CHAPTER IX
GOLD CAMP—THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS TO ARIEP—TATAS BERG AND COPPER PROSPECTS—A “MOUNTAIN” OF COPPER—THE GREAT FISH RIVER—THE “GROOT SLANG”—ZENDLING’S DRIFT.
Here, if water allowed, we intended making a permanent central camp from which to start our real business of prospecting, but the question—and the question above all others in these mountains—was water. Anxiously we followed the guide as he scrambled up over a ridge and into a ravine about 200 feet above our halting-place. To our consternation we found the much-desired water-hole to consist of nothing but a small pool of stagnant rain-water, teeming with animalcules, and barely sufficient to last ourselves and the “boys” a week, over and above the scanty supply in our casks. Our guide had described the place as a sort of lake(!) withbanja water, and he appeared hurt to think that this little hip-bath full of alleged liquid did not come up to the glowing description he had given us—so there was no more to be said!
The position was serious. Our oxen and horses had had no water since leaving Annisfontein, two days before; they had worked terrifically, and their flanks were hollow with thirst—for though they can go for four days without great discomfort over an easy trek, it is a different thing when they have been called upon to achieve the wellnigh impossible. And certainly they could not slake their thirst here. So we hurried back to camp and decided at once that they must be sent back to where they had last drunk, though probably some of them would never reach there.
But after a long and excited palaver among the“boys,” one of them intimated that he knew of a water-hole only a few hours away, and that it was afonteinwhere there was plenty of water and grass for the oxen. And so we sent him off with the poor thirsty brutes, hoping he would prove less of a romancer than the other chap, which luckily he did.
Evidently spurred by this good example, Klaas Zwartbooi, the wildest of the lot, and almost a pure Bushman, came clucking around us like a broody hen, and led us to understand that he also knew of water quite near us! We followed him, and sure enough, in another rocky catchment amongst the wilderness of peaks, we found a second tiny pool. Ransson was pleased, and gave Klaas a plug of tobacco he had no further use for, and this stimulated him to further efforts; for after another severe scramble, and in the most unlikely-looking spot imaginable, he brought us to still another apology for a water-hole.
Klaas was not a witch-doctor for nothing, and I feel sure that, if we had only had a pound of strong plug tobacco to tempt him with, he would have found us a nice little private bar and some iced lager-beer in the next gully.
Anyway, there was clearly enough liquid in the vicinity to keep us going for some time, and so we scrambled back to camp, pitched our tent, unpacked our waggon, had the first square meal for days, set our roust-about to make bread, and got ready for real prospecting.
Many years ago, in one of the gullies close to this spot, a number of gold nuggets had been found. These had been brought into Port Nolloth by a Hottentot, and white men proceeded to the spot. Still more nuggets were found, and eventually the magistrate of the district, Mr. W. C. Scully, the well-known writer, is said to have proceeded to the spot and verified the discovery. But owing to its inaccessibility and want of water it was never proclaimed a gold-diggings; and though an occasional white man had made an attempt to find gold there since, no one had succeeded. Still, it was obviousto us that nothing but the veriest fossicking had been done there, and we had hopes.
So day after day we cleaned and scraped hole and hole of the water-worn gully; carefully panning the stuff in a bathful of our precious water, using the latter over and over again, and losing not a drop; and still we could not find even a “colour” of the precious metal. In the mountain slopes above there were outcrops of quartz in all directions; most of these, however, were of white, glassy-looking stuff, and showed no signs of being mineralised; but day after day, after our failure in the gullies, we tested these systematically, separating, going off in different directions with a little food and a prospect-hammer, and a boy carrying a bag, and bringing back heavy loads of samples, to be laboriously pounded down to a fine powder with pestle and mortar, and as laboriously tested—and still no trace of gold. Minerals there were in abundance—copper especially. In all directions the rocks were discoloured blue or green with it; here and there the quartz was speckled bright with the silvery-looking crystal of molybdenite, in more than one place we found rich galena; yet, though these diverse minerals were to be seen almost everywhere, in no case were they in sufficient bulk to warrant extensive work being done on them. Samples, samples, everywhere—though one or two huge cappings of hæmatite were well worth going through to see what kind of a pie their thick crust covered! It was wearying work after a while, when the hope of finding gold became less and less, hard work that tore hands to pieces with the sharp razor-like splinters of the quartz, the scorching sun turning the rocks so hot that they blistered one, and all around a glare of sun, sand, and barren mountain-sides that made one’s eyeballs burn as though they were being slowly roasted. And except for our few “boys” in the gullies near the camp, an absolute silence, unbroken except for the occasional scream of adassie vanger, as the big eagles are called that sweep round the slopes of the peaks in search of an unwary rock-rabbit. Birdlife and animal life were very scarce; though on the higher peaks the chamois-likeklip bokwas plentiful, and would have afforded good sport had we been there for that purpose; but we were after gold, and contented ourselves with “cookies” and the tinned food from our stores. Of human beings we saw none; indeed, we had not seen a soul except a solitary native at the little farm at Groot Derm since we had left thenachtmaalmeeting at Springklip.
