CHAPTER XII
BRYDONE’S DIAMONDS—THE GREAT FALLS OF THE ORANGE—MOUTH OF THE MOLOPO—BAK RIVER—THE GERMAN SOUTH-WEST BORDER—KAKAMAS—LITTLE BUSHMAN LAND.
In Cape Town I found a most encouraging budget of news awaiting me from my energetic friend in Upington. Ever since my return from Rietfontein through that unsophisticated village (?) he had been collecting and collating every scrap of intelligence he could gather relating to the old legend of a rich diamond-mine in the Noup Hills, below the Great Falls of the Orange, and which for shortness I shall refer to as “Brydone’s diamonds”; and he had come to the conclusion that not only did the spot exist, but that he had sufficient data to enable him to proceed directly to it. The only doubt he expressed was whether the spot would be found to be on British or German territory, for everything pointed to its being just about where the twentieth degree of east longitude formed the boundary between the two. Probably, had I been critical, I should have discovered that a good many of his deductions were far from logical; but his glowing accounts tallied greatly with my own belief and with the vague stories I had heard from both natives and whites, and any little hesitation I felt was finally disposed of by still another urgent letter and some wires conveying the satisfactory news that a guide had been found who could take us to the actual spot. That settled it, and I immediately set about looking for a partner, and soon found a most satisfactory one in the person of a German named Paul, who had been a most successful diamond-digger at Harrisdale and Bloemhof, and who wanted a few more. In addition to his expert qualification as a digger, I felt that I had been lucky in striking thisman, for he told me, as soon as I broached the subject to him, that he had heard of this spot whilst in German West, and had even made an attempt to reach it, but had been prevented by the authorities. Here then, apparently, was additional proof that this Golconda existed; a bargain was struck, and we were soon on our way to Upington. Except for the fact that, during a bitterly cold night in a Cape cart on the veldt between Prieska and our destination, I contracted pneumonia, we reached our enthusiastic partner in safety, and after a few days’ annoying delay, during which I coughed and fumed and fretted and feared that someone would forestall us, we started off in the most overcrowded Cape cart I have ever squeezed into. Paul was a big, hefty chap; de Wet, our guide, at least a six-footer; Smidt, the driver, bigger still; and Borcherds, the “cheerful optimist,” weighed about as much as any two of them put together. We had reduced stores to a minimum, expecting to shoot for the pot; tools also were but few; for were we not to be led straight to the spot where we could pick the diamonds up? But even so, there were certain essentials: guns, a pick and shovel, a water-cask, emergency rations, sleeping-gear, etc.; and when, after several readjustments, I got all the foregoing jammed into, or tied on to, the cart, we suddenly remembered that a place had still to be found for me. However, a Cape cart is a wonderful vehicle, and at last it was managed, and we trotted out of Upington on September 13th, 1911, the observed of half its inhabitants—two of whom again paid me the compliment of trying to jump my claim by the Gordonian method of “following” a mile or two ahead. We had six spanking mules, and made good progress downstream, near the bank of the river, which is here very beautiful; smiling “lands” of wonderful fertility showing what irrigation can do with the belt of silt brought down by this Nile of South Africa: vineyards, orchards, corn-lands, lucerne, oranges, fruit-trees—and all flanked abruptly by stony sterile desert or redsand-dunes, outliers of the Kalahari stretching to the north. Into these dunes the “road” soon led, and within a few miles of Upington the mules were straining at a cart up to the hubs almost in heavy sand.
