CHAPTER X
ZENDLING’S DRIFT—JACKAL’S BERG—THE RESULT OF TOO MUCH WHYMPER—HUGE NUGGET OF NATIVE COPPER—A DIFFICULT PASS—KUBOOS—DEGENERATE NATIVES—BACK TO PORT NOLLOTH.
Zendling’s (Missionary’s) Drift received its name from the fact that the first missionaries to enter Damaraland crossed the Orange at this spot. There is no kind of settlement on the English side, and at the time of this first visit of mine the Germans had not commenced building the substantial police post that now commands the drift, their few police being encamped among the trees some distance from the river. The whole river, by the by, has always belonged to the British, whose territory extends 100 yards above high-water mark on the northern bank.
Having seen no other white men since we left Port Nolloth, and feeling sociable, Ransson and I swam the river with an idea of paying the Germans a visit, but I felt shy when I got out of the water, and sat down well within British territory. Ransson, however, had brought over clean pyjamas in a bundle on his head, and clad in these he coolly sauntered off to the camp, where, I believe, they turned out the guard and signalled to Warmbad for reinforcements. He turned up later with some nice biltong, and for the rest of the day did nothing but brag about the beer and schnapps he had been regaled with. He also most considerately breathed upon me now and then, and altogether I did not come off so badly.
The country near Zendling’s Drift is open and sandy. Upstream and some distance away from the river there are some extraordinary river-terraces of great height, on the flat surfaces of which sun, wind,and sand have combined to polish the beautifully coloured pebbles of ironstone, jasper, agate, chalcedony, and other stones in the most wonderful manner.
These ancient gravels gave great promise of being diamondiferous, and here and there among the pebbles a huge water-worn crystal would bring our hearts into our mouths with its perfect resemblance to a rough Koh-i-noor; but we had no means of working the gravels with us and found no diamonds. We questioned our “boys” about diamonds—they had heard vague rumours of those at Luderitzbucht, and they spoke of a big one that had been sold at Steinkopf years ago for many cattle.
Just above the drift on the German side there is a remarkable and beautiful mountain called by the Germans the “Lorelei.” It is triple-peaked, like a Bishop’s mitre, and affords a striking background to the placid stretches of tree-fringed river below it. Behind it, northward, the ranges are exceptionally high and rugged. Southward, on our bank, there is a tract of several miles of country covered with an absolute maze of quartz outcrops, literally thousands of them, but mostly hungry and barren; and in the mountains behind them there are many old copper workings, mostly dating from the time of Alexander’s venture, but some, far more ancient, the work of Hottentots, who used copper hammers and gads for their work. But by far the most striking of all the mineral outcrops that this sterile and desolate region affords is to be seen about a mile below the drift, where the river twists abruptly round a hog-backed, precipitous hill some 800 feet high. This hill is known as Jackal’s Berg, and from the southern spur of it there outcrops a most wonderful reef of hæmatite. Huge black blocks of it, each of many tons in weight, have rolled down the slope into a valley of pure white quartz adjoining it, and the effect of the glaring contrast of colour in the strong sunshine is remarkable. The reef extends for many miles, the ore is extremely high-grade and with a very low percentage of sulphur, and will some day be of great value.Near this reef, and a few miles lower downstream, there spreads a region of comparatively recent volcanic activity, a gruesome wilderness of scorched scoriæ, calcined shale, and schist, with innumerable outcrops of iron ore, all absolutely barren of any trace of verdure, dead and desolate as one imagines the craters of the moon. And below this the tangle of trees and bush bordering the river was an absolute jungle that we tried in vain to break through, and here in a patch of bare sand I saw more leopard spoors than I had ever seen before.