At length, having failed utterly to find a single trace of “pay dirt,” we decided to lay bare the whole bed of the sand-choked “river,” below which the reputedly rich gully emptied itself, by doing which, if gold existed there in a free state, we should find a trace of it. But the labour entailed would be considerable, and as the water was none too plentiful, we decided to leave the “boys” to do the rough part of the work whilst we made a rapid trip to locate and peg certain important copper deposits two days’ ride away towards the Orange. We took two guides with us, and this time carried everything we required on our horses—food, water, sleeping kit, tools, dynamite, gun, rifle, etc., being festooned about the little nags in a most extraordinary manner. Ransson looked exactly like the “White Knight” inAlice, and the clatter of the frying-pan at his saddle-bow was martial to a degree. I had just complimented him on this when the tea-kettle at my crupper got loose and went one better; then the prospecting-pan on the pack-horse joined in, and for a time we sounded like a whole troop of travelling tinkers. The baboons came out on the rocky peaks and hooted us, and Ransson, with fine repartee, hooted back.
The track led up and across bare rocky ridges and along precipitous slopes where a goat could scarcely have found foothold, and at times I felt much like climbing off and leaving the ironmongery to the pony’s mercy; but the little beasts were so careful, so surefooted, that I soon realised I was safer in the saddle than I should be on foot. They seemed quitetireless too, and when, after four hours’ climbing and clambering, we halted on a high grassy plateau, they appeared as fresh as ever.
The wide open space was beautiful with flowers, and there was plenty of food for the horses; but we made only a very brief halt, as we had planned to reach the Orange River that evening, and had only brought the barest ration of water from our limited supply at camp.
All the morning the heat had been great, and it was now terrific; the bush on the plateau was too stunted to afford any shade, and we were glad to get going again. This plateau was really a divide—a small tableland—about 3,000 feet high, and from it a veritable Switzerland of mountains could be seen stretching in all directions. We were accustomed to mountains by this time, but those ahead of us were so weird-looking as to appear absolutely unreal! We had passed range after range already, but in most cases the gullies, and even some of the slopes, had been covered with vegetation of a sort—queer, fantastic plants and cacti—but still vegetation! But these queer peaks were stark and bare and of the most startling colours. In serrated lines they stretched out like the teeth of a saw, and their crumbling slopes of rotten schist were of every shade of red, of brick-red, of flaring vermilion, of bright orange-red, in fact of every red-hot gradation of colour. And across their flaming flanks, in startling contrast, were drawn long broad bands of intense black, sharply defined in huge zigzags, and looking as though they had been scrawled across the scorching landscape by an enormous pencil.
Between these strange peaks “ran” rivers of glaring white and yellow sand, and riding through this uncanny goblin-land the weird stories of huge snakes and monsters told us by the Hottentots seemed no longer impossible. The whole land seemed dead, burnt up, absolutely devoid of life; not a bird or other living creature was to be seen anywhere, though the spoors ofwilde paardehere and there in the sand showed where mountain zebra occasionallyroamed. For hours we rode down and down the slopes till at length we entered a wide stretch of bare sand flanked by mountains; this also gradually sloped and narrowed till it became a tortuous defile, on either hand of which towered abrupt and red-hot looking cliffs. The heat was appalling; it struck back from glaring sand and rocks as from a furnace, and I was soon parched with thirst. We knew there was plenty of water a few hours ahead of us, and I for one was thankful for the knowledge. For nothing accentuates thirst like anxiety as to when it can be quenched, and luckily we felt none.
There was not a sound, for the soft sand deadened the footfalls of the horses as with drooping ears they trudged dejectedly along, hour after hour, winding and turning through narrowpoortswhere two could not pass abreast, flanking mountains only to find others barring our path, always descending and always getting hotter and hotter. In places, scrambling over huge masses of iron ore fallen from the black zigzags above, or tempted to clamber up to some bright deceiving outcrop of adamantine iron-glance, or to where the numerous green stains on the red rock showed the existence of copper; walking as much as possible to save the poor nags’ unshod hoofs, and only climbing to the saddle when our own feet became unbearable, we plodded and shuffled for five solid hours down that infernal ravine. I asked Klaas if it had a name. He said, “No,” that it was not a regular “path,” and that he had only been through it once—many years ago, when he was a boy. Time went on, and the course became so tortuous that at times we appeared to be doubling on our tracks; each of the peaks we passed looked exactly like the others we had already passed, and I began to think that Klaas was leading us in a vain circle! By-and-by we came to a big rock of crushed-strawberry colour with vermilion trimmings, and Ransson called Klaas back. He said, “Look here, Klaas; we’ve passed this blamed klip six times already! Now, you may think this funny, but wedon’t, and I’m going to mark this pebble with my hatchet, and if we pass it again—there’ll be trouble.”
