeff Bezos keep learning. As
Singh said,“You have to maintain your intellectual curiosity
and be willing to ask for feedback. The key questions
I ask myself are: ‘Do I feel bogged down or not? Am I
having fun? Do people respect me or are they following
orders? Are we hitting our goals? Are good people staying
and doing well?’ Every six months I ask for anonymous
feedback on these questions.”
14 Chapter 1 | Introduction

What Is Different About the Startup

Scaling Model?
Due to the benefits of scaling, recent research suggests that the ability to do
it well is of great interest to entrepreneurs. While many venture capitalists,
consultants, and academics have written about scaling, a comprehensive
framework for scaling remains to be created.
Consider the results of a May 2018 CNBC survey of its Disrupter 50
companies. The survey found that about 30% of respondents said that scaling
the company was their biggest entrepreneurial challenge.The same percentage
found that hiring qualified talent was the biggest challenge. Sadly, the survey
did not define what these CEOs meant by scaling, nor did it examine why
scaling was such a challenge or what scaling levers and practices they found
most useful or most prone to failure.
My interviews with academic experts on scaling reveal a heavy focus on
managing culture, organization, operations, and process as a company grows
and a relative neglect of strategy and capital raising. Yet several academics
concur with the idea that there is a need for a comprehensive framework for
helping founders who want their companies to scale successfully. Here are
several examples:
• Tom Eisenmann, Harvard Business School’s Howard H.
Stevenson Professor of Business Administration, defined
scaling as what happens after a company reaches the
product/market fit stage. He said that practitioners such
as Eric Reis and Steve Blank have provided effective ways
to think about how to reach that stage. As he said, “There
is remarkably little good stuff written about scaling. I see
the need for a framework.” Eisenmann argued that once
a company achieves product/market fit, it is in a stronger
position to seek out resources that it previously did not
control so the CEO can acquire, organize, coordinate,
and manage more resources. Noting that 60% of founders
do not survive their startup’s Series D round of funding,
Eisenmann highlighted various ways that founders fail to
scale. They cannot
• Win customers outside their core market profitably.
• Tell customers, employees, and investors the truth
when their ambitious goals prove out of reach.
• When creating a new business, let go of formal
processes designed for the core.
 Scaling Your Startup 15

• Resolve cultural battles between subgroups such as

the old guard and new employees.
• Be realistic about growth depending on “a cascade
of miracles” such as many uncontrollable factors all
going well.

• Gad Allon, the Jeffrey A. Keswin Professor and Professor

of Operations, Information, and Decisions, and the
Director of the Management and Technology Program
at the University of Pennsylvania, offered key insights
about the importance of designing a business model that
enhances a startup’s competitive advantage as it scales.
For example, Allon explained, “The most successful
founders are good at product, organization, or in rare
cases both. Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel (Snap), and Reid
Hoffman (LinkedIn) focus on product. Organization was
not always top of mind or their greatest skill. So they
brought in others to help with organization. Zuckerberg
hired Sheryl Sandberg and Hoffman hired Jeff Weiner.”
Bezos is the rare individual who can do both. “Bezos was
always thinking both about how to develop products and
how to build an organization. For example, with Amazon
Fresh, Bezos wanted to start small, trying to optimize
the logistics of grocery delivery work in Seattle before
expanding to San Francisco where he realized that he
needed to organize by zip code.” Allon argued that
companies should scale only after the CEO has built a
business model that will yield lower costs and greater
customer value as the company gets bigger. He highlighted
three key principles:
• Supply-side economies of scale: “Before scaling,
companies must figure out how to lower their cost
of acquiring and servicing customers as they grow.
For example, Amazon achieved economies of scale
by building a massive infrastructure and pooling
inventory in a small number of locations,” he said.
• Demand-side economies of scale: Startups
should also capture what he called demand-side
economies of scale. “To scale efficiently, companies
must tap into network effects that make their product
more valuable to customers and more difficult for
competitors trying to lure away their customers for
every new one they add to their network.”
16 Chapter 1 | Introduction

• Hot cause, cool solution: Another scaling

challenge is creating a compelling corporate culture
and effective performance measurements. “Effective
scaling also depends on having a hot cause (a
purpose that talented people find compelling) and
a cool solution (an effective set of performance
metrics that drive people to realize the company’s
goals),” he said.

• Bob Sutton, a Professor of Organizational Behavior

who has a courtesy appointment at Stanford Business
School and tenure at Stanford’s School of Engineering,
provided useful insights into how culture and process can
help leaders to manage a growing organization:
• Use culture to get work done the right way.
A company like Amazon with a strong culture can
scale because smart people can decide without
getting top management’s input. As Sutton said
“Mindset is the agreement about what is good and
bad behavior. When I meet with companies, I ask
two questions: ‘What’s sacred?’ and ‘What’s taboo?’
When I asked those questions at Amazon everyone
instantly agreed: the customer is sacred and wasting
money is taboo (Amazon is really, really cheap).”
• Do more with less. To manage growing teams,
he thinks companies ought to be vigilant about
subtracting processes that impede organizational
effectiveness. As he said, “The best leaders treat it
as a problem of more and less—they are always
looking for things to subtract that don’t work any
longer, that never worked, and that are getting in
the way.” For example, in 2013 Dropbox sent out a
companywide email entitled “Armeetingeddon has
landed,” which eliminated all regularly scheduled
meetings.
• Slow down before speeding up. “When [traffic
app] Waze raised a $35 million Series B round, its
CEO Noam Bardin noticed that only 5% to 6% of
the people who downloaded the app were still using
it. He focused everyone on figuring out what was
wrong with the software and what needed to be
fixed.You can’t scale excellence if you don’t have
excellence to scale,” said Sutton.
 Scaling Your Startup 17

• Jeffrey Rayport, Harvard Business School Senior

Lecturer, suggested that the most successful CEOs combine
excellence in creating a compelling vision and in getting
into the details of strategy execution. Rayport, who met
Jeff Bezos in the 1990s, noticed that he was unique among
the most successful founders in combining both attributes
and that he was a voracious learner. Rayport also offered
keen insights on several topics including the following:
• Scaling culture: As he said, “Culture is not about
being nostalgic about the good old days when there
were no formal meetings and no HR department.
It’s not one and done. As a company goes from
10 to 100 to 200 to 1,000 people, you might have
the same values, such as integrity, transparency,
teamwork, accountability, passion, and energy. But
those are all outputs. For the culture to scale, you
need to know what management levers you can pull
to get people to act according to those values. For
example, Bezos has physical, tangible rituals, such as
leaving an empty chair at meetings for the customer
and asking everyone to read a six-page memo
prepared for a meeting before it begins.”
• Strategy changes with scale: “It’s smart to look
at the stages as relating to the different funding
rounds, such as seed, Series A, B, and so on. The first
stage is before you have product/market fit, at which
point you are trying to raise seed capital from angel
investors. Once you have product/market fit, which
means customers are willing to pay for your product
and you can scale up with profitable unit economics,
you should capitalize to get big fast,” said Rayport.