At nightfall we were at Keimoes, a most fertile little village, afterwards made famous as the scene of a fight with the infamous Maritz, who was wounded there. Here we slept, and getting away early and pressing on the whole of the day, were at North Furrow, opposite Kakamas, by nightfall, having done a good fifty miles of extremely heavy going in a little over a day and a half. Kakamas itself, the “Labour Colony,” the pioneer irrigation settlement of the Orange River, is on the southern bank and we were on the northern, and I had no opportunity then of seeing the actual village. We passed the night at Krantz Kop, with a most hospitable store-keeper named Miller, whose well-stocked little Winkel was at that time a good 200 miles from the railway (at Prieska), and the last store, indeed almost the last dwelling, in British territory. Here a few well-disseminated lies as to our destination had the effect of ridding us of the claim-jumpers, who had kept in sight of us from Upington, and who rode away before daybreak the following morning in the wrong direction entirely. From Krantz Kop downstream towards the German border the roads are atrocious for a few miles, and then cease altogether. The only track leads away from the river, crossing stony kopjes where every step tempts a smash-up, and leading directly towards a formidable barrier of red-hot-looking peaks. The surroundings become wilder at every step, and the strange shapes of the peculiar-looking vegetation,koker-boomen(Aloe dichotoma), thorny candelabra euphorbia, and a variety ofmelkboschexactly like gigantic asparagus, lend a weird aspect to the landscape. The prevailing granite—pinkish and speckled with a profusion of rock garnet—is broken by numerous quartz reefs which, as one approaches the German border, graduallychange from pure white through every shade of pink to the most beautiful of rose quartz, which in numerous instances becomes amethystine and ranges from heliotrope down to deep purple. Many of these reefs are full of large crystals of jet-black tourmaline, beautifully faceted, and often as thick as one’s wrist.
On the horizon, westward, a jagged line of fantastic-looking peaks show faintly blue in the shimmering heat, prominent among them being the two pointedspitz kopjeswhich mark the spot where the Molopo joins the Orange. Away on the left, and across the river, lies a long ridge of queer-looking peaks outlined like a cockscomb, and especially noticeable even in this land of violent colour contrasts, for they are jet-black as though made of coal. There is no sign of habitation or life, for with the exception of the small farmhouse at “Omdraai” (“Turn back”), the whole country is uninhabited, except for a few nomad Bastards or Hottentots.
By midday we were at “Waterval,” where, in a canvas hut, we found Oberholzer, a Dutch farmer who probably knows more about the Great Falls than anyone living, and who had acted as guide to most of the rare visitors who have from time to time made their way to that most marvellous natural wonder. To reach the Falls, or a view of them, a guide is absolutely necessary, for access to them from the north bank is both difficult and dangerous, and indeed can only be obtained when the river is low.
Above the actual cataract the river, split up by numerous islands, is almost a mile in width, and to reach the main channel where it takes its huge leap several minor streams have to be first negotiated.
The first of these we waded through, following our guide most carefully, for the water was up to our waists, and the current strong and rapid; moreover, we had to grope for footing on a narrow ridge of rock, uneven and slippery, full of sharp points and pitfalls, and with deep water on either side of it. Orange River water is always turbid, and the treacherousbottom was quite invisible; moreover, the ridge did not run straight, but zigzagged, and altogether the passage of this preliminary channel was by no means pleasant. Another foot of water would have rendered it perilous, two feet would have made it wellnigh impossible for the strongest swimmer, for the rapids immediately below lead to one of the side-falls.
Once across and we were on an island of sand and silt, split up into deep channels by past floods, and with plenty of big trees; then came more rapid streams, which, however, were easily negotiable over the huge granite boulders that encumbered them. The last of these side-streams was running in absolutely the contrary direction to the others and the general course of the river, and, following it, we came to an open, boulder-encumbered spot, where it disappeared, but where we could still hear it rushing swiftly deep beneath us. And then came chaos: huge monoliths of riven rock, the size of houses, strewn and heaped about in the wildest confusion, piled on each other, balanced and tottering, a maze of bare stone without a vestige of vegetation. And now the dull murmur that had scarcely been noticeable became a muttering thunder of appalling depth: and emerging from a rift in the labyrinth of granite, we stood suddenly on the edge of a profound chasm, over the farther lip of which, a few hundred yards upstream, the huge muddy volume of the Orange was hurtling in one stupendous spout. The scene was absolutely terrifying, for the dark precipice, smooth as though chiselled, and dank and slippery with the incessant spray, fell sheer away from our very feet, and where it did not actually overhang, offered no foothold even for a baboon, whilst clouds of spray drove round us, and the solid rock trembled with the monstrous music of the fall.
