CHAPTER VIII
RICHTERSFELDT—ALEXANDER BAY—MOUTH OF THE ORANGE RIVER—“HADJE AIBEEP”—HELL’S KLOOF—A DESERTED COPPER-MINE—ROUGH GOING—A MAGNIFICENT VISTA OF PEAKS—AN OLD GOLD PROSPECT.
The fourth day found us at Springklip, a solitary hill near the mountain range, where, between two outlying granite peaks, a few waggons, and here and there a mat hut, marked the spot on which the Hottentots were to assemble for their annualnachtmaal(communion).
There was no sign of a permanent settlement; indeed, with the exception of Kuboos, a day’s trek farther on, where there is a tiny stone-built mission church, these nomads have no fixed village, trekking from place to place as water and grazing dictate.
During the whole of our four days’ slow trekking we had not seen a solitary human being, but now the natives could be seen coming in from all directions: parties of two or three men mounted on wiry little ponies, and followed by their women and children on foot; others mounted on powerful-looking riding oxen, saddled with horse-saddles of obviously German make, and significant of the loot brought from the farther side of the Orange River by the many refugees who had followed those doughty Hottentot fighters, Witbooi and Marengo, in the Hottentot rebellion; rickety waggons and weird-looking carts tied together with bits of riem and kept together by a miracle; others driving ponies laden with bloated and repellent-looking water-skins from the nearest water-hole at Doornpoort, some ten miles farther on among the mountains, to which spot our poor oxen had to be driven before they could quenchtheir four days’ thirst. The natives soon came flocking round our waggon. They seemed a dejected, harmless, invertebrate lot of beings, with very little character except an inveterate habit of cadging. Tobacco was their great desideratum, but it was noteworthy that, greedy as they were for it, they invariably shared anything given to them. They were all cleanly-looking, and though their clothing was in many cases a miracle of patchwork, no rags were to be seen.
Mr. Kling, the missionary, arrived that night, and the following morning Ransson and I set out to visit his waggon, about half a mile from our own. Although waggons, carts, and huts had considerably increased in numbers since our arrival, not a soul was to be seen, and the missionary’s waggon was likewise deserted; but from a huge erection of fresh bushes that I took to be a sort of cattle kraal I could hear voices. There appeared to be only two people speaking; first would come a brief emphatic sentence in Dutch, then a reply in clicking Hottentot. To my limited intelligence it sounded as though Mr. Kling was sharply interrogating a native on some point, but, on strolling round the large and high enclosure to look for an entrance, we came suddenly upon line after line of kneeling Hottentots, silently and attentively listening. The “kraal,” in fact, was a temporary chapel hastily built of bushes and filled to overflowing with devout natives, men on one side and women on the other, whilst at the far end, by an extempore altar, stood the missionary and a native in clerical attire, who was rapidly translating Mr. Kling’s address into the vernacular, sentence by sentence, and apparently with force and effect.
I’ll own we tried to bolt, but Mr. Kling called us, and we had perforce to walk up and sit by his side in our shirt-sleeves, facing four or five hundred pairs of curious eyes.
White men are a rarity in the Richtersfeldt, but surely not sufficiently so to account for the intense fixity with which these people regarded me?
Ransson, whom I consider much more of a natural curiosity than I am myself, they appeared to ignore; every pair of eyes seemed to be riveted on me! For a moment I felt flattered, then I tumbled! They had never seen abaldwhite man before. Ransson told me afterwards that a ray of sunlight, filtering through the bush roof, struck right on the top of my cranium, and was reflected as though from a mirror; he also said they probably thought it was a halo I was wearing. But as he also spread the quite unfounded yarn as to his having found a hen ostrich sitting on my head one morning when we were sleeping in the desert, and evidently taking it for a long-lost egg, I think his statement can be ignored.