Klaas must have seen that we were not to be trifled with, for we didn’t pass the rock again after that, and in about a week—Ransson says it was the same evening, but I know better—we suddenly emerged from a narrow gap in the rock ... and there, within a hundred yards, lay a glorious shining stretch of beautiful water bordered by a broad belt of luxuriant trees; and a vivid lawn of velvet turf extended almost to our very feet!
No transformation scene could have been more dramatically sudden ... we had been riding through an inferno and suddenly here was Paradise!
The poor nags spurted at the welcome sight, and within a couple of minutes our scanty clothing was off, and we were up to our necks in the water and letting the whole of the Orange River run down our thirsty throttles.
The place is called “!!Ariep!!” the notes of exclamation representing the Hottentot “clicks” that Klaas put into the alleged word. I told him I was glad to hear it, and would take his word for it sooner than go back. It really is a most beautiful spot; the river is about a quarter of a mile wide, and upstream takes a majestic bend. In that direction it is dotted with islands covered with trees and dense undergrowth, and is a favourite spot for the few hippo still to be found in the Orange. Downstream there are rapids which, though they look very innocent, are not to be trifled with, as I found later. Opposite, on the German bank, the mountains are as bare and highly coloured as those we had passed through. Indeed, “Red-hot Valley,” as we called it, is but one of scores in this region, where, strangely enough, the peaks near the river are all devoid of vegetation. The schistose rock of which they are principally composed seems to be suffering from dry-rot, for it crumbles at the slightest touch, and in climbing a whole avalanche is eternally clattering down from underfoot.
Here and there a few ghostly-lookingkoker boomen, or huge twistedCandelabra euphorbia, looking like huge spiders, cling to a precarious footing, and that is all.
The night of our arrival was a night of absolute luxury, with soft green sward for a bed, the twinkling stars above reflected in the long mirror-like stretches of the river, and the murmur of the rapids for a lullaby which we didn’t need.
Next morning we started upstream, for the best part of the day skirting the narrow belt of vegetation, clambering over huge piles of débris at the base of abrupt cliffs, where the belt narrowed to a few clinging bushes, and the river swirled directly below us; at other times, when the bed widened, losing sight of the river for miles and miles, and finding it next to impossible to burst our way through the tangled virgin growth. There was no vestige of a path, though here and there we came across a fallen and rotten trunk, or a lopped branch, showing that an axe had once cut a way there. That day we were shown three different spots where shafts had been sunk on prospects many years ago: all within a short distance of the river; indeed, it was obvious that copper was to be found almost everywhere, the blue and green stains showing up in all directions on the rocks bordering the scorching sand-rivers.
A few days in the defiles of the “Tatas Bergen,” and without going far from the water, satisfied us as to the copper prospects, and we returned to !!Ariep!! to locate a further spot which Klaas knew of, and of which we had great expectations. The samples he had shown us were of beautiful bornite, and if the spot only came up to the sample, it would mean something exceptionally good. Alas I we did not then fully realise what a queer mixture of intelligence and stupidity the average Hottentot or Bushman is! For, leading us downstream for half a day’s hard trek, Klaas ultimately landed us at a spot where the mountains receded from the river-bed, and the latter widened out into a boulder-strewn stretch of water-worndébris a mile or more in width. And here, in a patch of alluvial gravel, sand, and pebbles, he triumphantly pointed out two or three small fragments of bornite, the remnant of a water-borne fragment that he had found there, and smashed up on the spot! This was his copper-mine, and he seemed quite satisfied with it. There was nothing to show where it had come from: some bygone flood had brought it down—the veriest bit of jetsam. Words failed, for we had come all the way from Tatas Berg for this! Indeed, it had been one of our principal reasons for leaving the waggon. Meanwhile Klaas sat on his haunches and grinned and clucked, and held his old pipe out fortabaki, and was evidently quite pleased with himself. I started to tell him a little of what I thought of him, but realised that it was a bit beyond me. Then I saw Ransson picking up the rest of the “mine,” and I turned to him. “Oh, don’t be an ass!” I said. “Throw the ... stuff away—throw him away too! What are you going to do with it, anyhow?”