Rapidly converging from its width of a mile upstream, the Orange at this spot becomes pent in a deep channel, self-worn in the solid granite, until, when it takes its final plunge, it is concentrated into a terrific spout barely twenty yards in width, whichhurls itself with incredible velocity over the precipice a sheer four hundred feet into the gloomy abyss below. And with the plunge it practically disappears into the unknown, for many miles penned in a gloomy cañon, quite unapproachable and scarce to be obtained a glimpse of, till it emerges into a slightly wider bed close to the German border; thence it winds a tortuous course through solitary, wellnigh unknown and uninhabited country, for the last two hundred miles of its course to the sea; surely the most lonely and deserted of South African rivers? For, with the exception of the tiny police posts at Scuit’s Drift and Ramon’s Drift, not a habitation stands on or near its banks, through all those tortuous reaches that wellnigh encircle the mountains of Richtersfeldt, whose solitary peaks and ravines I have already made shift to describe.
Higher than the Victoria Falls, and more than double the height of Niagara, the Great Falls of the Orange lack the spectacular beauty of either of its famous rivals. Impressive they are, but the impression they leave is of terror rather than of pleasure, of awe rather than of beauty. There is no “fern forest” such as lends romance to the Zambesi fall; on all sides nothing but riven, shattered rock, sheer precipice, and giant buttress, a nightmare of barrenness, of desolation so appalling that one might well be standing in some other planet, some dead world from which all sign of life had long since vanished. The vegetation of the side-streams is hidden by the chaos of rocks near the brink of the cañon, and animal and bird life there is none, for all live things seem to shun the spot. This absence of vegetation and of life makes it additionally hard to realise the stupendous height of the main fall; the enormous smooth cliff opposite, the giant boulders, all confusing one’s sense of proportion.
Discovered by the traveller George Thompson in 1824, they were named by him the “Falls of King George,” but are generally known as the “GreatFalls”; whilst to the writer’s way of thinking, their native name of “Aughrabies” is far more fitting than either of the others.
Gloomy and terrifying as was the spot, it fascinated us and we could not tear ourselves away, but sat and watched the thunderous, ever-changing chaos of falling foam, speculating on what sight it would present in flood-time; and with the thought came the reflection that the Orange often rises 20 feet or so in an hour or two, and that we had been sitting there some hours already, and that a couple of feet would maroon us beyond all hope! I mentioned this great thought to the others, and the “time” we did back to the first and worst side-stream would, I am sure, have done credit to any athletic meeting’s records.
Some day, when civilisation shall have spread so far, there will of course be safe bridges over these side-channels, and mankind will be given an opportunity of seeing what no man yet can possibly have seen at close quarters and lived, the Orange River in flood, filling not only its self-worn channel, but spreading all over the lip of that nightmare of an abyss in one appalling maelstrom. Anyway, we got back safely, though sure enough the water had risen a good 6 inches since we crossed it before, and it was time to get going, for we were after better things than waterfalls; and bidding good-bye to Oberholzer, who prophesied our return, beaten, within a couple of days, we started again towards the blue peaks that beckoned to us from the German Border.
“You’ll maybe get as far as ‘Wag Brand,’” were Oberholzer’s last words; “not that you’ll ever get the cart there, but on foot you may do it: then you’ll have to come back. There’s a bit of a footpath that far, but it ends on the bank of the river, and you can’t get farther that way. Good-bye, so-long; see you back in a couple of days.”
However, we had long since learnt to take nothing for granted, and so we struck across rough but still negotiable country, away from the river, and hoped for the best. And our luck held, for though we hadto zigzag in and out of huge boulders and round granite kopjes that barred our way every few hundred yards, we still managed to keep something of a course, and made steady progress. At every step the country grew wilder and more interesting; moreover, its general characteristics resembled those narrated in Brydone’s narrative so closely that our conviction grew at every step that we were indeed on the path of the man who, forty long years before, had penetrated this wild country and brought out a fortune. Rocks and ridges of startlingly vivid colours criss-crossed with numerous quartz reefs, in which the huge black crystals of tourmaline were exceptionally prominent; bright red and yellow sandstones, bare, clean, and looking red-hot in the bright sun, with prominent serrated ridges, and kopjes of jet-black and shining dolerites, amongst which the frequent outcrops of beautiful rose quartz showed up in startling contrast. Every dry stream-bed (and they were many) was full of large water-worn blocks of this lovely pink, translucent stone.
Now, Brydone had mentioned blocks and fragments of “rock crystal” in his narrative, and we concluded, much to our own satisfaction, that he must have referred to this remarkable quantity of rose quartz, and welcomed it as a proof that we were hot on the scent. Late in the afternoon we entered a most picturesque bit of country, where the fantastic kopjes were standing in small but thickly grassed open spaces, and where the usual sand-rivers were bordered with thick vegetation, principally ofcameel-doorntrees, upon which the yellow bloom was thick, and the air full of its fragrance. This pleasant spot, I afterwards learnt, was known as “Knog Knieu” by the Bushmen, who made almost their last stand here.