Meanwhile, the sonorous sentences went on, then came hymns sung with enormous fervour in the extraordinary “click,” prayers and exhortations, whilst the birds fluttered in the bush roof above us, and the sun, now high in the heavens, flung broad blotches of gold through the open spaces on to the motley assembly facing us. And motley it was to a degree: tall, thin, spare yellow men with rudimentary noses, high cheek-bones, oblique eyes, and the Tartar appearance of the true Hottentot, sardonic-looking Bastards with aquiline noses and faces of a pronounced Jewish type, here a blubber-lipped, grinning Christy Minstrel, black as ebony, and all rolling eyeballs and gleaming teeth; there a big nondescript with red hair and a skin all piebald with huge freckles; by his side, and equally devout, the puckered physiognomy, all tattoo marks and wrinkles, of a pigmy Bushman.
This extraordinary race-mixture to be found amongst the so-called “Hottentots” of Richtersfeldt is to be accounted for by the fact that the lower reaches of the Orange River bordering their territory was at one time, and to a minor degree is still to-day, a sanctuary for refugees from every tribe in South Africa. Flying from justice or persecution, they sought this remote spot, intermarried with theHottentots, and have helped produce a tribe, or community, as heterogeneous as it is possible to conceive.
The following day Mr. Kling sorted out from among his motley flock the guides who were to take us to the many old prospects among the mountains, and after consideration we decided to send these men with the waggon and our heavy stores to Annisfontein, a spot affording the best starting-place from which to penetrate the tangle of mountains. Meanwhile, with a light cart drawn by six oxen, we proposed to visit the little-known bays on the coast near the mouth of the Orange River, thence working our way up the river-bank till we rejoined the waggon; and as the pace of the latter with its heavy load would be of necessity slow, we hoped by this arrangement to save a lot of time.
We started that night. Meanwhile the Hottentot encampment had broken up and the natives had dispersed in all directions, leaving the empty and deserted bush chapel alone marking the spot of their meeting-place.
The cart was a featherweight to the sturdy team, and trekking well into the night and again before dawn, we were in sight of the sea when the fog lifted in the morning; however, it was still far distant, and it was then possible to realise to what a height above sea-level the gently undulating plain had brought us. All day long, with but brief spells of rest, we trekked on, and the long glistening line of sea seemed as far off as ever. Two strangely shaped mountains, known as the “Buchu Bergen,” were our objective, as we knew them to mark the locality of the bays. That night we again trekked late, and midnight found us under the black shadow of “Buchu Berg,” with the thunder of the surf in our ears and the sweet perfume of thebuchubush making fragrant the cold night air. And cold it was—one of the coldest nights I ever remember. We had a bucksail with us, but the wind was so strong that we spent most of the night trying to holdit down over the cart we were “sleeping” under, and I was very glad when morning came.
Directly below the steep face of Buchu Mountain we came upon the most perfect little boat bay imaginable, surrounded by high rocks and almost circular, but with room only for a few lighters and small craft; here the ruins of a substantial stone house still stand, and little piles of copper ore scattered here and there tell their tale of the past. South of the cove runs a long, shallow depression known as Homewood Harbour, little better, however, than an open roadstead. The whole coast is indescribably lonely and desolate, and, to add to its dreariness, scattered along the beach far above high-water mark lie piles of driftwood, the accumulation of centuries, tree-trunk piled upon tree-trunk to a height of 4 or 5 feet, and a belt of 10 to 15 yards extending for many miles. Many of them are the remains of big trunks 2 or 3 feet in diameter, and all of them are bone-dry and like tinder.
Turning northward, we tramped, hot and thirsty, around the long crescent-shaped indentation known as “Peacock Roadstead,” the northern extremity of which is Cape Voltas, so named by hardy old Bartholomew Diaz, who landed there in 1486 and erected apadrão—a stone pillar surmounted by a cross such as these devout old adventurers usually hanked round with them, tokens of a pledge to the Pope that the salvation of the infidel was the principal object of their quest.
The headland is low and insignificant, and, as at Cape Cross, no vestige of the pillar remains, not even the hole it stood in. It is highly probable that Diaz landed at a small cove some distance from the point, where there are more ruins of a much more recent date, with a rude boatslip and many fragments of copper ore.