Thus, riding out each day in a different direction, we spent some time at the drift waiting for our waggon, living on the few things that fell to our guns—bush doves, a hare or two, and a still rarer klipbok, grilling the flesh on the ashes and eating it without bread, salt, or any other sauce but hunger to make it palatable, for the few stores we had brought in our saddle-bags were long since exhausted. Each evening Hottentots came over from the German camp, but we could get neither stores nor news from them of the native we had hoped to find there—the guide to the lost copper mountain.
Apart from our shortness of stores, our anxiety for the arrival of the waggon was accentuated by the fact that we were literally in rags, for we had nothing but the clothes we stood in, and thorns and sharp rocks had torn them to ribbons; moreover, the fierce heat had played havoc with ourveldtschoens, which had to be cobbled every day with fragments of rimpi, and which had assumed such dimensions that they would no longer go through the stirrups. But at length the waggon turned up, having had a terrific time in Hell’s Kloof, and having been patched and cobbled till it matched our boots.
I now learnt from Peter that the guide we were looking for had gone to stay at Kuboos, and I therefore sent a message in, with a spare horse to bring him back.
Four days later he turned up; a tall, elderly Hottentot of grave and important aspect, whoannounced himself as being the one and only veritable guide to my copper mountain. His manner was so impressive that again I had great hopes that he might be telling the truth. He kept aloof from the other “boys,” expected—and obtained—better rations than they did, and altogether appeared to be a pillar of strength. But all our questioning was unavailing; he would take us to the spot, but would tell us nothing as to its whereabouts except that we should have to return upstream.
We had been bitten badly before, and as he understood Dutch we painstakingly explained to him that it was our custom to make our guides eat all copper mines or mountains that did not come up to expectations. He smiled so superciliously, and was so dignified withal, that we decided to turn back once more under his guidance. So, changing our tatters, and filling our saddle-bags anew, we sent the waggon back to Kuboos, and, guided by the egregious Jacob and with a diminutive little Namaqua as a fourth, we retraced our steps along the river-bank, upstream.
We rested again at the “Ki-man Klip” and tried to lure the big snake out by means of dynamite, but without avail. We again negotiated without mishap the various bad places, though my state of blue funk whilst crossing the sand-slide was not lessened by the fact that a big crowd of baboons kept pace with us on the rocks above, hooting, barking, and occasionally sending big stones down at us. But, scratched, torn, ragged, and sun-flayed, but otherwise sound, we at length found ourselves back in the Tatas Bergen—where several of our pegs were already standing. Soon we were on our old tracks, as our guide stalked up a well-known ravine, and I could see murder in Ransson’s eye as he chewed at his old brier. But one by one we passed the ravines leading to our other pegs, and when at length we had to leave our horses and climb, it was up an entirely new peak, and our hopes ran high.
At length, on a high ridge, Jacob halted and pointed dramatically to an outcrop—and copper it was, anda good deal of it. But under no stretch of the imagination could it be called a “mountain” of copper—in fact, in no single particular did it answer to the place described by Preuss.
No! we had been fooled again—though this time I felt our cicerone had been innocent of intent to deceive, and therefore could not be shot out of hand—indeed, he had shown us a very nice prospect! So after we had pegged the spot we sat down and gave him sometabaki, and I questioned him.
“Now, Jacob,” I said, “what sort of a man was this Herr Preuss?”
“Wit man,” he said, promptly.
“Yes, I know he was white, but what was he like? Tall? Short? Fair? Dark?—what?”
“Ja, Herr Kaptein.” (He always called me “Kaptein” when I gave himtabaki.)
“Was he a big, tall, fair man—like Baas Ransson?”
“Ja, Herr Kaptein.” (Ransson’s about 5 feet, and has the complexion of a sunburnt Zulu.)
“Lot of hair—big beard like me, eh?”
“Ja, Herr Kaptein.” (I’m bald—no beard.)
“Sure his name was Preuss?”
“Ja, Herr Kaptein.”
“Wasn’t it Smith?”
“Ja, Herr Kaptein.”
“Or Jones—or Brown—or Robinson?”