The only possible track trended downwards, sometimes a faintly defined footpath, where it was often necessary for the whole party to combine forces and roll huge rocks aside to allow the wonderfully mobile Cape cart to pass; at others a soft-bedded sand-river, where the going was easy, except foroccasional rocky falls, which were negotiated with brake on and sled-fashion. Now the way went among peaks instead of low kopjes, and as it trended rapidly downwards, these bordering heights became veritable mountains, until late at night we were in a deep defile flanked by lofty abrupt peaks, an apparent cul-de-sac which ended on the bank of the Orange again, where the latter emerged from the cañon leading from the “Great Falls.”
RefugeesHOTTENTOT REFUGEES FROM THE GERMANS AT MOUTH OF THE MOLOPO, ORANGE RIVER.
HOTTENTOT REFUGEES FROM THE GERMANS AT MOUTH OF THE MOLOPO, ORANGE RIVER.
HOTTENTOT REFUGEES FROM THE GERMANS AT MOUTH OF THE MOLOPO, ORANGE RIVER.
BeaconINTERNATIONAL BEACON IN THE BAK RIVER, BORDER OF GERMAN SOUTH-WEST.
INTERNATIONAL BEACON IN THE BAK RIVER, BORDER OF GERMAN SOUTH-WEST.
INTERNATIONAL BEACON IN THE BAK RIVER, BORDER OF GERMAN SOUTH-WEST.
Morning showed us that, though the Cape cart had certainly performed miracles so far, it could go no farther. For, though the Orange had emerged from the narrow Falls cañon, it was still pent in by steep, precipitous peaks on either bank, which in parts went towering up skywards from the water with scarce foothold for a goat. Just where we were there was a dense belt of vegetation, for the side-ravine through which we had reached the main stream widened somewhat at the mouth. Among the thick trees we found a deserted hut, but the Hottentot guide we had hoped to find there had gone. However, de Wet had been to this place before, and he said we could get downstream to the mouth of the Molopo, where we should find a few Hottentots who might act as porters, for the cart must go round. By going back to Waterval and taking a circuitous route, it could get to a spot near the German border, and there wait for us, whilst on foot we explored the maze of unsurveyed peaks between, and in which our goal was believed to lie. So we unpacked sufficient food, arms, and other necessaries for a week, and our driver turned back to try to circumvent the mountains. We were now absolutely “on our own,” each man having from sixty to seventy pounds of impedimenta to “hump,” and before we had gone a mile down the difficult bank of the river we were fervently praying that we should find Hottentots at the Molopo; otherwise, once we really got amongst the mountains, instead of skirting them, we should be terribly handicapped by our loads.
In places the path was treacherous, smooth, water-worn granite rocks sloping steeply, straight into the swift, muddy current below; at others it widened into a belt of thick and tangled wood, in which pheasants and guinea-fowl were calling, and grey monkeys chattered in the thick trees. At length our way was barred by an exceptionally formidable peak rising sheer from the water, and we followed a faint and difficult spoor leading over its steep flank inland. On cresting the ridge, we saw that, though the country beneath us was still broken and rugged in the extreme, it was comparatively open, and that for some miles, at least, the river was no longer pent between formidable walls of rock. On the south bank loomed a huge red mountain, flat-topped and striking-looking, even in this land of strange-shaped mountains. This mountain—“Zee-coe-steek”—as it is called, is the highest point in the Kenhardt district, and during the Boer War a helio station was established on its summit; but this had long been abandoned, and the southern bank in its vicinity is almost as unknown and deserted as the wild hills in which we were searching.
