CHAPTER VII
KLEIN NAMAQUALAND—RICHTERSFELDT—PORT NOLLOTH AND THE “C.C.C.”—STEINKOPF—WONDERFUL NAMAQUALAND FLOWERS—TREKKING TO RICHTERSFELDT—FLEAS!—MONOTONY OF THE COUNTRY—MOUNTAINS IN SIGHT.
Whilst discussing ways and means for investigating the fascinating regions I have just described, something occurred to set my thoughts entirely in another direction. This was nothing less than an opportunity of exploring the lower reaches of the Orange River, and the miniature Switzerland of untraversed mountains bordering them, known as the Richtersfeldt Mountains. Over the vast mission-lands in that region a syndicate had obtained certain rights, and as the country was reported to be richly mineralised I was sent up to examine it, and thus given the chance I had so long desired.
For here, as I have already mentioned, Stuurmann, whom we had met at Luderitzbucht, had seen such wonderful gravels, full of “crystals” that might well have been diamonds. Apart from its diamondiferous possibilities, the northern position of Klein Namaqualand immediately adjoining the Orange River has long enjoyed the reputation of being very highly mineralised; but owing to difficulty of transport and various other reasons, its mineral wealth has remained practically unexploited, and the region only known to the very few.
As far back as 1838 Sir James Edward Alexander, F.R.G.S., published an account of anExpedition of Discovery into the Interior of Africa, which he had carried out under the auspices of the British Government and the Royal Geographical Society during the previous year, and during which he had exploredthe lands adjoining the southern bank of the Orange River for some 200 miles from the mouth. He was shown many rich deposits of copper by the natives, and so struck was he by what he saw that a year or two later, in London, he formed a company having for its object the exploitation of this new source of mineral wealth. Sir James’s scheme included the utilisation of the Orange River during the flood season for the floating down of ore, in flat-bottomed barges, to a wharf near the mouth of the river, and thence by waggon transport to one of the small bays near for shipment oversea; or the alternative of smelting furnaces near the river, fuel being obtainable from the thick, luxuriant belt of timber on either bank.
Definite information as to operations carried out some seventy-odd years ago are hard to obtain, but some attempt was certainly made to carry out this scheme, ore being actually floated down the river and shipped from Alexander Bay, Peacock Bay, and Homewood Harbour; all within a few miles of the Orange River mouth, and at all of which the ruins of substantial buildings, boatslips, etc., standing deserted to-day on the lonely shores, bear eloquent testimony of this period of activity of a bygone day. But the venture was premature. It was before the days of steam; the ore had to be towed out by ship’s boats; the prevailing wind, which blows with extraordinary force all along this coast, must have been a great obstacle to the rapid handling of ore, and the consequent delay was probably one of the principal reasons for the abandonment of the scheme.
However, the prospecting carried out had proved many of the deposits to be extremely rich, and some years later development work was started in several places by different syndicates, with excellent results, and a certain amount of ore was again shipped from Alexander Bay; but by this time a formidable rival had appeared upon the scene in the shape of the Cape Copper Company, who, with their own line ofrailway connecting their own copper-mine at O’okiep with their own port at Port Nolloth, had already begun to exercise that influence upon the affairs of Namaqualand that has lasted up to the present day.
Adverse circumstances thus again proving too strong for these budding copper ventures, the country once more became deserted, the actual locality of many of the abandoned workings remaining known only to a few among the Hottentots who form the scanty inhabitants.
It was with a view to locating and examining as many of these mineral deposits as possible, as well as keeping an eye on the prospects of the diamonds that Alexander and his followers had never dreamed of, and also to finding a route between them and the bays near the Orange River mouth, that I landed at Port Nolloth in August 1910, having made the voyage in theS.S.Hellopes, and having arrived in a thick fog the very twin brother of the one that hid everything on my previous visit there. However, by midday the sun had got the best of it, and we were slung overside in a big basket, dumped into a waiting lighter and towed ashore.
I was a bit curious to see Port Nolloth, for I had heard a good deal about it, and the mournful sound of the bell-buoy had engendered a somewhat mournful anticipation, which I may say fell far short of the reality.