“Make him eat it!” grunted Ransson—and judging by Klaas’s appearance a little later, I believe he did.
“Ou Ezaak,” the other Hottentot with us, now came forward with the information that he knew of another spot where there was an abundance of copper. It would mean a long day’s trek to the south, but we could return to the waggon that way. He assured us that it was a “mine” where, as a boy, he had worked with white men.
With the awful example of what had happened to Klaas well before him, he still persisted in his assurance of what we should find if we followed him, and we therefore turned back upstream without further loss of time, for our stores were wellnigh exhausted. There was a moon, and we trekked late, leaving the river by a side-ravine, winding and twisting between abrupt peaks, and always rising. By midnight we were almost clear of the mountains, and off-saddled for a few hours. There was not a vestige of food for the horses, nor a twig or bush to make a fire with.We were bitterly cold, and after vainly endeavouring to sleep, were glad to be moving again. Crossing a low rocky ridge, we emerged upon an almost level sandy plateau, with a few isolated peaks here and there, and made our way for some hours towards a peculiar-looking kopje, jet black, and looking as though made of shining anthracite coal. Around it lay thousands of tons of titaniferous iron-sand, and, turning its base, we found an entirely new panorama. A wide sand-river stretched away to the south, and the peaks beyond it were quite different in appearance from those we had traversed. They appeared to be tilted quartzite; in places the bedding was clearly defined, in others tossed and contorted in a most fantastic manner. Striking across the plateau, we almost immediately came upon a small herd of springbok, the first we had seen. We needed fresh meat badly, and after about three hours of the chase, in which the buck displayed considerably more knowledge of the locality than we did, we still needed it.
It was terrifically hot, we were dog-tired and thirsty, and the mirage was so strong all around that we could not always tell whether there was one buck or twenty, or whether they were a hundred yards away or five hundred. But that was not our reason for abandoning the chase.
Ransson sat down on a red-hot rock and mopped his brow. “Look here,” he said; “after all, these poor little things have done us no harm—why should we shoot them?”
I agreed, and explained that I had been merely shooting near them, just to see their antics when the bullet struck, and had not dreamed of hitting them; also that we’d better leave off in case we did.
“Yes,” agreed Ransson, “we’ll chuck it—anyhow we’ve no more cartridges!”
So we trudged on for three hours after the horses, which were already miles ahead.
This country was almost as weird as that which we had passed through on our way to the river. Wewere apparently skirting the base of a mountain of coal, jet black and glistening; the sands surrounding it were also black, but they were not coal, but titaniferous iron-sand, which I tried in vain for gold. This queer-looking peak was principally composed of hornblende, and here I also noticed huge crystals of black tourmaline, as thick as one’s wrist. At length, tired and footsore, we reached an ancient river-bed actually rejoicing in a name. “Gauna Gulip” old Ezaak called it, when we found him waiting for us with the horses under the poor shade of a few tamarisks—the first vegetation we had seen all day. Here also there were a few clumps of rushes, and the “boys” were busy scooping a hole in the sand with their hands. At about three feet, the bottom became moist, water began to ooze in, and we soon had enough for a kettle of tea. Meanwhile the horses had gone down the bed to a small open pool. I went and looked at it, but it was a squirming mass of animalcules, not fit even to boil; though, a month later, I was glad to drink the little that was left of it. We stayed at the sand-scooped hole, not to rest, for it was too hot to sleep, but patiently collecting enough water as it oozed in by the spoonful to fill our water-bottles, for Ezaak told us we should get no more till we reached the waggon, and we had two formidable ranges to cross before then. As a matter of fact, we could have drunk the whole supply as fast as it became available, for the heat that day was phenomenal—it seemed to be drying the very blood up in our veins, and converting us into biltong. Not far from this water-hole we came upon the first trace of man we had seen for many days, a faint old waggon-spoor in the sand. It led towards the fantastic peaks to the south, and Klaas told us that the vehicle had passed through some six months previously, on its way to a mass of native copper which had been discovered among the mountains there. We followed it for a short distance only, and, turning up a branch-ravine, came to the old prospect Ezaak had told us of, and which, luckily for him, was far too big to eat!
GorgeTHE DEEP GORGE, 500 FEET OR MORE IN DEPTH, IN WHICH THE ORANGE RIVER IS PENNED BELOW THE GREAT FALLS.
THE DEEP GORGE, 500 FEET OR MORE IN DEPTH, IN WHICH THE ORANGE RIVER IS PENNED BELOW THE GREAT FALLS.
THE DEEP GORGE, 500 FEET OR MORE IN DEPTH, IN WHICH THE ORANGE RIVER IS PENNED BELOW THE GREAT FALLS.