“Ja, ja, Herr Kaptein.”
“Right,” I said; “this must be the spot. This Court acquits you. Any man who has been guide to the white man you describe has my sincere sympathy.”
We spent a few days in the vicinity, finding numerous copper prospects, and eventually decided to try to reach Kuboos through the mountains instead of going back by the Orange to Zendling’s Drift.En routewe hoped to be able to look at the “native” copper we had heard so much about, the road to which was known to both our guides. So we planned to cross to our previous water-hole in the Gauna Gulip River.
When we arrived at this conclusion we were at aspot some miles from the Orange, up an unnamed dry river that by compass bearings appeared to trend in the direction of the Gauna Gulip, from which low, but rugged and difficult, mountain ridges separated us. So to avoid a detour of at least two days, we decided to follow up this unknown ravine instead of retracing our steps, hoping that it would ultimately converge into the right river-bed, where we should be near water, of which we had very little.
All the long afternoon we toiled up the defile, the winding sand-bed rising until the encompassing rocky walls were only a couple of hundred feet high, but still too steep for horses. At length, just about sunset, we came to the end of the crumbling schist and a granite intrusion rose on either hand—huge rounded boulders the size of cottages piled one upon another and without a vestige of earth or sand in the network of cavities between them. And after a few hundred yards of these we were faced by a low connecting granitenek, barring our progress, and abruptly ending the ravine. Over this we were confident of finding the Tatas River, from which we could easily reach our destination. I was riding ahead, and found thenekquite easy of ascent and scarce a hundred feet high. Up this I rode, crossed a few yards of ridge and looked down—and nearly fell from the pony in sheer funk!
For I was at the edge of a sheer precipice of 600 or 700 feet in depth, its face of horrible, smooth, slippery-looking granite, with scarce a crack or crevice in it to offer foothold for a cat, and with but a few huge rounded boulders clinging to its face as by a miracle.
It was almost dark, but in the depths below I could see the sand-river we were bound for, and could have almost dropped a stone into it—but to attempt to get down to it—even without the horses—looked sheer madness!
Ransson and the two guides came up, and the latter shook their heads and clucked and said we must go back—and go round—which would mean two days to reach the spot below us! Ransson merely gruntedand, getting off his horse, he rummaged in his saddle-bags and produced a small book.
Now, I had seen this volume before, and its title wasRambles among the Alps, by Whymper, the great Alpine and Himalayan climber. This pernicious volume had had a most demoralising effect upon Ransson. I had frequently noticed that whenever we came to a particularly bad place, where there was a choice of climbing or going round, he would climb for preference; whilst I meandered round the base of the peak, he would carefully pick out the most precipitous part of it, where I would look up at him and see him apparently hanging on by one eyebrow and flourishing that infernal book. He talked of “crevasses” and “couloirs” and “glaciers” and other weird things in his sleep, and once, when I caught him tobogganing down a sand-slope on his only pants, and reproached him, he had said disdainfully, “My dear chap, I’m simply practising ‘glissading.’”
So when he now got out that book, and got under a rock and lit a bit of candle and began to peruse it, I knew what to expect.
I said, “Look here, Ransson, I’m going back.”
He said, “I’m going down.”
I said, “Right! I’ll bury you when I get there in three days’ time.”
“Rot,” he said; “you’ll never make a mountaineer. Why, look what Whymper says——”
“Damn Whymper!” I said. “We don’t want Whymper, we want Paulham and Santos Dumont, and aeroplanes and a balloon or two, and a thousand yards of rope. I’m going back!”
He said, “You’re not. I’m going to take you down—and the horses.”... And he did.
We tried in either direction for about an hour; but my way it only got worse, and I could only hold on, and look over and feel giddy. At times Ransson whooped at me from some awful perch, and I bleated back; then he remembered Whymper again andtried to “yodel.” Luckily, about then, little Samuel shouted to me, and getting back to the horses I found that he had discovered a place where a descent for a man might be practicable, though for horses it looked madness.