Opposite this mountain, and near the mouth of the Molopo, we found a few Hottentots, who made a beeline for the hills the moment they saw us. Luckily two ancient hags and some pot-bellied little kiddies could not get away, and when they found who we were, and that we gave them tobacco and sugar instead of the sjambok, they hobbled off into the rocks and soon brought the refugees back. They had taken us for Germans, and their actions spoke volumes as to how they fear the white men on the other side of the border. They were all refugees from Damaraland, who had fled after the brave fight put up by Marengo against the Germans had finally ended in their defeat. In this remote spot, cut off by difficult mountains and uninhabited country for many miles in all directions from even the nearest dwelling, they had existed unmolested, seeing scarcely a white man a year, yet always in fear lest their oldtaskmasters should appear on the scene. They existed chiefly on the milk of a few goats, honey from the wild bees in the rocks, dassies (rock rabbits), and barbel caught in the river. In a short time they were chattering and clucking round us in high glee, but though we promised them good pay (or its equivalent in goods once we got to the cart) to guide us and act as porters, they were most reluctant to do so. They feared to go into the wild ravines we were bound for, fearing thirst, the leopards with which they said the mountains swarmed, and most of all fearing the Germans, whose patrol parties were often to be met with on our side of the border.
But at length our arguments prevailed, upon a solemn promise that if we penetrated German territory, as we fully expected to do, we should in nowise force them to accompany us.
Having made the old women happy with tobacco and tea, we once more started, this time in light marching order with the Hottentots as porters, towards a peculiar conical kopje a mile or so downstream, which denoted the mouth of the Molopo.
We found the ancient river-bed (which can be followed right through the Kalahari to Kuruman) dry, and choked from bank to bank with huge mounds of sand, but a little farther up its course, where the banks were still exposed, there was ample evidence to show that in the not far distant past a huge volume of water had flowed. Even the miserable little channel, worn deep in the débris that chokes the old bed, and which shows where an occasional trickle of water finds a way down after rain in the desert, was now bone dry, and it was evident that once away from the Orange we should have anxiety about water.
It was on the western bank of the Molopo, on a ridge of abrupt kopjes leading to the higher land to the north, that our guide, de Wet, had stumbled on the old waggon in a recent trip, and from it we hoped to be able to shape our course for the diamonds. We found the remains of the vehicle as he had described it. It was obviously very old, the natives knewnothing of how it had come there, there was no vestige of path or spoor anywhere near—in fact, it seemed incredible that it should ever have been dragged there at all. But there it was, and, taking stock of the wild surroundings, we felt more certain than ever that we were hot on the scent. A huge ravine had been mentioned, deep-cut and profound. There, less than a mile away up the Molopo bed, showed the entrance to just such a place, deep and clear-cut in the sheer rock as though split out by the stroke of a giant axe. And the “strangely shaped mountain” to which it led, in the narrative? We turned as one man in the direction given in the book, and there, its crest well clear of the intervening foothills, was just such a hill. It appeared useless to traverse the ravine, for it must lead to the hill, and there was no need to follow the devious path taken by the first man. From the height on which we stood we could take compass bearings of that hill, and cut straight across country to it.
The guides clucked and jabbered and intimated that it couldn’t be done, but we knew better—or thought we did; and it did not look more than five or six miles.
Evening found us struggling in a perfect maze of deep, tortuous ravines from which it was impossible to see anything, and in which to keep even an approximate course was out of the question, and as night fell we were glad to “give it best” and turn in beside a tiny pool of stagnant rain-water which we were lucky enough to stumble upon. There was dead wood enough for a fire, and the “boys” kept it up all night, for a perfect path of leopard spoors encircled the little puddle and the Hottentots were scared out of their wits; for they credit the leopards of these mountains with a ferocity above all others—and not without reason.
We were afoot at early dawn and plunged again into the labyrinth, here and there climbing a high point to endeavour to obtain a glimpse of the peak we sought, or of some tangible landmark or way out;but it was high noon, and we were almost dead-beat, before we at long last broke clear, and into a wide, well-defined ravine that ran in the right direction. The tourmaline crystals in the white quartz reefs abounding in this ravine were the largest I have ever seen, and there were abundant traces of tin everywhere; but we were eager for diamonds, nothing less, and pushed on, at length emerging into more open country, with our elusive hill full in sight. But alas! as we proceeded and broke clear of the surrounding rocks, we saw that instead of one hill there were three—four—five—all the same strange shape, all alike as two peas! Truly anembarras de richesses, for this multiplicity either meant we were on the wrong scent, or that we should have to search all of them before we could get the next landmark!