By the time we had pegged the spot it was sunset, and a debatable point whether we should camp there and ride early next day, or try to cross the mountains by moonlight. We had eaten our last scrap of food at midday, and there was no vegetation for the horses to nibble, so we decided on the latter, though we knew we were taking risks, for Ezaak seemed none too sure of the path, and crossing pathless mountains by moonlight is scarcely a picnic. Rummaging in our depleted saddle-bags, we found a last pinch of tea, plentifully mixed with tobacco dust, and with it we brewed a kettleful of the most obnoxious fluid I have ever tasted. The water was brak (alkaline) and thick and slimy, and we had no sugar, but we got down a hot beakerful each, and started on one of the coldest rides I have ever experienced. For on the bare, sun-blistered uplands of Namaqualand there is practically no intermediate stage between intense heat and intense cold, and less than an hour after sunset my teeth were chattering and my hands so numbed I could scarcely hold the reins. Naturally, the higher we climbed, the colder it became, and I soon regretted that I had not decided to wait hungry, and do that ride in the warm sunshine. I had nothing on but a khaki shirt and pants, of the thinnest—just enough to keep the sun from flaming me—and though I had a blanket strapped on the horse, it was useless trying to wrap that about me in such a scramble as we were in for. It soon became evident that Ezaak was relying on his sense of direction to bring us to the waggon, and occasionally he was absolutely at fault. In and out among the solemn peaks we scrambled, here plunging into dark ravines, where it was impossible to do more than grope one’s way, then emerging into a blaze of white moonlight that showed every pebble in the path as clear as noonday. Once or twice, in the darker places, we had to retrace our steps, as we found the way barred by rock or precipice, and often the only warning that we were on dangerous heights was the crash of a dislodged stone or boulder falling into the depthsbelow. But “Ou Ezaak” still scrambled on, till, after passing over two distinct ranges, we found ourselves again amongst thick vegetation, and here our experiences became even more variegated. For most of the bush was of thewachteen-beitjevariety, full of hooked thorns, and as the little nags wriggled through it, it ripped and tore skin and clothing from us in the most impartial manner. It blew great guns too, and but for sheer shame I would have called a halt, lighted a fire, and waited for morning. However, Ezaak was now fairly in his stride, and after an interminable time, and when I had resigned myself to being utterly lost, we suddenly plunged down a dark ravine, and saw a fire twinkling below us. It was the waggon, right enough. We had been scrambling for seven hours. In the morning we found that a dozen or more Hottentots had pitched their matpondhoeksclose to the waggon. They had a flock of goats with them, and appeared to live entirely on the milk. We bought a little of it later, giving tobacco and tea in return. They had a great idea of the value of their commodity, and doled it out very sparingly. Their fondness for tobacco is extraordinary, the women and young girls smoking quite as much as the men, and passing the hollow leg-bone of a buck, which serves them as a pipe, from lip to lip, as they squatted by the fire.
They had two riding-oxen with them, fine-looking beasts with a rein passed through the nostril to guide them by, and saddled with ordinary horse-saddles of German military pattern. We used them on several of our excursions later, finding them excellent, both for pace, endurance and climbing powers, which they possess to a remarkable degree.
With all this addition to the population, it was clear that the water would last only a few days; in fact, we were hard put to it to enable us to “pan” the cleaning up on the section of river-bed which the “boys” had bared for us. Still, we managed somehow, the remains of the water in which we had“panned” for gold all day serving us for making coffee at night; but in spite of all our efforts, we found no particle of gold, and reluctantly decided to abandon the spot, coming to the conclusion, at the time, that we had been shown the wrong spot, and that the gold had never been found there.
Before leaving, however, we finished our exploration of the surrounding peaks, finding numerous traces of other metals, but no gold. As an instance of the variety of minerals scattered through this region, I may state that a single stick of dynamite in a faint splash of carbonate of copper disclosed more than a hundredweight of bornite, with galena, an essay of which, in Cape Town, gave 38 per cent. of copper and 24 oz. of silver to the ton, whilst within a fifty yards radius, fine samples of molybdenum, hæmatite, and copper-glance were found, and the sand-rivers were black with hundreds of tons of titaniferous iron-sand. Many of the rarer and lesser-known metals are undoubtedly present also in this region, tantallite being frequently met with in the sands and amongst the hæmatite débris, and the very large crystals occasionally met with point to the probability of large deposits of this valuable mineral awaiting systematic search. The ravines of this wild and remote spot were full of a beauty peculiarly their own, being luxuriant with vegetation of strange form and colour:Varias euphorbia, huge fleshy-trunked succulents, with brilliant scarlet flowers, aloes of different shapes and colours, and above all, a most glorious copper-coloured bush, known locally as the “Pride of Namaqualand,” all contrasting vividly with the milk-white of the quartz, and the brick-red of the red-hot-looking schist. Here of all places, the strangePachypodium namaquanumis abundant, and reaches a size I saw nowhere else: moreover, many of these giant succulents, of 10 feet or more in height, were many-branched instead of consisting of a single trunk, and may possibly be a different variety. Of animal life there was but little. On the higher peaks, the chamois-like klipbok could occasionally be seen standing on an isolated pointand tempting a long shot, but in the valleys a few leopards and wild-cat, a slinking hyæna or jackal, were all that were ever seen.