• Shikhar Ghosh, HBS Professor of Management Practice,

believes that as startups get bigger, their leaders must
change how they manage the organization. He noted that
these break points occur at powers of three, for example,
30, 90, 270, or 810 employees. Effective leaders must
• Manage the tension between process and
culture. According to Ghosh, “Managers come
into the company and they want to create formal
processes. But processes work for activities like
accounting and not so well for creative work where
18 Chapter 1 | Introduction

it is better to set goals and let people figure out

how to get there. Size often demands more formal
processes, which is at odds with the history and
mythology of the company, such as the idea that
everyone worked 24 hours a day for a week before
the end of a quarter in order to meet goals.”
• Let go to go further. When a company gets
bigger, the leader has to accept that new talent will
do things differently—and make mistakes. But if the
leader does not let go, the company will not be able
to scale. As Ghosh said, “If the founder continues
to be the chief problem solver, the people he hires
to run, say, an operation in a new city will never
become effective leaders. Instead, the founder
should accept that as you create a new subgroup,
there’s a V-curve.You will initially get less efficient.
But after the subgroup makes mistakes and learns,
it becomes more efficient and reaches a limit. If you
intervene, you do worse.”
• Make a common purpose stronger than
chaos. As a company scales, the leader should
make sure that the centripetal forces are stronger
than the centrifugal ones. “As a company grows, it
gets more specialized. Specific business functions
want to optimize themselves, which pulls the
company apart. The only way to keep functions
like engineering, finance, sales, and so on together
is to continuously remind everyone of the
company’s purpose, mission, values, and desired
behaviors,” he said.
• Ranjay Gulati, Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo
Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business
School, argued that scaling can only happen if leaders add
structure and processes and formalize culture, According
to Gulati, “Firms must hire functional experts to take the
enterprise to the next level, add management structures
to accommodate increased head count while maintaining
informal ties across the organization, build planning and
forecasting capabilities, and spell out and reinforce the
cultural values that will sustain the business.This approach
to scaling will make a firm more efficient and help it find
and exploit new opportunities.”
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
much as forty. These were generally choked up with sand, and it
often occupied us half a day to clean them out. I remember, on one
occasion, working hard, with a party consisting of about thirty men
and women, during upward of twenty hours, before we could obtain
a sufficiency of water. It was cold work; for about sunrise the ice
was often half an inch thick, and we had no waterproof boots to
protect our feet.
Game now became abundant. We managed to kill sufficient for
the table without being obliged to have recourse to our few
remaining live-stock. I saw here for the first time that magnificent
antelope, the eland.
Beasts of prey were likewise numerous. Indeed, they always
follow the larger game. During the nights we were constantly
annoyed by the dismal howlings of the hyænas; and we had some
very exciting foot-chases after these animals.
While out hunting early one morning I espied a small troop of
gnoos quietly grazing at a bend of the river. Cautiously approaching
them under shelter of the intervening ground, they suddenly tossed
their heads, switched their tails, scraped the earth impatiently with
their hoofs, and sniffed the air. I was puzzled how to account for this
unusual agitation, as, from my position, I was certain they could not
have discovered me. But I had not much time for conjecture, for the
next instant I was startled by the growl of some animal close to me.
On looking in the direction whence it proceeded, I discovered, to my
utter astonishment, two lions and a lioness on the rising ground just
above me, and, as it seemed, they also were on the look-out for the
gnoos.[30] I instinctively leveled my piece at the head of the nearest
of the beasts; but a moment’s reflection convinced me that the odds
were too great, and I therefore thought it best to reserve my fire, so
as to be in readiness to receive them should they charge. After
having regarded me for a few seconds, however, they growlingly
disappeared behind a sand-hill.
By this time the gnoos had become aware of the lions, and were
making off at the top of their speed. Being anxious to obtain a shot
at them, I followed on their tracks, but soon found, to my dismay,
that my three royal friends, with jaws distended and uttering furious
growls, were following a course parallel to mine. Though I must
confess I did not at all like their looks, as only excessive hunger
could have induced them, in broad day, to seek for victims, I
nevertheless continued to follow the tracks of the antelopes until
they led me into the bush, where I presently lost them as well as
myself.

UNWELCOME HUNTING COMPANIONS.