We sat down and had a meal of sorts before tackling them, and very little was said, Borcherds’ cheery remark that there would be a mine in each of them being met with a cold silence. Not that anything, even silence, could be “cold” in those ravines, be it understood, for the rock was too hot even to sit upon without an aroma as of fried steak arising, and the fact that our water was nearly finished, and we had no notion when or where we should find any more, by no means added to our hilarity.
The next two days were productive of more climbing, scrambling, and general discomfort and profanity, than I ever remember concentrated in so short a time. Not that we did not find the landmarks; on the contrary, we found too many of them. For from the five hills we could see others; from each there were dozens of ravines, any one of which would answer the meagre description of the narrative, and as we plodded along from one to the other, doggedly determined to find the right one, we were eternally stumbling on something to raise our hopes to the highest pitch, only to find them dashed down immediately by some new obstacle.
We found enough rain-water to live on, though it was vile and stinking, and every hour of daylight wesearched, and searched, in vain. Apparently no human foot had ever trod these hills before, for no spoor except those of baboon, leopard, and lynx showed in the white sandbeds of the many dry river-beds; in fact, the whole region was given up to these, its only fit denizens. Except on the summits of some of the flat-topped hills there was no vegetation; there the queer-lookingkoker-boomclustered in miniature forests.
The Hottentots apparently thought we were mad, though in any case as long as they had enough to eat and drink they cared little; but even their curiosity was at length stirred, and it occurred to them to ask us what we were looking for, anyway; and in a queer mixture of Dutch, English, and Hottentot, we told them. “Oh,thatplace,” said they, “where the ‘bright stones’ come from?Thatplace, by the big mountain? Oh! that is not inthesehills,thatplace is a long day’s trek farther on; not near the Molopo, but near the Bak River, right on the German border,thatplace.” Words failed. So these poor despised chaps knew the real place all the time, and we had not even asked them!
Borcherds tore his battered remains of a hat off, and jumped upon it in sheer exasperation.
“Which way?” he snorted, grabbing up his kit, and preparing to make a beeline.
But the Hottentots apparently knew no way except to get back to the Molopo, and thence follow the Orange downstream, and we did not at all like the idea of that; but patient inquiry elicited the information that the place to which we had sent the cart could not be more than half a day from where we were, and from the cart the men could find the way.
At great pains we reached an open valley that night, where at some deserted water-pits the cart should have been, but neither cart nor spoor could be seen, and we spent an anxious night, for our food was finished, and game had proved so scarce that there was little chance of living by the rifle, shouldany mishap have happened to the vehicle. In the morning, however, we found it a few miles up the valley, and had the first real square meal we had had since it left us.
We consulted again as to the route, and the natives soon demonstrated that, although the valley we were in led eventually to the Orange, it was impassable in that direction, for the lower end consisted of a series of huge sheer precipices of polished granite which led like gigantic steps to the river, and down which this side-river had at one time poured in cascades similar to that of Aughrabies. To go round upstream would be possible, but it would mean about three days with the cart, which we were reluctant to leave again.
The alternative was to climb the almost vertical mountains that barred our way, cross their flat tops and descend on the far side, a distance, we judged, of not more than ten miles as the crow flies. Time was an object, and we decided not only to attempt this path, but also to try to take a pack-horse over with us. It looked impossible, but Paul had spent a few hours in clambering the slopes and thought it could be done. So Stoffel, one of the leaders, an old horse who was used to pack-work, was chosen and packed with a miscellaneous load of food, tools, blankets, etc., round which was wound the stout rope with which we proposed to negotiate the crater in which were the diamonds—should we find it. The Hottentots were well loaded too, and altogether we had sufficient in the shape of stores to make us independent of the cart for a long time. The cart was to remain by the water-place, which was nothing but a hole scraped in the dry sand of the river-bed, but into which water soaked as fast as we could use it.