Just before leaving, a Hottentot came in riding an ox, and claimed through an interpreter that he knew of the whereabouts of a “mountain” of copper, rumours of which I had heard from various sources before. A certain German prospector named Preuss—a man whose word I absolutely believe—had told me that some years back he had endeavoured to trek through these mountains from the vicinity of the Great Fish River—which runs through German South-West—into the Orange. Some natives had guided him; it had been an exceptionally dry season, and they had nearly died of thirst, but in a remote spot he had come upon a whole mountain of copper ore. He wanted water more than copper, and had no licence anyway, so he made no attempt to peg it, but he told me of it in Cape Town, and gave me the names of the Richtersfeldt natives who had brought him through. I had made inquiries from the Mission, and this chap was the first result. He gave us his name, but I cannot reproduce it—it sounded like a hungry man swallowing oysters. Anyway, he said he could guide us to that mountain, and that it was three days’ trek away, so we rationed him, and made him happy with tobacco, and prepared to trek. A man was sent away to bring in the oxen, which were grazing some days away; the waggon was left in charge of Peter, with instructions to meet us at Zendling’s Drift fourteen days later; and with scant rations in our saddle-bags, we started off again, under the guidance of the ox-rider. His route led us back to the Orange—a few miles above where we had struck it before, but through quite a different series of ravines, in which we again came upon numerous copper indications, all of which we ignored, in view of the “whole mountain” of it to which we were being guided.
But alas! our guide turned out to be a bigger romancer than Klaas Zwartbooi, for after two days of hard trekking, he landed us at a little patch ofgreen carbonate the size of a tea-tray, and solemnly pronounced this to be the spot we were looking for!
We had passed at least a dozen better prospectsen routewithout taking the trouble to turn aside from the path! This was heart-breaking, and I never felt more homicidal in my life. We could get nothing out of the brute: he spoke no word of any language but the “click,” and old Ezaak’s (our other guide) few words of English and Dutch were quite unequal to the occasion.
So we retraced our steps to the river, with the intention of following its tortuous course to Zendling’s Drift, where we had been told Preuss’s guide was living—for this man was plainly an impostor. That night we spent by the solemn, lonely Orange, bathing and revelling in the cool water to our hearts’ content. We had brought but very little food with us, hoping for game; but we came across nothing, and regretfully resorted to the unsportsmanlike practice of putting a stick of dynamite in one of the deep pools, in the hope of getting some fish. About half a dozen little chaps the size of small herrings (a variety ofspringer) was the only result, and they were so absolutely full of bones as to be quite uneatable. We grilled them, and tried to imagine they were trout, but the only thing good about them was the smell!
A moonlit river is always beautiful; the Orange (possibly because of its contrast with the wilderness of barren and forbidding mountains through which it has burst a way) seems incomparably so.
Before turning in, I walked up the bank to a beautiful grassy spot, where I could see for some distance, and sat down, and looked at the majestic sweep of the water upstream. There was not a sound, for the nearest rapids were miles away, and not a ripple disturbed the mirror-like surface of the water, as the big volume of it swept slowly by, from the black, towering portals of the Tatas Berg mountains in the far distance. Above that gorge for at least a hundred miles its course is almost unknown, as for miles it is penned into a cañon between precipitous cliffs.
It was all very tranquil and lonely, and I lay on the sweet turf and smoked, and pondered on the fact that, with the exception of Ransson and the guides, there was probably not a soul within many days’ journey. It made me feel quite sentimental, and I thought of the crowded towns I had known, and the crowded bars ... and the beer.... Then I heard a concertina ...! and I wondered if the sun had been too much for me. A concertina! here, in the most solitary spot imaginable!
It appeared sheer lunacy, but there was no doubt about it, and I got up and cleared back to camp, prepared for any old thing. Ransson was sitting by the fire, smoking, and before him were capering two little stark naked Hottentot “boys,” imitating the antics of monkeys—in fact, dancing the so-called “baboon dance” of the Bushmen.