A long row of low shanties, mostly of corrugated iron, almost level with and facing the sea, on a narrow path won from the desert of white powdery sand stretching behind it; not a tree, bush, or sign of vegetation except the bright hues of the cherished pot plants adorning the tiny stoeps of some of the dwellings on the “front,” whose owners doubtless like to remind themselves that there are other things on earth beside sand and sea and the Cape Copper Company.
RangeGRANITE RANGE BEHIND KUBOOS, RICHTERSFELDT.
GRANITE RANGE BEHIND KUBOOS, RICHTERSFELDT.
GRANITE RANGE BEHIND KUBOOS, RICHTERSFELDT.
PassENTRANCE TO A BAD PASS, RICHTERSFELDT.Ransson in foreground.
ENTRANCE TO A BAD PASS, RICHTERSFELDT.Ransson in foreground.
ENTRANCE TO A BAD PASS, RICHTERSFELDT.
Ransson in foreground.
A fog almost every morning, chilly, damp, and all-pervading, mournful surroundings made more mournful by the incessant tolling of the bell-buoy rocking on the dangerous bar, the muffled crash ofsurf on a sandy shore and the periodical boom of the detonator from the signal-station. Then, when Father Sol has vanquished mist and fog, an hour or two of intense heat, and the glare from white sand and burnished sea and sky sufficient to blind one; this again followed by the uprising of the prevailing wind, which, if kind, may for a time make life tolerable, but which usually means a change infinitely for the worse, a change to sand, whirling and driving in all directions, penetrating every house, every room, every orifice, choking and blinding one and making the bathless “hotel” absolutely unendurable.
The daily event the departure of the miniature train carrying coke to O’okiep for the smelting out of the copper ore, which the return train brings back in the shape of opulent “regulus” which, in pigs, bars, trucks, and stacks, lies near the landing-stage in hundreds of tons, ready for shipment to Europe to help swell the profits of that greatquasimonopoly, the Cape Copper Company.
It is not my province to unduly criticise this important corporation, from whose officials, moreover, I have always received the greatest courtesy; at the same time one cannot but deplore the fact that the many millions profit it has made since its inception some forty years ago have done so little towards the general development of Namaqualand, and that their railway-line of nearly 100 miles should have tended so little to open up the surrounding country. Indeed, but for the wharves, tugs, and primitive facilities for shipping copper at Port Nolloth, the mine at O’okiep, and the railway, Namaqualand generally is little the richer for the “C.C.C.”[1]
[1]This was written in 1910, when the mines were in full swing. To-day they are closed, the C.C.C. having ceased operations in June 1919. This closing down of the only industry in Namaqualand caused endless suffering to the wretchedly poor inhabitants, and was followed by a general exodus of the population.
[1]This was written in 1910, when the mines were in full swing. To-day they are closed, the C.C.C. having ceased operations in June 1919. This closing down of the only industry in Namaqualand caused endless suffering to the wretchedly poor inhabitants, and was followed by a general exodus of the population.
In order to obtain the necessary Hottentot guides for the expedition I had first to proceed to Steinkopf, a tiny mission station some seventy-odd miles up the C.C.C. line from Port Nolloth, and the headquartersof the Steinkopf and Richtersfeldt Mission-lands, upon which most of the copper deposits I wished to locate were situated; and as soon as I possibly could I finished my business in Port Nolloth and proceeded thither. Leaving at 8.30 one morning when the combination of fog, surf, and bell-buoy were more unbearable than usual, the tiny little engine laboriously hauled its long load of coke-laden trucks, together with a few antiquated coupé carriages of fearful and wonderful design and dilapidation, and dignified locally by the name of “specials,” inland across a monotonous and level belt of sand which, arid and destitute of vegetation near the coast, becomes eventually covered with low bush, scanty at first, but after a few miles thick and luxuriant, and apparently excellent for stock-raising purposes. At “Five Miles,” where there is the Namaqualand equivalent for a station, some iron tanks of goodly dimensions show from whence Port Nolloth draws its supply of fresh water, which is taken in in “water cabins” by train, and distributed about the town by a primitive system of water-barrels drawn by mules.