On first seeing the gnoos, I left my henchman “Bill,” a Damara lad,

who carried my spare gun, at some distance behind, with directions
to follow on my track according to circumstances. Now that the
gnoos were lost to me, I shouted loudly to the youth, and also
discharged my gun more than once, but was unable to elicit a reply.
Thinking, however, that he might have returned to our encampment
(which was at no great distance), I also repaired there. But “Bill” had
not been heard of. The harassing suspicion at once crossed my mind
that the lions had eaten him. Without a moment’s delay, I hurried
back to the spot where I had last seen the beasts, but all my
endeavors to find the poor fellow were unavailing. What with anxiety
on his account, and my exertions under a broiling sun (for if the
weather was frosty at night, it calcined one by day), I was unable to
proceed farther, and sat myself down on the ground to wait for the
arrival of the wagons, which were now moving forward. Just at this
moment, the Damara, to my inexpressible delight, emerged from the
bush. His story was soon told. He had, like myself, lost his way, and
it was long before he was able to recover the right track.
One morning, as we were about to yoke the oxen, we were
amused to see them suddenly start off in every direction in the
wildest confusion, and cutting the most ridiculous capers. The cause
of this commotion was the arrival of a large flock of the buphaga
Africana, which alighted on the backs of the cattle for the purpose of
feeding on the ticks with which their hides are covered. By means of
their long claws and elastic tails, these birds are enabled to cling to
and search every part of the beast. It was evident, however, that our
oxen had never experienced a similar visitation; no wonder,
therefore, that they were taken somewhat aback at being thus
unceremoniously assailed.
The buphaga Africana is also a frequent companion of the
rhinoceros, to which, besides being of service in ridding him of many
of the insects that infest his hide, it performs the important part of
sentinel. On many occasions has this watchful bird prevented me
from getting a shot at that beast. The moment it suspects danger, it
flies almost perpendicularly up into the air, uttering sharp, shrill
notes, that never fail to attract the attention of the rhinoceros, who,
without waiting to ascertain the cause, almost instantly seeks safety
in a precipitate flight. According to Mr. Cumming, these birds also
attend upon the hippopotamus.
 Another bird (textor erythrorhynchus) is also in the habit of
feeding upon parasitical insects, but is said to restrict its visits to the
buffalo. In the part of Damara-land of which I am now speaking,
that animal is unknown, yet the bird was in very great numbers. It
appeared to be very social in its habits, living in colonies, and
building its nest, which consists of dry sticks, on lofty trees.
We also made acquaintance with a small, sparrow-looking bird,
the amadina squamifrons, which deserves notice on account of its
peculiar and interesting nest. According to Dr. Andrew Smith, this is
placed on a small shrub, and is constructed of grass. But in Damara-
land and parts adjacent, the materials are of a beautifully soft
texture, not unlike sheep’s wool. I never could discover the plant
from which it was procured. The Hottentots use it as a substitute for
gun-wadding, and it is by no means a bad makeshift. The nest is so
strongly put together that one has difficulty in separating it. When
the old bird absents itself, it effectually conceals the opening of the
nest from view. Even long after I was acquainted with this
peculiarity, I was puzzled to find it out. Just above the entrance is a
small hollow, which has no communication with the interior of the
nest, but which, by the uninitiated, is often mistaken for it. In this
tube the male bird sits at night.
We occasionally fell in with Damara villages. In our journey
northward the natives had shown themselves excessively timid and
suspicious, but now that they had so many evidences of our peaceful
intentions, they approached our camp without the least reserve or
hesitation; but we could not induce them to part with any cattle, of
which we stood much in need.
On the 26th of July we came in sight of Omatako, and many other
well known hills. On the 3d of August we found ourselves at
Schmelen’s Hope; but how different an aspect did it present to that
which lived in our memory! When we left it about three months
previously, the country was covered with the most luxuriant
vegetation. Since then, the Damaras had been encamping there with
their cattle, and we were now unable to obtain sufficient pasturage
for our animals. The water, moreover, was all but exhausted.
On the following day, the 4th of August, we continued our journey
to Barmen, where we arrived on the afternoon of the same day safe
and well.
Thus ended an expedition which, although it might not have been
so successful as we had anticipated, was not without its fruits.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
The Damaras.—Whence they came.—Their Conquests.—The Tide turns.—
Damara-land only partially inhabited.—Climate.—Seasons.—
Mythology.—Religion.—Superstitions.—Marriage.—Polygamy.—
Children.—Circumcision.—Bury their Dead.—Way they mourn.—
Children interred alive.—Burial of the Chief, and Superstitions
consequent thereon.—Maladies.—Damaras do not live long; the
Cause thereof.—Food.—Music and Dancing.—How they swear.—
Power of the Chieftain limited.—Slothful People.—Numerals.—
Astronomy.—Domestic Animals; their Diseases.

Frequent opportunities had by this time been afforded me of

observing and studying the physical features of the country, the
character of the natives, and their religious rites and customs.
Having previously said but little on these subjects, I propose now to
give some account of them. Though, from the lying habits of the
Damaras, great difficulty has arisen in arriving at the truth, I believe
that my statements will not be very wide of the mark. Besides the
concurrent testimony of many of the natives, I have had the
satisfaction, on comparing my notes with those of the missionaries,
to find them agree in the main; and as it has been my fate to
witness the complete ruin and downfall of the Damaras—who,
probably, before another century has passed away will be forgotten
—I think that a connected and somewhat detailed description of
their history may not be unacceptable to the general reader.
That the Damaras have not resided for any length of time in the
country which they now occupy is quite certain, though whence they
came is doubtful. Some of these people point to the north as their
original home; others conjecture that they migrated from the
northeast.[31] Be this as it may, it would appear quite certain that
about seventy years ago not a Damara was to be found south of the
Kaoko, but that, at some time within this period, they invaded the
country, then inhabited by Bushmen and Hill-Damaras, the last being
in all probability the aborigines. Not having a warlike disposition, the
Hill-Damaras were easily subdued, and those who were not killed
were made captives. The few that escaped took refuge among the
mountains, or other inhospitable and inaccessible regions, where
they are still found dragging on a most miserable and degraded
existence.
The Damaras were once, undoubtedly, a great nation; but, unlike
others which gradually become powerful by the union of a number
of smaller tribes under the head of a single chief or king, they have
dwindled into an endless number of petty tribes, ruled by as many
chiefs.
After their conquest of the country, the Damaras continued to
extend themselves, without much opposition, to the east nearly as
far as Lake Ngami, and to about the twenty-fourth degree of latitude
on the south. At both these points, however, they were checked in
their onward career. At first they were attacked by the Matjo’nas,
with whom, from time to time, they had several desperate conflicts;
and though they appear to have fought well, they were ultimately
obliged to retreat with considerable loss. But it was from the
Namaqua-Hottentots that they were destined to experience the
greatest reverse, by whom, as will by-and-by be shown, they were
finally destroyed or broken up.
About the period of the conquest alluded to a small tribe of
Namaqua-Hottentots had pitched their tents on the banks of the
Orange River, under the rule of Jonker Afrikaner,[32] who was then a
chief of only secondary importance; yet, as his people were
possessed of horses and fire-arms, he soon became formidable to
his enemies. The territory lying between him and the Damaras was
occupied by various tribes of Namaquas, who, on finding themselves
hard pressed by the Damaras sent to Jonker to demand his
assistance. This he granted; and, like another Cæsar, “came, saw,
and conquered.” Indeed, that day sealed the fate of Damara-land.
The Namaquas, at first the oppressed, became in their turn the
oppressors. In proportion as they grew powerful and successful, the
prospect of booty, which the vast herds of sleek cattle so amply
afforded them, was the sole object of their inroads upon the
Damaras. They appeared to have adopted the motto of the old sea-
kings,

“That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can.”