Following a coastline is tedious work, especially when one is extremely thirsty and when one feels compelled to examine the gravel for possible diamonds every few yards; and it was sunset when we reachedAlexander Bay, a nice little harbour with a good beach, sheltered by high rocks on either side, the entrance partly protected by a bar, and apparently easily convertible into a very snug little anchorage for the tugs, lighters and small craft necessary for the shipment of ore on a large scale. The numerous shell middens to be found on this uninhabited coast probably mark the site of Bushman or Strandlooper settlements of long ago, and it is likely that where these huge mounds of shells, fragments of pottery, etc., are to be found, water was at one time not far distant, though to-day there is not a drop to be found between the Orange River and thebrakwater-holes at Rietfontein, some twenty miles south.
Just beyond Alexander Bay we found our cart, the oxen outspanned and the natives as anxious for mutton and coffee as we were ourselves, and two hours’ trekking with a bitterly cold wind in our teeth brought us to the ruined farm near the mouth of the Orange, where we were thankful indeed to get a drink again.
The mouth of the Orange River is simply a wide expanse of mud flats, interspersed with low islands, and here and there long, lagoon-like stretches of water. Most of these latter are stagnant and isolated, and it is only after tedious wading knee-deep in mud and water that a channel is reached which still moves almost imperceptibly towards the long sand-bar closing the actual mouth from bank to bank, and through (or under) which the river, in the dry season, percolates into the sea. Upon this bar the white Atlantic rollers were breaking, at high tide sending the salt water surging up the river several miles.
There was wild fowl in abundance. The mud flats were dotted with flamingoes standing in lines and companies and looking absurdly like soldiers; wild duck quacked till the whole place sounded like a huge poultry farm, and the “honk-honk” of beautifully plumaged wild geese made me regret that, with a laudable anxiety to do nothing unlawful, I had read up the list of protected game beforestarting and knew I must not shoot them. Luckily, however, Ransson had not read that list. Apart from the wild fowl the spot is absolutely uninhabited, though I believe the German bank was at that time frequently patrolled. About two miles from the mouth stands an old ruined farm, with a stone-built kraal, whose walls of enormous thickness and great height speak eloquently of the turbulent times, less than seventy years back, when these lower reaches of the Orange were infested with native outlaws, who from their fastnesses on the many islands used to sally forth to pillage and ravage the neighbouring tribes in good old Border fashion. Both pillagers and pillaged have long since vanished—unless, indeed, my mutton-loving rascals from Kuboos were lineal descendants of those bolder robbers of the old days.
A few miles farther upstream we noticed a large number of horses running on the low islands and the river-bank; they were fine-looking animals, and appeared to be quite wild and untended. I afterwards found that they belonged to a Boer farmer living at a solitary farm called “Groot Derm” some distance from the river mouth, and who breeds them extensively, finding a ready sale for them among the Germans on the other side of the river.
For some distance upstream we found the river-bank flat, barren, and uninteresting, whilst bordering it extended a long flat stretch of coarse sand and grit much resembling the diamondiferous sands of the German South-West fields. Here, in common with many a spot along the coast we had left, were standing numerous old prospecting pegs, showing where a few enterprising spirits had “rushed” from Port Nolloth just after the discovery of diamonds at Luderitzbucht, and had pegged anything remotely resembling a “wash.” They were disappointed in that they found no diamonds, but it is doubtful if anything like a systematic search was ever made by these “prospectors” except in one or two chosen spots.
Before reaching Groot Derm the banks became lined with a thick belt of vegetation, beautiful willows of vivid green, graceful mimosa thorn, many of them of great height, bastard ebony, and many other varieties of trees and shrubs, forming in places an almost impenetrable barrier to the water. Inland the country was becoming more broken and hilly, and from an abrupt bluff overhanging the water we were able to obtain a fine view of the river in both directions.
Westward stretched the long, flat lower reaches to where the ribbon-like channel lost itself in the numerous lagoons of the mouth; before us lay a broad, placid sheet of calm, unruffled water with a typicalzee-coe-gat(hippo hole) mirroring the abrupt cliff on which we were standing; upstream the silver gleam of long lake-like stretches, broken here and there by the darker water of the rapids, and the whole extent in that direction fringed with a thick belt of luxuriant vegetation on either bank; bush doves fluttering and cooing in every tree, small birds of brilliant plumage darting from branch to branch and glistening like living sunbeams, beautiful trees, beautiful water—in fact, a strip of Paradise running through a desert.