Samuel said we must wait for thenacht zon(night sun), as he called the moon, and so in the dark we sat and waited for it to rise, whilst the “boys” clucked and muttered and Ransson sucked his empty pipe and took intermittent counsel from Whymper by matchlight, and I funked and worried and wondered why I hadn’t the moral courage to take the whole crowd back! At long last came the moon, and we started, Sam in advance, then Ransson and his horse, then Jacob and the pack-mule, whilst I led my horse, and the expedition, strategically from the rear. For two hours we clung and stumbled and slid diagonally across and down that almost perpendicular face, clinging to shrubs, following cracks where we actually had to place the horses’ hoofs for them, urging them to scramble over horrible little water-worn places where, once they lost momentum or hesitated, they must have gone to the bottom, and eventually striking a very narrow ledge where there was sand and a firmer footing. I hugged myself, for we surely must be half-way down; in fact, I had just begun to whistle from sheer relief when Sam—who had gone on ahead—came back.
We must go back, he said; it was impossible to get through that way; we must try back above the sand.
Then Ransson went and had a look, and at last I did myself. The sand-gully ended in a fairly level patch flanked by titanic granite boulders, and, creeping between, we again looked down a sheer precipice—in fact, this particular spot overhung the sand about three hundred feet below. We were dog-tired, and I refused flatly to go a step farther in the treacherous moonlight. So we off-saddled and turned in, the last straw being our discovery that the water-bags on the pack-mule were empty, bone dry. The “boys” had been helping themselves; and that night we thirsted.
In the morning, parched and anxious, we started back and tried another route, and after four hours of nightmare, during which Ransson, who was now ahead, absolutely built a path for the horses over hundreds of feet, we came safely to the bottom.
A couple of hours’ hurried trek and we reached Gauna Gulip, passing plenty of springbok on the way and not even troubling to shoot at them—we were too thirsty.
We found the water in the sand-hole practically finished, and the trickle quite insufficient to satisfy us, and had to be content with a kettleful of the horrible stagnant liquid from the open pool, foul, stinking, and full of animalcules. We strained it through a handkerchief and made some coffee, and after a brief rest again trekked up the river-bed, coming at sunset to the base of an abrupt range of fantastic peaks which appeared impassable. Here we found a tiny pool of fairly good water, and as our guides told us the huge nugget of native copper we had come to see lay in the slope above us, we cried a halt and slept there. In the morning, to my dismay, I found that Ransson had fever, and though he climbed up to look at the copper, he was manifestly ill. Close by the tiny pool of water there stood an old deserted hut of dry branches which offered some little shade from the terrific heat, and into this he crawled, having taken the last of our quinine, whilst I took hammer and cold chisel and made my way once more up to the big nugget. It is an enormous mass of absolutely pure copper, 4 or 5 feet in length, with a girth of 7 or 8 feet—and weighing several tons.
I endeavoured to cut off a projecting point with hammer and chisel, the big mass of metal giving forth a most sonorous, bell-like sound at every stroke I struck, and the effect of the loud ringing clang echoing from peak to peak in this wild and desolate spot was startling in the extreme. The mass has been rolled down from the spot, some 40 feet above, where it once formed an outcrop, and here a shaftof about 8 feet has been sunk, disclosing a thin vein of native copper leading down from it.
This big “nugget,” which is by far the largest discovered in South Africa, and is only equalled in size by the huge masses of Lake Superior, belongs to Mr. Giffen, a Port Nolloth prospector.
I found Ransson still asleep, but when he awoke he said that though he felt better he had been light-headed a lot, imagining he’d heard a big church bell ringing all the time! I told him about what I had been doing with the copper, and he seemed much relieved to find that the noise had been real instead of imaginary, and would not hear of resting any longer, though he was obviously unfit to ride.