From my first arrival in the country to the time I left it—a period of
less than four years—the Namaquas had deprived the Damaras of
fully one half of their cattle, the other portion having already been
taken from them previously to my visit. With the loss of their
property followed that of their independence.
Although a large tract of country is marked on the maps as
Damara-land, a small portion only is inhabitable. This may also be
affirmed of Namaqua-land; and in both cases the disparity arises
either from scarcity of water or the frequency of inextricable jungles
of thorn-wood.
Damara-land being situated in the tropic of Capricorn, the seasons
are naturally the reverse of those in Europe. In the month of August,
when our summer may be said to be at an end, hot westerly winds
begin to blow, which quickly parch up and destroy the vegetation. At
the same time, whirlwinds sweep over the country with tremendous
velocity, driving along vast columns of sand many feet in diameter
and several hundred in height. At times ten or fifteen of these
columns may be seen chasing each other. The Damaras designate
them Orukumb’ombura, or rain-beggars, a most appropriate name,
as they usually occur just before the first rains fall.
Showers, accompanied by thunder and vivid lightning, are not
unusual in the months of September and October, but the regular
rains do not set in till December and January, when they continue
with but slight intermission till May. In this month and June strong
easterly winds prevail, which are not only disagreeable, but injurious
to health. The lips crack, and the skin feels dry and harsh.
Occasionally, at this time, tropical rains fall, but they do more harm
than good, as a sudden cold which annihilates vegetation is
invariably the result. In July and August the nights are the coldest,
and it is then no unusual thing to find ice half an inch thick. Snow is
of rare occurrence.
The Damaras and the Bechuanas have nearly the same notion as
to their origin. Thus the latter believe that the founders of their
nation and the animals of the country emerged from a cave, while
the former declare that they sprung from a tree. When men and
beasts first burst from the parent tree—so runs the tradition—all was
enveloped in profound darkness. A Damara then lit a fire, which so
frightened the zebra, the giraffe, the gnoo, and every other beast
now found wild in the country, that they all fled from the presence of
man, while the domestic animals, such as the ox, the sheep,[33] and
the dog, collected fearlessly round the blazing brands.
The tree from which the Damaras are descended is to be seen,
they say, at a place called Omaruru. But somehow there must be
more than one parent tree, for both in going and coming we met
with several Omumborombongas, all of which the natives treated
with filial affection. [34]
The chief deity of the Damaras is called Omukuru. His abode is
said to be in the far north; but it would be somewhat difficult to
specify his attributes. Each tribe is supposed to have its own
Omukuru, to whom it ascribes all its superstitious habits and
customs, peculiarities, &c. The tribe is divided into castes or
“eandas.” Thus there are Ovakueyuba, those of the sun, or related
to the sun, and Ovakuenombura, those related to the rain, &c., each
of which has its peculiar rites and superstitions. These, moreover,
are derived from the mother, and not from the father. If a man of
the Ovakueyuba marries a woman of the Ovakuenombura, their
offspring adopt the notions, &c., peculiar to the latter, and vice-
versâ. They can not account for this division of castes; they merely
say it is derived from the “wind.” Some religious notions, no doubt,
lie at the bottom of this.
 Though the Damaras do not profess absolutely to believe in a life
hereafter, they have a confused notion of a future state. Thus they
not unfrequently bring provisions to the grave of a deceased friend
or relation, requesting him to eat and make merry. In return, they
invoke his blessing, and pray for success against their enemies, an
abundance of cattle, numerous wives, and prosperity in their
undertakings.
The spirits of deceased persons are believed to appear after
death, but are then seldom seen in their natural form. They usually
assume on such occasions the shape of a dog, having, not
unfrequently, the foot of an ostrich. Any individual to whom such an
apparition (Otjruru) might appear, especially if it should follow and
accost him, is supposed to die soon after.
The Damaras have great faith in witchcraft. Individuals versed in
the black art are called Omundu-Onganga, or Omundu-Ondyai, and
are much sought after. Any person falling sick is immediately
attended by one of these impostors, whose panacea is to besmear
the mouth and the forehead of the patient with the ordure of the
hyæna, which is supposed to possess particularly healing virtues.
The sorcerer, moreover, makes signs and conjurations.
Some very singular superstitions about meat exist among the
Damaras. Thus a man will perhaps not eat the flesh of an ox which
may happen to be marked with black, white, or red spots. Others
refuse to partake of a sheep should it have no horns; while some
would not touch the meat of draft-oxen, according to the rule of the
“canda” to which he belongs. If meat is offered a Damara, he will
accept it; but, before he ventures to eat it, he carefully inquires
about the color of the animal, whether it had horns, &c.; and should
it prove forbidden food, he will in all probability leave it untouched,
even though he might be dying of hunger. Some even carry their
scruples so far as to avoid coming in contact with vessels in which
such food has been cooked; nay, even the smoke of the fire by
which it is prepared is considered injurious. Hence the religious
superstitions of these people often expose them to no small amount
of inconvenience and suffering.
The fat of particular animals is supposed to possess certain
virtues, and is carefully collected and kept in vessels of a peculiar
kind. A small portion of this is given in solution, with water, to
persons who return safely to their homes after a lengthened absence
at the cattle-posts. The chief also makes use of it as an unguent for
his body.
When an ox accidentally dies at a chief’s werft, his daughter (the
offspring, probably, of his favorite or chief wife) ties a double knot
on her leather apron. Should this be neglected, a “curse” is believed