For the land behind us and through which we had passed, though bush-covered and capable of supporting stock, could scarcely be called by any other name, whilst on the other bank the enormous sand-dunes of German South-West stretch back from the belt of willows as far as the eye can reach, dune piled upon dune, into veritable mountains of glaring yellow, with not a vestige of vegetation to relieve their awful desolation.
It is a peculiar fact that there are no dunes of this description on the British side of the river; sand of course there is, but it is covered in vegetation of a sort, and is good land compared to the fearful barren waste on the northern bank. A little higher up we came to the tiny farm of Groot Derm, surely one of the loneliest places in this land of loneliness!For to reach a habitation upstream the farmer would have to traverse at least 150 miles of desolation bordering the tortuous winding of the river: west of him lay the desolate beaches we had just left, and the broad Atlantic; north spread the fearful thirst-dunes of German South-West; and south, his “next-door neighbour” at Port Nolloth was a good four days’ waggon trek away.
The lonely little house was empty, its owner being away on his periodical trip for stores, and we therefore did not even outspan at this tiny frontier homestead.
A mile or so above the farm the rough cart-track left the river and we struck across sandy hills to Aries Drift, which we found deserted even of the few miserable Hottentots occasionally to be found there, living in miserablepondhoeksof leaves and branches, and existing on the milk of their goats, the gum of the thorn-trees, the few small fish to be found in the river, and the various weird odds and ends that figure in their cuisine.
This drift, mentioned by Alexander as a permanent Hottentotwerf, we found to be a most deserted and dreary expanse of flat, barren land, composed of the extremely fine silt brought down by constantly recurring floods; and this deep deposit of alluvial soil has been worn into a labyrinth of channels in all directions, with thousands of little “islands” between them, which are covered with and partly held together by the intertwined roots of dreary-looking tamarisks. Each time I have been to the drift it has been blowing hard, and on this first visit the hurricane was carrying the powdery silt in swirling clouds in all directions. There was no shelter anywhere, for the Hottentots in the past have denuded the spot of all the big trees, and our outspan that night was a most miserable one. A temporary lull led to our attempting to make a fire, which had hardly got fairly going when a most fiendish blast scattered it in all directions, taking with it our pots and pans and half-burying us in clouds of silt. Wehad to stick it somehow, however, as we had let the cattle away in search of food; it was bitterly cold, and what with being half buried in dust, as well as being half frozen, I was extremely glad when morning broke after a sleepless night and we could trek again. This time we turned south-east, away from the river and across a wide, undulating plain consisting principally of granite débris from the mountains we could now see, and where our waggon waited. Although to all appearances this plain, stretching gently upwards to the mountains, was unbroken, our attempt to cross it soon proved it to be cut into many places by deep, dry watercourses, the banks of which were often so abrupt as to make them worthy of being called cañons, and crossing them meant wide and difficult detours. These watercourses, sand-choked and dry, full of water-worn boulders of rocks foreign to the surrounding country, and all showing the enormous erosion by water that has taken place in the past, go to strengthen the general impression of the traveller that in the very remote past Namaqualand enjoyed a rainfall vastly in excess of that of to-day.
Plant“KOKER BOOMEN” (ALOE DICHOTOMA), RICHTERSFELDT MOUNTAINS
“KOKER BOOMEN” (ALOE DICHOTOMA), RICHTERSFELDT MOUNTAINS
“KOKER BOOMEN” (ALOE DICHOTOMA), RICHTERSFELDT MOUNTAINS
MountainA MOUNTAIN OF LACMATITI NEAR ZENDLING’S DRIFT, RICHTERSFELDT.
A MOUNTAIN OF LACMATITI NEAR ZENDLING’S DRIFT, RICHTERSFELDT.
A MOUNTAIN OF LACMATITI NEAR ZENDLING’S DRIFT, RICHTERSFELDT.
At length and after many tedious detours we reached some foothills of the huge granite mountains of Kuboos which formed a barrier in front of us, and here, by a tiny trickle of water beneath two huge outcrops of white quartz, we found the waggon awaiting us, and with it the full complement of “boys,” guides, and oxen to take us into that same barrier. Formidable these mountains looked now we were close to them, so formidable that a careful inspection of them from this “kicking-off” spot made us wonder whether, instead of a waggon, we ought not to have brought an aeroplane!