The mountains dimly visible from Port Nolloth are first reached at Oograbies, where abrupt sandstone kopjes of considerable height extend north and south from either side of the line. These, however, are but outliers of the formidable mountain range farther inland, which forms an abrupt barrier at Anenous, some thirty-five miles farther on. This place was for many years the terminus of the railway, the copper having in those days been brought down to it in waggons through difficult passes in the mountain. Here, as at several other spots along the line, there is a good supply of water; indeed, it appears that practically wherever water has been bored for in this so-called “waterless desert” it has been found at a very moderate depth below the surface.
Thence the mountains rise abruptly, the track ascending by tortuous curves and gradients far exceeding in steepness those of the famous HexRiver Pass, and climbing some 2,000 feet within the next few miles. The scenery is magnificent: mountain after mountain on either side, peak after peak, and range after range; near at hand the vivid splashes of bright-coloured rocks showing up in brilliant contrast to the green of themelk bosch(euphorbia) clothing the less precipitous slopes, everything startlingly clear and distinct in the brilliant sunshine and clear air of the mountains, the tawny hues of the peaks in the middle distance gradually changing to a blue, which in the more remote ranges became ethereal to a degree, till mountain and sky became merged in the bright shimmer of the horizon. Around Klipfontein are the corn-lands of the natives, and on the occasion of my first visit these “lands” presented a most beautiful and wonderful appearance. For field after field of cleared plateau and mountain slopes were ablaze with gorgeous colour, being absolutely covered with the most brilliant-hued flowers, not mingled in blurred and confused masses, but in broad and clearly defined stretches of different vivid colourings. Here, morgen after morgen of glorious crimson; there, half a mountain-side of mustard yellow, in startling contrast to the other half of azure blue. Parterres of lovely heliotrope, red-hot patches of scarlet and orange of every shade, of pink, of mauve, salmon, a hundred tints, and all so thickly clustered and luxuriant, so well-defined and separated, that the general impression was that of an enormous garden of wonderful carpet bedding. The veldt flowers of South Africa are justly celebrated for their wonderful beauty, but I doubt if at any other part of the sub-continent they can be seen in such gorgeous perfection as at Klipfontein on the Port Nolloth-O’okiep line.
The season for them is, however, but a transient one, and two months later, when I again passed the spot, not a blossom was to be seen.
A few miles farther and Steinkopf is reached; from thence the track winds on a down-grade across a wide, barren, desolate plain, broken by queer-lookinggranite kopje, to where a high, humped mountain marks the position of the copper-mine at O’okiep.
Steinkopf consists of a mission church and buildings substantially built of stone by the natives themselves, a post and telegraph office, a store or two, and a scattered collection of miserable shanties and the circular mat huts of the natives. Flimsy as these latter are, they are infinitely preferable to the paraffin-tin built abominations usual to the locations, for they are not only more sightly, but they can easily be moved when sickness or a prolonged stay upon one spot has produced the usual awful state of sanitary affairs.
The Hottentots are miserably poor; they depend upon a few poor flocks and herds for a living, together with a precarious harvest which want of rain cheats them of. Year after year their scanty corn-lands on the slopes of the mountain, where rain is most likely to fall, have been ploughed and sown, and a promising crop has again and again sprung up, only to wither and die for want of rain long before reaching maturity. This had happened time after time at the period when I first visited the place, until no corn remained for the people to sow, the seed having been eaten to keep them from starving. There was no work in the district, the supply being greatly in excess of the only demand, namely that of the C.C.C., and present conditions rendering it almost impossible for “outside” mining ventures to work the many known mineral deposits in the vicinity at a profit.