to be the consequence. She also places a piece of wood on the back
of the dead animal, praying at the same time for long life, plenty of
cattle, &c. This woman is called Ondangere, and is to the Damaras
what the vestal was among the ancient Romans; for, besides
attending to the sacrifices, it is her duty to keep up the “holy fire”
(Omurangere).
Outside the chief’s hut, where he is accustomed to sit in the
daytime, a fire is always kept burning; but, in case of rain or bad
weather, it is transferred to the hut of the priestess, who, should it
be deemed advisable to change the site of the village, precedes the
oxen with a portion of this consecrated fire, every possible care
being taken to prevent it from being extinguished. Should, however,
this calamity happen, the whole tribe is immediately assembled, and
large expiatory offerings of cattle are made, after which the fire is
relit in the primitive way, namely, by friction. This again reminds us
of the “holy fire” of the Romans, which, under similar circumstances,
could only be relit by fire from heaven.
A portion of such fire is also given to the head man of a kraal
when about to remove from that of the chief. The duties of a vestal
then devolve on the daughter of the emigrant.
For every wild animal that a young man destroys, his father makes
four small oblong incisions on the front of the son’s body as marks of
honor and distinction. He is, moreover, presented with a sheep or
cow. If either of these should produce young ones, they are
slaughtered and eaten, but only males are allowed to partake of
such food.
The chief of a kraal must always taste the provisions before they
can be eaten by the rest of the tribe. Though sweet milk, when
boiled, may be freely drunk by the women and children, it is more
commonly swallowed in an acid state.
Should a sportsman return from a successful hunt, he takes water
in his mouth, and ejects it three times over his feet, as also in the
fire of his own hearth.
When cattle are required merely for food, they are suffocated; but
if for sacrifices, they are speared to death. On the decease of one of
the tribe, they have also the cruel practice of destroying the poor
beasts with clubs, which I believe to be a kind of expiatory offering.
The flesh of such cattle as are killed on the death of a chief is
principally consumed by his servants.
The women marry at very much the same age as those in Europe,
but few ceremonies are connected with this important affair. A girl is
sometimes betrothed to a man when yet a child, though, under such
circumstances, she remains with her parents till of proper age. The
woman, upon being asked in marriage, puts on a helmet-shaped
head-dress, kept in readiness for such occasions, and for a certain
time hides her face by means of a piece of thin, soft skin attached to
the front of the “casque,” which she can raise or let fall in much the
same manner as a curtain.
Polygamy is practiced to a great extent, and, as has been said
elsewhere, women are bargained for like merchandise, the price
varying according to the circumstances of the husband. Yet, though
a man may have as many wives as he likes, I never knew one to
have more than twenty!—a pretty good supply, however, it must be
admitted.
 The favorite wife always takes precedence of the rest, and, if she
should have a son, he succeeds to his father’s possessions and
authority.
Each wife builds for herself a hut of a semicircular form, the walls
of which consist of boughs, sticks, &c., the whole being plastered
over.
Twins are not uncommon with the Damaras. Children are,
generally speaking, easily reared. During infancy, sheep’s milk
constitutes their chief diet. Their heads are more or less deprived of
hair; the boys are shaved, but the crown of the head of the girls is
left untouched. Even grown-up females follow this custom. To the
hair thus left they attach—not very unlike the Ovambo—thin strings,
made from some fibrous substance.
All males are circumcised, but no particular period of life is
prescribed for this operation, which usually takes place when any
event of national interest occurs.
Children are named after great public incidents; but, as they grow
up, should any circumstance arise of still greater importance to the
community, they are renamed, retaining, however, the original
appellation; and, since there may be no limit to remarkable
transactions, it follows that an individual may have more names than
any Spanish hidalgo can boast.
Between the age of fifteen and twenty, both sexes chip a wedge-
shaped piece of the two centre teeth in the upper jaw, and at a later
period they extract entirely from the lower two or three teeth. The
first operation is usually performed by means of a piece of iron, a
flint, or simply a stone.
The Damaras bury their dead. Immediately after dissolution, the
back bone of the corpse is broken with a stone,[35] and it is then
bent together with the chin resting on the knees. Afterward it is
wrapped in ox-hides, and deposited in a hole in the ground dug for
the purpose, care being taken to place the face toward the north.
This is done, they say, to remind them (the natives) whence they
originally came. The Bechuana mode of disposing of the dead is very
similar.
Upon the death of one of the tribe, the whole population of the
place assemble to deplore the event. The howlings and lamentations
on such occasions are most discordant and dreadful. Tears are
considered favorable signs, and the more plentifully they fall on the
corpse the better. Two months is the usual period for a son to mourn
his father, but the time is modified according to circumstances. The
wealthier the deceased, the greater the outward signs of sorrow—a
kind of feeling which, at any rate, bears some approximation to that
of civilized life. During the season of mourning, the mourner wears a
dark-colored skin cap, conically shaped on the top, with certain
ornaments affixed to it. Round the neck is suspended a “riem,” to
the two extremities of which is attached a small piece of ostrich egg-
shell. In case of the death of a valued friend, the adults will
occasionally shave the head completely, and keep it in that state for
years.
When a woman in reduced circumstances dies and leaves a child,
it is not unfrequently buried alive with its mother. Mr. Rath was once
fortunate enough to be the means of saving a child that was about
to be destroyed in this barbarous manner.
 DAMARA GRAVE.