We spent a day in rest and preparation, during which we visited the so-called “Cave of Hadje Aibeep,” a natural wonder of which I had often heard, and which was situated about half a mile from our waggon at Annisfontein. By the few white men who have visited it this queer hole is sometimes calledthe “Bottomless Pit,” and the natives certainly have some strange belief about it, and avoid it as much as possible. It is a strange place, this Hadje Aibeep, a deep shaft going down abruptly into the bowels of the earth, about 15 feet in diameter, almost circular and nearly vertical. I had expected to find traces of volcanic origin, but there is nothing of the kind near the spot, though in the valley below there is a large amount of a sort of solidified mud, which may have come from some such blow-hole, which may probably have been the vent of a geyser. The most intelligent Hottentot among our guides, a man who spoke English well, told me that the literal translation of the name “Hadje Aibeep” was “The Unknown Place,” but whether he meant the “unfathomable” place or the “mysterious” place I could not determine. He said it was believed that, long, long ago, men went down the hole and came out on the bank of the Gariep (Orange) River many miles away, and that, in one cavern they passed through, they found many “bright stones.” Students of the Hottentot language, however, give another translation of the term “Hadje Aibeep,” which, they say, relates to a form of ancestor-worship formerly practised among the natives. When any notable died, and was buried, each passer-by was obliged to add to a heap of stones piled upon his resting-place, and such tumuli certainly exist in many parts of the country, but there is nothing of the kind near this deep hole! Of course it may be that the ancestors were thrown down the hole, and the stones on top of them; in fact, this would be rather an obvious thing to do; but in that case there is still plenty of room for a lot more ancestors—and stones. Others believe the shaft is the work of man, and that at some remote period treasure was brought up from it, whilst still another legend connects it with the fabulous dragon-like monster, which the Hottentots still firmly believe emerges from its underground lair at night to ravage the land between the Gariep and Buffels rivers.
We sat round the rim of it and heard all these yarns,and, of course, Ransson wanted to go down it at once. He appeared to have had a lifelong pining to interview a dragon; ancestors, again, had always been his pet hobby. I told him he would probably become an ancestor without undue loss of time, if he insisted on being let down by the clothes-line we had with us; and whilst he was pondering over this dark saying, I quickly sent one of the men back to the waggon, with instructions to hide it.
Returning to the waggon, we found that the horses had arrived; they proved to be three dejected-looking native mares,bosje kops, and were accompanied by a foal and young colt. The whole cavalcade looked more fitted for the knacker’s yard than for hard work, and, knowing we should have to rely upon them solely as a means of transport when once we got among the mountains, I felt extremely dubious about them. However, nothing else was available, and we had to make the best of it; moreover, as events proved, they turned out wonderful little animals for the purpose we required.
Meanwhile the waggon was entirely repacked, for we were now preparing to enter a very different country from the one already traversed. Every available water-barrel and utensil was filled, for henceforth we should have nothing to rely upon but a few precarious rain-water pools for our further supply until the maze of mountains before us was traversed and the Orange River again reached; whilst everything that could fall off, or out, was lashed, strapped, or otherwise secured to the waggon, in view of the awful boulder-strewn stream-beds and rocky tracks that would be our only roads. We trekked next day at noon, straight up the dry boulder bed of the Annis River, the sixteen mountain-bred oxen pulling as one beast and keeping the trek-tow taut in spite of the huge boulders that threatened to overturn it every moment. Then a ravine opened in the mountain flank, and we gladly turned up an incline deep in sand. Up this gradient we trekked for hours between high bare walls of sandstone,shale, and other sedimentary rocks, with numerous outcrops of barren-looking quartz. Winding steadily upwards, we outspanned about sunset on an open plateau covered with vegetation and studded with many of the queer-looking aloes known askoker boomenor “quiver-trees,” and so named from the fact that the Hottentots and Bushmen at one time used the hollow bark of the branches as quivers. There were many kinds of euphorbia and fleshy-leaved plants of varieties new to me. In fact, these plateaux are in every way distinct from the plains from which we had climbed.