The guide’s idea had been to cross from this spot to the Gold Camp, and thence through Hell’s Kloof to Kuboos, where we had sent the waggon; but this was old ground to us, and we wished to try a new route.
At length Jacob said that he had once been through a pass which would make a much shorter journey for us, but it was very difficult on foot, and he doubted if horses could be got through. But after our experience of the day before anything might be possible, and we decided to try it.
As it would be moonlight we did not start till the cool of evening. Our track led across difficult foothills of granite débris, broken by innumerable ravines, to where a gap in the mountain barrier marked the entrance to the pass. Long before reaching it we struck a dry river-bed, pleasant withcameel-doorn, mimosa, and other greenery, whilst here and there thick beds of reeds showed that moisture was still in the soil. Altogether a very pleasant valley, but gradually the encircling peaks of tilted quartzite narrowed in, and at dusk we entered a gloomy ravine that led us to a narrow point. Through this, and we were in an absolute cañon. On either hand the river cliffs towered up hundreds of feet, in places absolutely overhanging, whilst the narrow stream-bed up which we struggled was a chaos of fallen rocks, débris, and huge boulders.
Through this cramped Krantz the wind, concentrated as though driven through the nozzle of a huge bellows, tore with such force that we could scarcely make headway even where the going was fair. But hour after hour we blundered and stumbled and fought our way through this hideous gorge, in almost Cimmerian darkness, for we had been wrong in depending upon the moon; her light could scarcely reach us for hours after the open country had been made almost as light as day. Ransson was delirious and talking all sorts of rot, and yelling and singing defiance to the wind, and I was thankful indeed when at length the moon did appear overhead, and light up our difficult path. Then, suddenly, the profound gully ended, and we had to negotiate a slope of quite 45 degrees with scarce foothold for a cat, scrambling up, and up, breathlessly to a great height. A brief rest on a saddle-back ridge, a downward plunge into darkness again, through rocks, thorn, and other impedimenta, and again we were in the gorge. At length we emerged into a deep crater-like valley surrounded by high peaks, where we off-saddled and slept beside a tiny pool of water. Morning showed us most surprising surroundings. We were, in truth, in an actual crater, the huge encircling walls of which were of a new and extremely interesting formation. A huge upheaval had taken place at some remote period, and the riven rocks now reared aloft in abrupt peaks were of alternate layers of quartzite and of a conglomerate of a similar nature to the so-calledbanketof the Rand. Enormous masses of this “pudding stone,” fallen from the peaks above, now cumbered the slopes on every side, and the beds of the ravines were full of it. The peaks showed over a thousand feet of alternate beds of this ferruginous conglomerate, and its resemblance to the gold-bearing reef of Johannesburg was so great that we thought we had stumbled on a new El Dorado.
However, our first few eager pannings were disappointing, for they showed no free gold; but wehad neither tools nor time for a proper test, for our stores were exhausted, Ransson was still full of fever, and the fact that a leopard had taken old Ezaak’s dog, quite close to us, as we had lain sleeping the sleep of exhaustion by the pool, and without a fire, warned us that we should have dangerous neighbours if we stayed.
Still, we should certainly return, so with the few samples we could carry at our saddle-bows we climbed by dangerous paths out of this strange abyss, passing over ridge after ridge of the same sort of rock, till late in the afternoon we could see, through a gap in the mountains westward, yet another range whose characteristic shape showed them to be granite, and beyond the spur of them a wide, dim expanse of plain. “Kuboos,” said Jacob, pointing to where mountain and plain met, and late that night we rode into a dry river-bed where, close to a beautiful trickle of actually clean water, our waggon was waiting.