After having consigned the remains of a chief to his last resting-

place, they collect his arms, war-dress, &c., and suspend them to a
pole or to a tree at the head of the grave. The horns of such oxen as
have been killed in commemoration of the occasion are hung up in
like manner—a custom also found among the natives of Madagascar.
The tomb consists of a large heap of stones, surrounded by an
inclosure of thorn bushes, no doubt to prevent hyænas and other
carnivorous animals from extracting the corpse. Sometimes,
however, the chief, should he have expressed a wish to that effect,
instead of being buried, is placed in a reclining position on a slightly
raised platform in the centre of his own hut, which, in such a case, is
surrounded by stout and strong palisadings.
When a chief feels his dissolution approaching, he calls his sons to
the bedside, and gives them his benediction, which consists solely in
wishing them an abundance of the good things of this world.
The eldest son of the chief’s favorite wife succeeds his father; and
as soon as the obsequies are over, he quits the desolate spot,
remaining absent for years. At last, however, he returns, and
immediately proceeds to his parent’s grave, where he kneels down,
and, in a whispering voice, tells the deceased that he is there with
his family, and the cattle that he gave him. He then prays for long
life, also that his herds may thrive and multiply; and, in short, that
he may obtain all those things that are dear to a savage. This duty
being performed, he constructs a kraal on the identical spot where
once the ancestral camp stood; even the huts and the fireplaces are
placed as much as possible in their former position. The chief’s own
hut is always upon the east side of the inclosure.
The flesh of the first animal slaughtered here is cooked in a
particular vessel, and, when ready, the chief hands a portion of it to
every one present. An image, consisting of two pieces of wood,[36]
supposed to represent the household deity, or rather the deified
parent, is then produced, and moistened in the platter of each
individual. The chief then takes the image, and after affixing a piece
of meat to the upper end of it, he plants it in the ground on the
identical spot where his parent was accustomed to sacrifice. The first
pail of milk produced from the cattle is also taken to the grave, a
small quantity is poured on the ground, and a blessing asked on the
remainder.
 Fever and ophthalmia (eye-sickness) are the prevailing maladies.
The symptoms in fever are headache, pains in the neck and bowels,
general weakness, and ague. It makes its appearance about April
and May, or when the periodical rains have ceased. Ophthalmia, on
the other hand, begins to show itself in September and October, but
reaches its maximum when the cold season sets in. The first
sensation experienced is as if the pupil of the eye was too large. A
gathering of water in the sides and under the eyelids then ensues.
In a short time this fluid becomes scaldingly hot, and, if not quickly
and carefully removed, the pain will be intense. The sight is
sometimes completely destroyed by this malady. Indeed, one not
unfrequently meets with people either totally blind or minus one eye.
Europeans are as liable to these inflictions as the natives. I speak
from experience, having myself been a severe sufferer from fever
and ophthalmia.
Comparatively few old people are to be met with in Damara-land,
for which several reasons may be assigned, such as their cruel civil
broils, and their want of compassion for aged and disabled
individuals. At times, indeed, they would seem to do all they can to
hasten the death of such sufferers. Some instances of this atrocity
have come to my knowledge: one of the most shocking occurred at
Barmen.
Finding that a certain poor woman, being nearly blind, was unable
to provide for herself, Mr. Hahn took compassion on the helpless
creature, and gave her a small quantity of provision almost daily.
The brother, finding he could not obtain the same boon, grew
jealous of the preference shown to his sister, and secretly resolved
to kill her. This he effected by taking her to a spot destitute of water,
under the pretext that they were to dig roots, where she was left to
her fate. A boy who accompanied them asserted that, on the
unnatural brother returning to the place some days afterward, and
finding his sister still lingering, he beat her about the head with his
knob-stick until life was extinct.
 Milk is the staple food of the Damaras. They eat or drink it out of
one and the same dish without its being cleaned otherwise than
occasionally by the tongues of dogs. The people have a notion that if
they wash their “bamboos” (pails) the cows would cease to give
milk.
With the exception of the spoils of the chase, they destroy but few
animals for food. Indeed, unless it be on the occasion of a marriage,
a birth, a death, or a circumcision, cattle are rarely killed.
The Damaras are very fond of music and dancing. The only
musical instrument known among them is the bow (a kind of
temporary rude Jews’-harp), from which they contrive to extract a
sort of wild melody. By this instrument the performer endeavors
(and frequently with much success) to imitate, musically, the motion
peculiar to different animals; for example, the awkward gallop of the
giraffe, the quick trot of the zebra, and the lively caperings of the
beautiful springbok.
The dance consists mostly of mimic representations of the actions
of oxen and sheep. The dancers accompany their gesticulations by
monotonous tunes, and keep time by clapping their hands and
striking the ground with their feet.
As with the Ovambo, the Eastern custom of taking off the sandals
before entering a stranger’s house is observed.
The Damaras swear “by the tears of their mothers.” This is most
touching and beautiful: it elevates the oath to heaven.
Generally speaking, a chief has but nominal power over his
subjects. On an attempt to punish heavy offenses, the guilty
individual often coolly decamps with his cattle, and takes refuge with
another tribe. In minor matters, however, from superstitious customs
and old habits, the chief is more or less obeyed.
The Damaras are idle creatures. What is not done by the women
is left to the slaves, who are either descendants of impoverished
members of their own tribe (is not this another approach to
civilization?) or captured Bushmen. The former are seized upon
when children, and mostly employed as herdsmen.
The Damaras have numerals up to a hundred; notwithstanding
which, they are sorely puzzled should the sum exceed the number of
fingers. They count like bad poets, who settle their metre by their
digits. It is a most amusing sight to witness a group trying to reckon
a dozen head of cattle.
Though they give names to many of the heavenly bodies, they
have a very absurd conception of their character, rotatory motion,
and so forth. Thus many imagine that the sun which sets at night is
different from that which rises in the morning. Like the children who
wondered what was done with the old moons, perhaps these
savages are equally perplexed to ascertain what becomes of the old
suns.
The domestic animals indigenous to the country are oxen, sheep,
and dogs. The latter greatly resemble those mentioned as existing
among the Namaquas, but, be it said to the honor of the Damaras,
they take much more care of these associates and companions of
man than their southern neighbors. Indeed, I have known them to
pay as much as two fine oxen for a dog.
Of the Damara cattle I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. The
sheep are (or rather were) plentiful, and the mutton is by no means
bad. Though somewhat spare-looking, they furnish good joints when
cut up. Skin and offal included, they not unfrequently weigh 100
pounds, and sometimes as much as 110 to 120 pounds. They have
large tails, like those of the Cape Colony, but they do not arrive at
such a formidable size. They have no wool, but a kind of short,
glossy hair, lying close to the skin, covers the body. The greatest
peculiarity of these animals is their color, which is of every hue and
tint.
Cattle are subject to several diseases. The most common and
dangerous is that which affects the throat, and which invariably
proves fatal. Cataracts on the eye, frequently followed by blindness
and swelling of the feet, are also very common ailments.
Sheep often die from the blood conglomerating in divers places
under the skin, which is called the “blood-sickness.” It is even
asserted that man is affected by this disease (sometimes from
partaking of the flesh of the infected animal), and that the only thing
to save him under such circumstances is instantly to cut away the
parts affected.
 CHAPTER XIX.
Dispatch a Messenger to Cape-Town.—Depart from Barmen.—Eikhams.—
Eyebrecht.—Depart from Eikhams.—Elephant Fountain.—Tunobis.—
Enormous quantities of Game.—Shooting by Night at the “Skarm.”—
The Author has several narrow Escapes.—Checked in attempt to
reach the Ngami.—The Party set out on their Return.—Reach
Elephant Fountain.—How to make Soap.—Pitfalls.—A night
Adventure.—Game scarce.—Join Hans.—The Party nearly poisoned.—
Arrival at Walfisch Bay.—A tub Adventure.—Extraordinary Mortality
among the Fish.—Author narrowly escapes Drowning.—Arrival of the
Missionary Vessel.—Letters from Home.—Mr. Galton returns to
Europe.—Reflections.

