. The traveller
finds great difficulty in procuring animals capable of acting the
part of fore-oxen to his team, the ordinary members of the wild herd
being wholly unfitted by nature to move in so prominent and isolated
a position, even though, as is the custom, a boy is always in front
to persuade or pull them onwards. Therefore, a good fore-ox is an
animal of an exceptionally independent disposition. Men who break in
wild cattle for harness watch assiduously for those who show a
self-reliant nature, by grazing apart or ahead of the rest, and
these they break in for fore-oxen. The other cattle may be
indifferently devoted to ordinary harness purposes, or to slaughter;
but the born leaders are far too rare to be used for any less
distinguished service than that which they alone are capable of
fulfilling. But a still more exceptional degree of merit may
sometimes be met with among the many thousands of Damara cattle. It
is possible to find an ox who may be ridden, not indeed as freely as
a horse, for I have never heard of a feat like that, but at all
events wholly apart from the companionship of others; and an
accomplished rider will even succeed in urging him out at a trot
from the very middle of his fellows. With respect to the negative
side of the scale, though I do not recollect definite instances, I
can recall general impressions of oxen showing a deficiency from the
average ox standard of self-reliance, about equal to the excess of
that quality found in ordinary fore-oxen. Thus I recollect there
were some cattle of a peculiarly centripetal instinct, who ran more
madly than the rest into the middle of the herd when they were
frightened; and I have no reason to doubt from general recollections
that the law of deviation from an average would be as applicable to
independence of character among cattle as one might expect it
theoretically to be. The conclusion to which we are driven is, that
few of the Damara cattle have enough originality and independence of
disposition to pass unaided through their daily risks in a tolerably
comfortable manner. They are essentially slavish, and seek no better
lot than to be led by any one of their number who has enough
self-reliance to accept that position. No ox ever dares to act
contrary to the rest of the herd, but he accepts their common
determination as an authority binding on his conscience.

An incapacity of relying on oneself and a faith in others are
precisely the conditions