Kuboos is really the only “permanent” centre for the Richtersfeldt Hottentots, for here they have a tiny stone-built mission church, round which cluster a variable number of matpondhoeks. Practically the whole of the population called on us the following morning, bringing goat’s milk in various weird receptacles, amongst them a number of women and girls of all sizes, all chattering and laughing gaily, in absolute contrast to the taciturnity of the men. Many of the younger women were quite good-looking, though their faces were mostly adorned with the hideous smears of soot and ochre with which they delight to paint themselves. Each woman carried at her waist a small tortoise-shell as a “beauty box,” in which was kept these “beautifiers,” together with a hare’s tail, some sweet-smelling buchu leaves, and other weird toilet essentials.
Kuboos itself is absolutely without interest. The church, huts, etc., stand upon bare foothills of decomposed granite without a sign of vegetation, for the only “lands” the natives cultivate lie high up on the top of the magnificent granite range thattowers above the settlement, the path to them being so steep that the corn is brought down in sleds.
Prominent amongst the soaring peaks of this bold granite barrier is a striking castellated cluster known as “Kuboos Tower,” the pillars and buttresses of which might well have been piled aloft by some titanic builder.
These Hottentots of Kuboos are wretchedly poor, for though nominally a tiny commonwealth sharing equally their belongings, the fine herds of cattle and flocks of sheep occasionally met with in the locality do not belong to them, but to old Jasper Cloete, their nominal chief, a fat, wily old chap, who could never be cajoled into embracing Christianity when once he had grasped the fact that to do so he should give up all his goods and chattels to the common weal. He could hardly be blamed! Indolent, shiftless, and hopelessly degenerate, these Richtersfeldt Hottentots, nominally Christians, have all the failings of their savage forefathers, and of the white man whose “faith” they have adopted, without the good qualities of either. They have been taught to chant a few hymns, parrot-fashion, and some of the outward forms of “Christianity” as disseminated by the Berlin Mission; but witchcraft, demonology, and all the beliefs of their ancient and more robust savagery still dominate them when once they are outside their little stone church at Kuboos. Avowedly, they believe in a resurrection—and they are devout enough to forgather from far and wide to partake ofnachtmaalonce a year. Really, they believe that the soul of the newly departed takes possession of a jackal—known to them as theK’nas Jackhals, and many a time have I seen theouderlings(elders) of this Christian Mission crouching round a camp fire in abject fear because an unusual-looking jackal had been seen sniffing round the camp, and they imagined one of the party was about to die and that the uncanny animal was prowling round waiting for his soul. A mass of superstition, a race of cadging, whining beggars, the only qualities they ever possessed—hardihood,courage, endurance—have been emasculated by their newly acquired “religion,” and they are the least likeable of any natives I have ever had to suffer.
A few days of interesting prospecting in the vicinity, and I received a mail with instructions to return temporarily to Cape Town; so, paying off the “boys,” we sent the waggon direct to Port Nolloth, whilst Ransson and myself, with our horses and a pack-mule in charge of little Samuel, took the circuitous route down to the Orange, near Aries Drift, to look at certain supposed nitrate deposits there, thence striking across open country to the coast near Buchu Bay, from whence we followed the coast down to Port Nolloth.
And those last few days were crammed with more discomfort than all the rest of the trip put together!
For a howling sand-storm battered and choked and half blinded us by the river, and when, our work finished there, we struck across to the coast late at night, we were enveloped in a dense sea-fog that drenched us to the skin. It was intensely cold, too, and when we off-saddled and tried to sleep we were soon half frozen. Then the sam-pans tackled us, and I got up with both eyes swollen so that I could not see out of them, and in a state of intolerable irritation. The sand was very heavy going, and for two days we rode along the coast against a wind that the ponies could hardly stand up against, the sand blowing into us at such a rate that I felt grateful to the sam-pans for bunging my eyes up. Nothing but monotonous scrub and sand the whole way made the ride seem interminable, but at length the wind bore the tolling of a bell to us—the bell-buoy of Port Nolloth—and soon after we rode into that fag-end of creation itself.
We were in rags, and so frayed and blistered by exposure that we were not recognised by people who knew us well in the little dorp.