Our driver was certainly bent on getting as much as possible out of his oxen, for that night late we trekked again across the plateau to where a gap in the peaks pointed to a pass up a steep climb where loose stones and boulders hurled the waggon from side to side, till every loose article in it was jumbled up in hopeless confusion, and it seemed that no wheels ever made could stand the terrific jolting; then over anek, to plunge down a slope so steep that the tightly screwed brake scarcely kept the vehicle from taking charge and running over the oxen in front of it.
Having been riding all day in an antiquated saddle which was patched and cobbled past all belief, and to enjoy sitting in which was a taste difficult to acquire, I had thought to rest a bit by riding in the waggon, and in spite of the jolting must have dozed a bit just about the time we began on the down-grade. Half dreaming, I heard the shouting and jabbering of the “boys” as they screwed down the brake, then I felt the waggon skidding and the back part tilting up, then we struck a rock, and the whole of the gear that the up-grade had collected astern came “forrard” with a run. A prospecting-pan ricochetted from my head with a bang, a rifle slipped from its slings and smote me amidships, a kitbag came lengthwise over my anatomy and pinned my legs down, and before I could struggle free a perfect avalanche of various other belongings overwhelmed me.
I tried to get free, I tried to yell loud enough for the driver to hear, but he, and every other blamed Hottentot, was yelling at the top of his voice, the big whip was cracking like a lively rifle-fire, and the skidding wheels were screeching and grinding and banging against obstructions with such a din that my feeble bleat stood no chance of being heard.
At last a lucky lurch threw me clear and I struggled up beside the driver. It was pitch dark, but we appeared to be going down a precipice full of loose rocks that threatened destruction at every yard.
“Solomon,” I yelled in his ear, “you must be off the path.”
“Nie, baas,” he jerked out between his yells to the oxen.
“Then,” said I, as the front wheels rose over a big boulder, and came down with a terrific crash on the rock below it, “get off it!”
I’m not sure if he did, in fact I’m not sure of anything that happened during that mad toboggan except trying to hold in the avalanche of fallen gear inside the waggon; but after an interminable but by no means dull time, we hit bottom somewhere, and outspanned in a dark gully, but on fairly level ground. I wanted coffee badly, and, groping round, I soon had plenty of dry bush for a fire. Then I couldn’t find the matches, and I remembered that, as usual, I had lent them to Ransson, who used to principally live on them. But I couldn’t find him, and call as I could there was no answer. The “boys” had outspanned and gone off with the oxen; and though we had matches by the gross, all my groping in the darkness and devastation inside the waggon failed to find one. After a while I got mad and commenced pulling everything out and dumping it in the gully; it would have to come out and be repacked, anyhow! And at length I found the overturned “scoff-box” and in it matches and a candle.
After that I found Ransson; he was quite at the bottom of the pile, a tin of golden syrup had oozed out of the scoff-box all over him, but he still slepttranquilly and was considerably annoyed when I woke him up. I wish I could sleep like Ransson!
We repacked that waggon at dawn, this time double-lashing everything, for the driver warned us we should soon be at the end of the good path!
Although we had passed over a formidable range of mountains, and an open valley widening to a plain lay to the left of us, we soon found that our mountaineering was just beginning. For, emerging into open ground, we turned abruptly to the right and headed straight towards a precipitous range that made the mountains we had lately crossed look like excavations.
Northward the ranges opened out, and across open country we could see through the shimmering heat the long dark line of dense vegetation bordering the Orange at Zendling’s Drift, and again, beyond, many a lofty peak of faint, exquisite blue. And now, rough as it was, we could see that the track we were following had been worn by many a waggon-wheel, and our guides explained that the copper ore from the “Numees” mine in the mountains ahead of us had been brought to the sea over this very road.