That climb was a thing to be remembered. The first hour was fairly easy, for the lower slopes, though encumbered by huge blocks of rock, were negotiable by cautious zigzagging; but steeper and steeper grew the incline, till the “capping” of about two or three hundred feet was reached, and this was almostvertical. By working along the face, however, we found here and there a steep gully where water had worn a way, and in which there clung quite a lot of thorn-bushes and other vegetation. Up one of these we got the old nag, until it seemed impossible to get him farther, and we unpacked him and sent the “boys” on with his load to the top, where the others had long since arrived. I was loth to abandon the idea of getting him up, seeing how near the top was, and therefore started making a path, pulling here and there a rock away and making it possible for him to scramble up, disturbing more scorpions in so doing than I had ever seen before. Within 50 feet of the top, and when I could hear the other chaps laughing and talking above, I got tired of this road-making and tried to pull the old horse up by his rein. He had just reached up for a mouthful of dry grass growing in a crack, and as I snatched him a bit he reared, lost his balance, and went over with a crash. Of course I thought he was finished, for the rock went sheer down, but on looking over I found that he had only fallen about 10 feet full into the middle of a thick thorn-bush, and there he lay, on his back, with his legs wildly pawing and the bunch of dry grass still in his mouth, looking about as ludicrous an object as it would be possible to imagine. My yells soon brought the whole party down, and somehow we managed to get him out and up to the top, full of thorns, but with no bones broken, and still munching the bunch of grass.
The tableland on which we now stood was remarkable. Apparently it extended as far as the eye could reach, for this was the true level of the country, and the valleys from which we had emerged simply water-worn by erosion towards the bed of the Orange.
So sheer did these numerous valleys go down that at a few yards from the brink it was impossible to see that such depressions existed, the whole country appearing as an unbroken flat. The vegetation was entirely different to that of the lower levels, wholeforests ofkoker-boomenand other aloes, and thick-leaved succulents and resinous plants abounding.
Reloading, we made our way across this flat due west, and eventually came upon a descent as steep as the face we had climbed, along the brink of which we searched for an hour or more for a possible path, which at length we found, and got Stoffel down to a similar valley to the one we left the cart in. This, however, trended due west; it was full of pleasant vegetation too, and, better still, full of game. Here we camped, and an hour’s trek in the morning brought us among formidable peaks again, whence we soon looked down into an ancient river-bed deep worn in smooth granite, and seemingly quite inaccessible.
This was the Bak River, its steep walls at this lower part of its course worn a good 500 feet in the rock, and its farther bank German territory.
And the Hottentots knew a way down, though they were already on thequi vivefor a German patrol, and ready to bolt back into the mountains every time a dassie moved in the rocks. In this strange river-bed we made our camp, choosing one of the few spots where sand and soil had lodged and a thicket of reeds had sprung up, through which ran a trickle of water as clear as crystal, but very salt to the taste. Both above and below this spot for miles the actual bed of the river was worn so deep and smooth in the living granite that it was almost impassable for a man on foot, and out of the question for horses. In no part of the mountains bordering the Orange, where erosion has been so widespread and enormous, have I seen anything to compare with this polished granite river-bed, through which for many thousands of years huge volumes of water must have rushed from a region which to-day is one of the dryest in the world.
From the spot where we camped a side-gully led conveniently into the western bank and German territory, which at this part is as wild and unknown as the British. About a mile upstream we found thefirst international beacon, standing in the actual river-bed, a pile of rough rocks surmounted by an iron plate bearing on one side the inscription “British Territory,” and on the other “Deutsches Schutzgebeit.” These beacons extend at irregular intervals from the Orange River right up the twentieth degree of east longitude for many hundreds of miles; many of them are in almost inaccessible places, and have probably been seen by few, if any, white men since the International Boundary Commission first erected them; some have been thrown down by animals or the natives, and several that I have seen have been used as targets, the iron plates being perforated with bullet-holes. For this region formed a fastness for the guerilla bands of Hottentots that put up such a game fight against the overwhelming odds of the Germans in the “Hottentot Rebellion” of 1903-6.
We soon found that, though this Bak River ravine answered to the description of the place we were after even better than the country near the Molopo, the natives who had brought us to it could not, or would not, show us the actual spot. They had all heard of it, all said it was near where we were, but there their knowledge ended.
Moreover, so scared were they at the proximity of the dreadedDuitstersthat they were practically useless, except to gather firewood, look after the camp, and steal every bit of tobacco, sugar, etc., they could lay hands on.
About a mile upstream a faint track showed where the German patrol from Stolzenfels at rare intervals took a turn round this remote portion of their frontier, and it was interesting to note that for miles this path of theirs ran well within British territory. However, we saw nothing of them, and after days of fruitless scrambling in the wild ravines and precipitous slopes of our own side of the line, we made a systematic search of all we could cover of theirs. Day after day we started at daybreak, dividing our forces and meeting at prearranged spots, each taking a littlefood and water for the day and returning only at nightfall.