But the musician! He was away ahead of the gaudiest buck-nigger I had ever seen! On his head was a German uniform “smasher” hat, about three sizes too large for him, and covered with sweeping ostrich plumes, a tight-waisted, wide-skirted uniform coat was left open to show what had once been a verydécolletéwhite waistcoat, which in turn was finished off with a broad athlete’s belt of red, white, and black. Then his costume ended till you came to his feet, on which he wore a brand-new pair of glaring yellow elastic-sided boots, with spurs! Oh! he was a peach, and he knew it. His concertina was also German, spangled beyond belief, and quite new. He only used about three notes of the considerable number there appeared to be on it, but the Guards’ Drum Major, Sarasate, Paderewski, and several other virtuosi rolled into one could not have approached that buck-nigger for style. After a while we got him to stop his music and talk. He spoke a little alleged English and Dutch, and several German cuss-words, and led us to understand that he had been working in German South-West some months, and had now decided to retire and get married. We wondered where the lady was, and gave him sometabakiand wished him luck, and he cleared off. But we had scarcely got to sleep when that infernal concertina started again, and there was “His Nibs” back again, with the two “coryphées” capering away for all they were worth, and evidently prepared to keep it up all night. The moretabakiI gave them, the more energetic they became; the more I swore, the more they seemed to think I appreciated their efforts; and at last I had to turn out of my blankets and go for them with a sjambok. Then only did they quit, and I turned in again. But I had got a big thorn in my foot, and when I had got that out a scorpion got into my bed, and objected to my being there. Altogether, a nice, quiet, idyllic night by the river.
In the morning, the musician turned up with a tin full of goat’s milk, and informed me that he knew a magnificent copper-mine close at hand, and wanted us to pay him for showing it. As he pointed in the direction we were going, we took him along, and, as I expected, he led us to an outcrop that we had pegged on our previous visit.
He then danced about six steps, played a pæan of joy on his infernal concertina, grinned from ear to ear, and held out his hand. “’Undred pounds,” said he. “Duizand pond, Zwanzig mark!” He got it.
We gave him a plug of tobacco, and a little tea for his bride, and he stood on a peak and played us out of sight. He was certainly the most cheerful and original Christy Minstrel I ever met in a wild state, and I remember him with gratitude.
We now made our way down the river towards Zendling’s Drift, finding but little difficulty for the first day or two. The banks were mostly densely wooded; at places this belt of virgin vegetation was half a mile or so in width, in others the abrupt flanking peaks crowded in upon the stream, leaving but a narrow belt of vegetation clinging to their base. There was plenty of grass for the horses, pigeons for the pot, and dassies (rock rabbits) for the “boys.” Skinned, they looked like rabbits, and smelt verynice when cooking, but I could not bring myself to taste them. Though small birds were plentiful, and there were wild duck and geese in abundance, and monkeys and baboons galore, we saw no trace of larger game here by these solitary reaches of the Orange; if we except the splashes of some large animals in the pools between some of the numerous islands, which the “boys” assured me were hippo.
These latter, of which there are but a very few left in the Orange, are usually found on the islands near where the Great Fish River joins the larger stream, after running for hundreds of miles through German South-West.
We passed this spot on the second day, and here saw the first sign of former habitation, two or three abandonedpondhoeksmade of branches, long since dry and leafless. And here we came upon stretches of fine sand and gravels which showed signs, here and there, that they had been worked superficially, doubtless for diamonds, for there were the gravels that Stuurmann had told me of in Luderitzbucht, and, as he had described them, they were sparkling with “bright stones”—pretty but worthless crystals.
We found no diamonds, but we had not the means for systematic sieving, and some of the old river terraces near this spot looked very promising indeed.
The mouth of the Great Fish River, where it debouches into the Orange, is choked with a huge accumulation of sand, through which, after rain, the water finds its way in various small channels to swell the larger stream. There are numerous small, well-wooded islands in the vicinity—these were the haunts of the hippo already alluded to. The spot is one of the wildest and most remote and difficult of access of all spots in this deserted region; even on the German bank there is neither settlement nor habitation within many days’ trek in either direction.
Our leisurely and easy trek downstream now came to an end, for just after passing the Great Fish, we came to a bend where the mountain converged upon the river, the course of which became tortuous in theextreme; and at length an apparently impenetrable barrier of peaks stretched before us, through which it appeared impossible that the river could penetrate. And then trouble began. In places we scrambled for hours along precipitous slopes, cumbered with fallen rocks, and with swirling rapids below us; a mile or so of easier going where the country was more open, and again a mountain spur would shoulder the river aside. This time the abrupt slope would be dense with high and tangled thorn-bush through which we had to cut a way, whilst here and there a huge fallen rock or a whole landslide from the cliffs above would bar further progress, till we had crawled round, over, or under them, at imminent risk of breaking our ponies’ necks or legs, as well as our own. At times we were obliged to descend into the actual river-bed, and had the water not been low, these traverses would, of course, have been impracticable, and a sudden freshet upstream would certainly have accounted for the lot of us, had the flood caught us in one of these spots.