The rain had evidently been widespread, and its fall relieved me of the anxiety I had felt about the scarcity of water on my coming trip, for which I was now able to make final arrangements. My visit had been timed to coincide with the missionary’s periodical trip to the remote mission station of Kuboos, in Richtersfeldt, where once a year the nomad Hottentots forming that community gather fornachtmaal, and this would be the most favourableopportunity for meeting the guides I needed. All being arranged, I returned to Port Nolloth, where I met S. Ransson, my companion for the trip, a tough and seasoned prospector whose recent two years on the diamond-fields of German South-West had turned him into a sort of salamander, with a hide like biltong, and a positive liking for a diet largely consisting of sand and “brak” water. With him came the whole cargo of stores necessary for such a long trip, for we had been warned that the country we were going into was practically a land of famine. The few inhabitants—Hottentots and Bastards of the Richtersfeldt Mission-lands—are wretchedly poor, practically existing upon the milk of their few cows and goats; they very rarely slaughter an animal, and are very reluctant even to sell one; they grow nothing whatsoever except a few patches of corn on the mountain-tops near Kuboos, the harvest of which, when they are lucky enough to reap one, is only sufficient to last them a few months; and when milk fails and grain is finished they exist upon a few edible roots and the gum of the thorn-trees growing on the banks of the Orange River. And as we expected to employ a fair number of these natives, and would have to feed them, it came about that, roomy as the waggon proved, its capacity was taxed to the utmost, and its team of sixteen sturdy oxen had plenty of collar-work before they got through the belt of heavy sand that stretches for miles inland from the sea.
The team, with its Hottentot driver andvoorlooper, had come three days’ long trek from Kuboos to Port Nolloth to fetch us, and to our dismay we learnt from them the grave fact that, contrary to our expectation, the heavy rains that had recently fallen in the Steinkopf district had not extended to Richtersfeldt, whither we were bound, that the water-holes were dry, and that the oxen had not tasted water during the three days of intense heat that the journey had lasted. Not that they appeared inconvenienced; indeed, these Namaqualand cattlerun the camel close in their ability to go for long periods without water, and their nomad owners are thus able to “run” them over tracts of veldt far distant from the precious fluid, caring little so long as they can get them to water every third or fourth day. To a minor degree this faculty is also shared by the few ponies bred in the country and called locallyboschje kops, wiry little animals with a good deal of Basuto blood in them, and perfect marvels for endurance. I have on more than one occasion ridden one of these ponies three days without being able to give it a drop of water, and have seen it, when grass failed, and every bush was burnt dry with the awful sun, contentedly chewing the sapless twigs from the bushes that an ordinary goat would disdain, or apparently thriving upon the dry fallen leaves beneath the trees in the scorched-up river-beds.
The waggon track to Richtersfeldt leads north-east from Port Nolloth, and after a few hours’ trek the sand veldt becomes thickly bushed,melk bosch,zout bosch, and many other fleshy-leaved aromatic and resinous shrubs densely covering the long, undulating slopes of heavy sand, the sad monotony of dark grey-green being unbroken except by an occasional lily-like flower of a brilliant scarlet; no sign of life anywhere, the silence unbroken except for the crack of the whip or the yell of the driver, the sand effectually deadening the sound of the wheels and the tread of the oxen. As we wished to see the whole of the country we were travelling through, we trekked only by day, quite contrary to the general custom of the country in the hot season; and as the intense heat made it impossible to move during a considerable part of the day, our progress was of necessity slow. The country was quite uninhabited and we saw not a soul during the first day; but towards evening we were overtaken by some five or six Hottentot women with a perfect mob of children, who, it appeared, were also bound for Kuboos.
PeopleFEEDING THE HUNGRY AT THE STEINKOPF NATIVE MISSION STATION, LITTLE NAMAQUALAND.
FEEDING THE HUNGRY AT THE STEINKOPF NATIVE MISSION STATION, LITTLE NAMAQUALAND.
FEEDING THE HUNGRY AT THE STEINKOPF NATIVE MISSION STATION, LITTLE NAMAQUALAND.
TransportHARD PULLING IN THE HALGHAT RIVER KLEIN, NAMAQUALAND.
HARD PULLING IN THE HALGHAT RIVER KLEIN, NAMAQUALAND.
HARD PULLING IN THE HALGHAT RIVER KLEIN, NAMAQUALAND.
They were frowsy and filthy and poverty-stricken to a degree, and in a weak moment, having pity on one poor old bundle of rags who was carrying a baby and seemed hardly able to get along, I motioned her to get up on the waggon box, and later, when two or three pot-bellied little imps clambered up beside her, I hadn’t the heart to turn them off. Then—it being late afternoon of a terrifically hot day, and the waggon going smoothly through the soft sand—I stretched out and fell asleep for a bit.