The vessel which brought the missionary stores to Walfisch Bay

every second year was expected in December, and by this
opportunity we hoped to be able to return to Europe, or at least to
the Cape. In order, however, to insure a passage, Mr. Galton
dispatched a messenger to his banker in Cape-Town to make the
needful arrangements. In the mean time, as we had still several
months on our hands, Galton resolved to employ the interval in
making an excursion to the eastward, partly with the view of
penetrating to the Lake Ngami, our original object, and partly to
become better acquainted with Great Namaqua-land and its semi-
civilized inhabitants. Moreover, the prospect of good sport with the
larger game, which every one said we were sure to meet with in
abundance, was a further inducement to undertake the journey.
It was arranged that Hans should proceed to Walfisch Bay with
one of the vehicles to fetch the remainder of the stores, &c., while
Galton and myself, with the other wagon, prosecuted our journey to
the eastward. A rendezvous having been appointed where Hans was
to meet us, we left Barmen in the afternoon of the 12th of August.
In about three days we reached Eikhams, the residence, as already
said, of Jonker Afrikaner; where my friend, before finally leaving the
country, was anxious to settle certain disputes between the native
tribes.
Eikhams is very prettily situated on the slope of a hill, bare at the
summit, but at its base adorned with very fine groups of mimosas,
among which a tributary to the Swakop winds its course. It was the
only spot in South Africa where I ever saw any thing resembling a
twilight. This was produced from the reflection of the setting sun on
the peaks of the picturesque mountain ranges by which it is almost
entirely surrounded.
Eikhams is abundantly supplied with water from three or four
copious springs, and the site of these springs being elevated, the
land in the lower ground is easily irrigated. The natives construct
gardens, wherein they grow many sorts of vegetables, some of
which arrive at perfection. The soil is exceedingly fertile, and seems
well suited to the cultivation of tobacco. Taking it as a whole,
Eikhams is the prettiest place I ever saw either in Damara-land or
Namaqua-land.
About twenty minutes’ walk from Eikhams is a bountiful hot
spring. The water, just where it gushes out from the limestone rock,
has a temperature of 194 degrees of Fahrenheit. Mr. Hahn informed
me that here, on one occasion, he boiled a piece of meat, and that,
though not quite so good as when dressed in the ordinary manner, it
was not unpalatable.
Eikhams, as already said, was formerly a Rhenish missionary
station. It was founded so far back as 1843 by the Rev. C. H. Hahn,
resident at New Barmen in Damara-land. After a time, however, it
was given up to the Wesleyan Society, which sent Mr. Haddy to
reside there. This gentleman erected an excellent dwelling-house
and a most substantial church. For a while the mission flourished,
but was latterly abandoned, and the station is now rapidly falling
into decay. This, I am sorry to say, has been the fate of many other
institutions of a similar nature in Southern Africa.
 Among other gifts, Mr. Galton presented Jonker with a splendid
cocked hat and richly-gilt uniform: a court dress, in fact, that had
once probably adorned the person of some great man when paying
his respects to majesty, and with which the African chief expressed
himself highly gratified.
Being desirous of obtaining a likeness of so famous a personage
as Afrikaner, I requested him one day to put on this costume and
allow me to take his portrait. He good-naturedly consented to my
solicitation, and on the following morning appeared duly appareled.
We rather expected to have a laugh at him, since his gait and figure
were somewhat unprepossessing; but we were disappointed. He
marched up to his seat with as much ease and dignity as if he were
familiar with the usage of courts.
During our stay at Eikhams we became acquainted with a Mr.
Eyebrecht, formerly in the missionary employ, but now Jonker’s
right-hand man. In addition to excellent English and Dutch, he spoke
the Namaqua and the Damara tongues rather fluently. As he was
well acquainted with the country, Mr. Galton secured his services for
our tour to the eastward, and he proved of the greatest assistance.
 JONKER AFRIKANER.

On arriving at Eikhams Mr. Galton imagined that his business with

Jonker would soon be arranged; but in this part of the world
expedition is not the order of the day, and we were therefore so long
delayed as to prevent our departure until the 30th of August.
In the course of our journey we encountered a great number and
variety of wild animals, and consequently our larder was well
supplied. Indeed, in a few hours, on a certain night, I bagged no
less than three hartebeests, two pallahs, and five zebras, and, had I
felt inclined, might have shot double this number. We also observed
a few wild boars.
After a fortnight’s harassing travel we arrived at Elephant
Fountain, formerly a Wesleyan missionary station. It was founded in
1847 by the Rev. Mr. Tindal, but had of late years been abandoned
in consequence of a destructive fever, which carried off many of the
natives. Even the few Europeans settled there suffered severely. It
was situated within the territory of the chief Amral, who was born
and bred in the Cape Colony, and, if I am not misinformed, was
raised to his present dignity partly through missionary influence.

WILD BOAR’S HEAD.