The worst going for the ponies was over these places, for the huge rocks and boulders were rounded, slimy, and slippery with mud, exactly like boulders on a sea-beach at low tide.
But, to me, the biggest nightmare of a spot was where, on the steep slopes of a mountain rising abruptly from the water, a big drift of sand rested. I do not know at what angle sand will rest, but certainly it was steeper than 45 degrees, and dry and loose. We could not get above it, for there the cliff was vertical, and the men warned us that we must keep going as fast as possible, as to stand still a minute meant being half-buried, and slipping down with the sand to the swirling water below. The ponies would scarcely face it, and were plainly scared out of their wits, and I did not like it myself.
But there was no alternative, and no time to stay and think about it, for it was nearly dark, and we could not stay where we were, whilst about a mileahead we could see open ground and grass. I don’t know how we managed that mile; it was one wild flounder and scramble, a case of plunging through loose, shifting sand up to one’s knees almost, dragging a frightened pony behind, and always climbing upwards as well as forward, to compensate for the slipping-down of the whole bank of sand.
I was heartily glad when it was over, and though I have crossed that sand-slide twice since, I have always funked it.
It was dark when we floundered out of it, and we steered straight for a wide thicket of willows, made a big fire, and were only too glad to turn in. It seemed an excellent camp, with wood, water, and shelter from the cold wind, but it was plain that the “boys” were uneasy, and they crouched close to our fire instead of building one apart as they usually did. After some food Ezaak suggested that we might perhaps trek on a little farther, and this, coming after a most arduous day, was decidedly strange. We asked him why, and after beating about the bush for a bit he told me that in the middle of the river, and exactly opposite where we were camped, was a big rock in which the huge snake (the “Groot Slang,” in which every Richtersfeldt Hottentot firmly believes) had his home, and that it was not safe for us or for our horses.
We had long heard of this snake; many reputable Hottentots and a few white men claim to have seen it, many more have seen its huge spoor in the sand or mud—a foot and a half wide. It is believed to take cattle from the banks, and the natives fear it mightily. There are no crocodiles in the Orange, and, besides, there are never any traces of feet with the spoor, but it is a remarkable fact that the Hottentot name for this huge python—or whatever it may be—is “Ki-man,” which is very like the Eastern name for an alligator.
Anyhow, we were far too tired to care for snakes, and of course stayed where we were, the only thing to annoy us being the huge long-legged tarantulas that kept running with incredible swiftness into thefire, where they sizzled, squirmed, and smelt unpleasantly.
In the morning we found that the river here was a long, wide, still, and apparently very deep stretch of water, and that a big rock rose from the centre, as the guides had said. It appeared to be of granite, and was riven in half by a big cleft. The steep mud banks of the river should have shown a trace of anything coming from the water, but we found no spoor. So we made up some dynamite cartridges with fuse and detonator, and flung them out as far as we could, and stood by with the “arsenal” handy in case the “Groot Slang” was at home and objected. The dynamite made a big upheaval, but no snake materialised; only a few small springers and barbel flapped round in the muddy water.
Then I saw something moving in the crack in the rock, and let drive with my rifle. I was in a hurry, and I heard my bullet hit the landscape somewhere in German territory; but Ransson had seen that movement too, and was emptying his magazine into the crack without undue loss of time. When we’d finished a very flustered and indignant old wild duck squatted out of that crack and went away unhurt and quacking most derisively. No luck again with our “big game” shooting.
A hard day’s trek again and we left the river, climbed up a sandy incline between hills of black hornblende schist where faint wheel-marks showed that we were on an old beaten track, and cutting across country, at about ten at night we again came to the river at Zendling’s Drift. And the crowing of a cock, and the barking of a dog from the other bank, were as music in our ears, for the loneliness of this deserted land was beginning to tell upon us.
Scarce was our camp fire blazing when we heard a great shouting and splashing in the river below, and three or four Hottentots came across to find out who we were. They were working for the German police, who had a post on the further bank. The splashing and shouting is always done by these Hottentotswhen crossing the river at night—for fear of the “Groot Slang.” They have no boats, but at various places along the banks long dry logs may be seen lying with a peg driven in on one side. These poles they use to help them in crossing, holding the peg and pushing this primitive raft before them.