My dreams were interrupted by a terrific blow on the nose, and I awoke with a yell to find a small but extremely odoriferous youngster sprawling across my face, having fallen from a perch which he had evidently taken up on our piled-up belongings behind us; each box or bag or sieve was occupied by others: one of them had on my new pith helmet and nothing else—the whole waggon, in fact, was filled and festooned and overflowing with them. On the box-seat now sat four frowsy old hags smoking, spitting, and clucking like a barnyard full of hens, whilst the atmosphere...! A sudden jolt of the waggon threw another youngster across Ransson’sembonpoint—much to my gratification—but he merely snored a bit louder. I, however, felt myself quite unequal to the occasion or the odour, and scrambling out of the waggon, I gave them best and walked. We outspanned in the middle of the track, the native drivers on these lonely treks seldom troubling to draw aside from the beaten path. Glorious are these Namaqualand nights, the soft, velvety blackness of the seemingly limitless veldt, above the great solemn blinking stars, looking double the size they appear through the denser atmosphere of the South, and making one feel very small and wormlike.
There is an abundance of fuel in the shape of dry bush almost everywhere in Namaqualand, and that first night of our trek our fire blazed brightly nearly the whole night, the natives huddling near it and clucking and cackling in their extraordinary “click” language, men, women, and quite small childrenpassing from mouth to mouth the native-made soapstone pipes, filled with their lovedtabaki. These pipes are peculiarly shaped, being a straight tube like a very large cigar-holder, and often the more primitive natives simply use the hollow shin-bone of buck or sheep.
We slept in the waggon, or rather tried to, and as we turned in Ransson commented on the extraordinary monotony and lifelessness of the country so far. “No life,” said he, “no game, nothing to shoot at, neither buck nor bird, no snakes, no insects even!” He was still grumbling when I fell asleep—but he was wrong! I have a sleeping-bag, and usually, when I am once inside it, it needs a cyclone to wake me before daybreak; but that night the paucity of insect life in the surrounding country was accounted for by the fact that they had all got inside my bed, and appeared, moreover, to resent my presence. For a few minutes I dreamed that I was being used as a garden roller over a bed of stinging-nettles, then I woke to find myself squirming and writhing in an absolute bagful of fleas; not the decent educated variety, mind, but Namaqualand fleas, belonging to a land of famine and bent on making up for it while the chance lasted. I was out of that bag in quick time, but the whole waggon was phosphorescent with fleas, and through it all the other chap snored. He afterwards said that I was the best man he’d ever been out with; whilst I was around every flea in the vicinity left their homes to follow me, and he could sleep in peace, but personally I think they knew what they were up to when they left him alone....
I finished the night outside, my only idea in sleeping in the waggon having been to avoid the dew, which on the coast-belt is often extremely heavy, and which accounts for the dense belt of low bush. A tramp through it in the early morning on the lookout for a shot means being saturated, every bush and plant being soaked with brilliant dew-drops. Doubtless this helps the animals that feed there toexist so long without water, sheep in particular; indeed, I have been assured that in certain parts of the veldt thereabouts lambs often go for the first six months of their lives without ever seeing water, and have no notion as to how to drink it when first brought to a pool.
The end of the second day’s wearisome trek brought us to Daberass, where, in a wild, rocky ravine amongst rugged kopjes, we hoped to find water for the oxen; but the deep hole scooped in the sand was scarcely damp at the bottom, and we thanked our lucky stars that our own water-barrels were holding out well.
The hills bordering the ravine (which is the dry bed of the Halghat River) were soon passed, and another wide expanse of bush-covered plain came in sight, on the far side of which, as far as the eye could reach, extended a range of bold and fantastic peaks.
There was no sign of the herds of springbok which are at times found on Richtersfeldt, a fewpaauw—very wild and quite unapproachable—being the only signs of life; there was nothing to prospect but sand, or an occasional outcrop of white, barren and “hungry”-looking quartz, barely worth turning aside to look at; and I sat on the waggon box and looked at that distant line of blue peaks and wanted those mountains bad! That was before I got to them, mind....