Elephant Fountain is chiefly inhabited by Hill-Damaras, who

cultivate extensive gardens of tobacco, &c. Game was abundant
thereabout, but we had not then time to look after it.
From Elephant Fountain eastward the country was represented as
very sandy and bushy, and, as our oxen were in a very indifferent
condition, we determined to leave the wagon behind in charge of
John Mortar, the cook, and to prosecute our journey with pack-and-
ride oxen. Amral, with a great number of the tribe, expressed a wish
to accompany us, chiefly for the sake of the anticipated sport. As we
traveled on we were joined by Lambert, his son, and other
Namaquas, with their attendants, till at last our party amounted to
several hundred individuals.
After no little inconvenience and misery, on account of the great
heat, the terrible drought, and scarcity of pasturage about the few
and widely-separated watering-places, we reached Tunobis, or
Otjombindè, on the 3d of October. According to Mr. Galton’s
observations, this place is situated in latitude 21° 55´ and 21° 55´
east longitude.
The Bushmen who inhabited these parts declared that the country
between here and the Ngami was then impassable, and that any
attempt on our part to reach it would be certain destruction to
ourselves and cattle. Though we did not altogether credit their story,
we felt that, under the circumstances, it would have been highly
imprudent to proceed farther.
From a rough calculation, we concluded that we could not be
above nine or ten days’ journey from the lake, and it was, therefore,
with no little reluctance that we gave up the attempt. However, it
was all for the best, and we ought, indeed, to be grateful to the
natives for their truthful information. From after experience, I am
quite confident that, had we tried to push on that year, nothing
could have saved us and our beasts of burden from perishing from
thirst. After leaving Tunobis, we should not have met with water for
at least three days and a half of actual travel, besides the necessary
delays. To perform this, even with fresh animals, would perhaps
have been a thing unheard-of in these regions, but the difficulty was
magnified by the state of our cattle, which were now reduced to
skeletons. Indeed, even before reaching Tunobis, some of them had
been left behind from sheer exhaustion.
I must confess that, on first reading my friend’s narrative, I was
somewhat startled on coming upon his pleasant assertion that he did
not much care about reaching Lake Ngami. It is true that, when
landing at Walfisch Bay, we had but little hope of arriving there; but,
at least for my own part, I had always conceived the great goal of
our journey to be precisely the Ngami. Moreover, with regard to his
supposition that the country hence toward the lake was
comparatively open and free from bushes, and that, consequently, a
road to it could be traced without the slightest difficulty, I can only
say that shortly after leaving Tunobis—not to mention the scarcity of
water—the bush becomes so dense, and the thorns so tormenting,
that I found it necessary to make immense détours, and even then
all our clothes, pack-saddles, &c., were literally torn to ribbons.
The few days that we remained at Tunobis were spent profitably
and pleasantly. Besides much interesting information of the country,
derived from the Bushmen, part of which has since been
substantiated, we had abundant shooting. From the absence of
water within a distance of two or three days’ journey of the place,
the number of animals that nightly congregated here to quench their
thirst was truly astonishing.
To give the reader an idea of the immense quantity of game
hereabouts, I may mention that, in the course of the few days we
remained at Tunobis, our party shot, among other animals, upward
of thirty rhinoceroses. One night, indeed, when quite alone, I killed,
in the space of five hours (independently of other game), no less
than eight of those beasts, among which were three distinct species;
and it is my belief that if I had persevered I might have destroyed
double the number.[37] But I never took delight in useless slaughter.
In our case, and I think I may say in all cases where I have been
concerned in killing a great number of wild beasts, not a pound of
flesh was ever wasted, for what we did not require for our own use
was devoured by the natives.
As another evidence of the enormous quantity of game in this
region, I may state that the fountain in question, which was a
copious one—nay, apparently inexhaustible—was almost nightly
drunk dry.
 On several occasions I had narrow escapes from being gored by
the horns of these ugly monsters. Thus one animal, on receiving a
mortal wound, charged me with such fury as to carry completely
away the fore part of my “skärm,” and I only saved my life by
throwing myself with great force against the opposite wall, which
fortunately gave way.
At another time I was walking leisurely up to a huge female white
rhinoceros, that Mr. Galton had killed during the preceding night,
when all at once its calf, about the size of an ox, rushed upon me
from behind the carcass. Its movements were so rapid that I had
neither time to get out of its way nor to level my gun; but passing
the barrel, like a stick, against its chest, I fired, and, as luck would
have it, the ball caused the calf to swerve on one side and take itself
off. A short time afterward, and at no great distance from our
encampment, it was found dead.
Being tired of shooting, and having got all the information we
could from the Bushmen, we bent our steps homeward. Our failure
in not reaching the Lake Ngami deeply mortified me. Night and day I
was haunted by the thought. Taking every thing into consideration, I
could not help thinking that, under more favorable circumstances,
success would crown my endeavors, were I determined to renew the
attempt. Accordingly, I made up my mind first to see my friend safe
from the African shore, and then to return as soon as the rains had
fallen.
I communicated my resolve to Mr. Galton, who at once fully
entered into my views; and as I had neither oxen nor wagons, he
kindly promised to supply me with both, as also with such articles of
barter as his own reduced stores afforded.
After nearly a month’s absence, we found ourselves safe at
Elephant Fountain. Notwithstanding we had been almost solely living
on fresh meat during this time, we had only used the one half of a
small copper-cap box[38] of salt! I mention the circumstance to show
that salt is not strictly necessary to man’s existence. Moreover,
excepting once or twice at the missionary table, we had not tasted
bread for months. I had so totally forgotten the use of it, that, after
our return to Barmen, on being entertained at Mr. Hahn’s house, I
finished my meal without noticing the piece of bread which was
conspicuous enough alongside my plate. Our men grumbled a little
at first at being deprived of bread, but they also soon got
accustomed to do without it, nor did the least inconvenience arise
from its absence. I have always heard that the want of bread and
vegetables is the greatest hardship a man can experience. Be that as
it may, the human system—as the above facts demonstrate—is
capable of reconciling itself to nearly all conditions and
circumstances.
The men left in charge of the wagon were well, but poor John
Mortar, the cook, looked pale and thin. On asking him the cause, he
pointed to the fire where our food was cooked, and, with something
like an oath, exclaimed, “Sir, look at that pot! I have been watching
it these seven-and-twenty days and nights, and, after all, I find that
my labor is thrown away!”
Shortly after leaving Elephant Fountain, John, it seems, had set
about making soap, of which our supply was exhausted. Through
some mistake, however, he used unslaked lime instead of the alkali
obtained in the country from the ash of the native soap-bush. This
at once accounted for his failure in regard to the article itself, and his
own emaciated appearance.
Game, as has been said, was very abundant near to Elephant
Fountain, and, by means of spacious pitfalls, great numbers of wild
animals were almost nightly captured. The whole ground in the
neighborhood of Zwart Nosop, which flowed past the place, was
literally a succession of pitfalls, and they were so cleverly arranged
and well concealed that it required the utmost caution in walking
about. Even people thoroughly acquainted with the locality ran great
risk of being precipitated into these dangerous traps.
Lions were numerous and very daring. From time to time, several
of Amral’s people, while lying in ambush for game at night, had been
either carried off or fearfully mangled by these beasts. Finding that I
was somewhat incautious, the chief expressed the greatest
apprehensions for my safety, more especially as I was usually quite
alone.
On one of these occasions I must confess to having felt rather
uncomfortable. I had posted myself in a dense mimosa brake,
commanding the approach to the Zwart Nosop River at a point much
frequented by wild animals, and flanked by an immense pitfall. The
darkness was deepened by surrounding thick foliage and high river
banks. Indeed, so black was the night that I could not discern even
the muzzle of my gun. The gloominess of my solitude was increased
by the occasional “Qua-qua!” of the night-heron, which made the
succeeding hush more dreary, during which even the falling of leaves
and rustling of insects among dry grass was hailed as a relief to the
oppressive dumbness. To a man in a savage wilderness, and without
a companion, silence, especially when combined with utter privation
of light, is inexpressibly solemn. It strikes the mind not merely as a
negation, but as a threatening presence. It seems ominous. I shall
never forget the loneliness and sense of desolation I felt on this
occasion. It was past midnight, and still no game appeared.
Suddenly I fancied I heard the purr and breathing of an animal
close behind me; but as no other indications of any living thing
ensued, I attributed the sounds to a heated imagination. All at once,
however, the dismal stillness was disturbed by the quick steps of a
troop of pallahs descending the stony slope leading direct to my
ambush. Stooping as low as possible, in order to catch their outline,
I waited their arrival with my gun on full cock. Nearer and nearer
they came, till at last I fancied the leader was on the verge of the
pitfall; but just at that moment there was a low, stifled growl, a
rush, and then a faint cry, as of some dying animal. All was again
silent. Though the impenetrable darkness prevented me from seeing
any thing, I could no longer doubt that I was in the immediate
vicinity of a lion. I freely acknowledge that I felt awed, well knowing
that, were he to attack me, I should be completely at his mercy. My
situation was critical in the extreme. Straining eyes and ears to
discover the beast’s whereabout, I held my breath in fearful
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