As our way led close to the deserted mine, we resolved to visit it, knowing, however, that it was still held under lease and could not be pegged. We hoped to find water there too, but in this we were disappointed, a few reeds growing in a hollow of hard-baked mud being all that remained of the water-hole from which the miners had once drawn their supply. This was by no means encouraging, as it might well be that the water-hole at the spot we were first bound for would also prove a failure; and as we had before us a particularly difficult pass known as “Hell’s Kloof” before we reached that spot, it was obvious that we had better push on without delay. So the waggon was hurried forward and, keeping the ponies back in charge of a “boy,” Ransson and I explored the mine. A considerable amount of development work has been carried out at Numees, adits having been driven into an abrupt mountain ofquartzite in and around the dry ravine at its base. The ore is principally bornite and “peacock ore,” beautiful in its bright iridescent colouring, and gorgeous samples were easily chipped off the walls of the dark, cool drives. A great deal of rough ore lies at the mouth of the principal drive. Numees appears to be rich, and will probably add its quota to the world’s copper-supply in the not far distant future. Here I saw for the first time the strange and extremely rare succulentPachypodium namaquanum, known to the Hottentots ashalf mense(half men), which is peculiar to the country, and is only found in a few of the more inaccessible parts of the mountains. It attains a height of from 6 to 8 feet, its fleshy, branchless trunk being covered with sharp thorns and surmounted by a crown of green leaves about 9 inches in diameter. The native maintains that this head always inclines to the east, but the plant appears to be something of agirasole, inclining to the sun as the sunflower does. The trunk is often the girth of a man, and the effect of these solitary, erect figures against the bare background of rock is such as to render their Hottentot name of “half men” very appropriate. The plant was first discovered by Paterson, and described by him in hisVoyage into the Country of the Hottentotsabout a century ago. I brought back two of these rare plants on each of my trips. Two were given to Dr. Marloth, the famous botanist, one of which, I believe, he presented to Kew Gardens, and the other to Professor Pearson of the South African Museum. These were, I believe, the first live specimens ever brought to Cape Town.
Having explored the mine, we started after the waggon, and soon found ourselves in the formidable ravine known as “Hell’s Kloof.” Our unshod little native ponies made light of the rugged track, hemmed in on either side by precipitous peaks, and until we overtook the waggon we were inclined to think that the difficulties of this particular part of the trek had been much overrated. But when we came in sightof the waggon we realised that what was fairly easy going to lightly laden ponies which could climb like goats was very heavy work for a long and weighty waggon. In the distance at times the oxen looked like flies crawling up a wall, then they disappeared over a ridge, and shouts, yells, and a fusillade of whips showed the kind of toboggan they had struck on the other side.
In many places the rise was so steep that it had to be taken literally at the run, for once having lost momentum the whole outfit must have gone over and over till it hit the bottom. Still, by great effort and even more luck we managed to get to the top of the Kloof, and I think the oxen and “boys” were nearly as pleased as we were—not quite, perhaps, for they did not know, as we did, that over a hundred pounds of dynamite and box after box of detonators were among the stores in that waggon!
Even at the summit the sun had sunk, but beyond the pass we had just climbed the western sky was still ablaze, and silhouetted against it were innumerable peaks of every shade of mauve and violet grading into deepest purple. It was magnificent, and I sat down on a rock and gazed and gazed, and was still gazing when Ransson, who has no soul, came along and asked me what I was mooning at. I waved my hand to the celestial pageant: “Drinking it in,” I said shortly—I don’t like being talked to when I feel like that. He said, “Yes, I’m thirsty too; but you ought to be kicked for talking about drinking when we’re 200 miles from any beer!” As I said before, Ransson has no soul.
That night we put in three hours’ more hard trekking, starting at moonrise, winding in and out peaks and always keeping at a great height, skirting deep gullies and precipices, floundering over stony slopes where the wheels dislodged big boulders and sent them bounding and leaping hundreds of feet down into the black depths of the Krantzes below. The need for haste was imperative, for the oxen were thirsty, and should we find no water at our destinationthey would barely get back. A cold outspan in a cloud of driving mist, and we were glad to move on again before sun-up. By eight o’clock we were bumping and skidding down a mountain-slope to where, far below, wound a tortuous silver ribbon of dry sand that once had been a river. On every hand rose mountains, and beyond these more mountains.
I don’t know how the waggon got down, for I took the rifle and cleared on ahead on foot, and I was hard put to it in places to keep my footing.
But get down it did, in a very short space of time, and wonderfully little the worse for wear, considering the battering it had had on Namaqualand “roads.” An hour’s trek beside the sand and we came to our destination, a few brilliantly green willows, rising from the dry river-bed, marking a natural camping-place, and the spot where gold had been found many years before.