WaterfallTHE MAIN FALL, GREAT FALLS OF THE ORANGE.The cliff opposite is about 450 to 500 feet.
THE MAIN FALL, GREAT FALLS OF THE ORANGE.The cliff opposite is about 450 to 500 feet.
THE MAIN FALL, GREAT FALLS OF THE ORANGE.
The cliff opposite is about 450 to 500 feet.
In German territory the mountains were higher than upstream, their tops wide spaces of flat tableland covered withkoker-boomen.
From the riverwards edges of these plateaux a vast panorama stretched on every side. Upstream the winding Orange lay like a blue ribbon fallen between a wilderness of bare and riven rocks, the only vegetation visible being the thin dark line of trees lining the actual river-banks, and this in many places entirely disappearing where the cliffs that pent in the water gave no footing for even a plant to cling. For many miles the river was unapproachable, and from these high mountain-tops from which we viewed its course, a long and difficult detour would be necessary before the thirsty traveller could reach a drop of water. As far as the eye could reach in any direction no sign of habitation or of life could be seen; all was silent, desolate, and infinitely lonely.
Our food ran short, and awkwardly enough the only game seemed to be on the German side, where we were chary of shooting; for sound travels far in this region, and the last thing we wished for was a visit from a German patrol. Their nearest post was a bare twenty miles east as the crow flies, but twenty miles of as rough country as can be found in the rough north-west, and therefore a good two days’ trek away. We found many things: copper, galena, and more precious minerals; but search as we would, we could not find the spot we were looking for. Yet even to the last day our hopes ran high; for whatever the origin of Brydone’s narrative may have been, there was proof positive to be found in these gullies that somewhere in the vicinity Kimberlite pipes actually exist.
On one of the flat-topped mountains well within German territory we came upon the remains of a Hottentot bivouac, evidently dating from the time when Marengo and Simon Cooper fought the Germans here. Scattered about amongst the bushes wereodds and ends of clothing, German ration-tins, etc., and in one heap I found the gilt hilt of a German sword, and a pair of binoculars which had been battered and smashed to try and get at the prisms.
In one of the ravines where a thick bush known ashaak doorn(hook thorn) abounded we found more gruesome relics in the shape of skeletons, firmly entangled in the thickest part of the bush, where they had apparently been thrown as living men.
The Hottentots claim that in this unhappy war of reprisals the Germans, exasperated by the protracted resistance of the natives, used to treat all wounded men who fell into their hands with horrible severity; breaking their bones, and throwing them bodily into these thorn-bushes, from which a sound man could scarcely escape, being a favourite method of disposing of them.
I have had this told me by numbers of Hottentots who fought in this war, and have seen the skeletons in several places where fighting took place. The Germans claim that German wounded were thus treated by the Hottentots, but the rags of clothing clinging to the bones I saw were not part of a German uniform.
One of the most beautiful things in this wild region was the wonderful outcrops of rose and amethyst quartz to which I have already alluded, but which in the vicinity of the Bak River reached a profusion and a perfection I have seen nowhere else. Huge kopjes of this beautiful stone, of the most exquisite rose-colour, big reefs cropping out of the mountain slopes and in places crowning them, afforded a wonderful sight, especially when the early sun shone into their translucent depths. Since I first wandered there I have seen this beautiful semiprecious stone cut into jewellery, and sold in shops as “pink quartz,” but in the Noup Hills by the Bak River there is sufficient of it to build a town.
A day or two before we abandoned the trip I had an adventure which might have proved more unpleasant than it did. Food was already very scarce,and one afternoon I took a shot-gun and went down the defile to where the Bak gorge ran into the Orange. Here the river was very wide, placid, and beautiful, and in the thick trees there were pheasants in plenty; but so thick was the vegetation that to flush them was next to impossible, and it was only after hours of walking and creeping through thick thorn, and the expenditure of the eight cartridges I had brought with me, that I got three pheasants. Of the others I had hit one or two hard, only to see them fall into the high and unclimbable thorn-trees, or into the river, and missed the rest. With my last shot I began to think about getting back to camp, and found that, absorbed in the pheasants, I had made my way upstream much farther than I had imagined. It was about sunset when I realised this, and night falls very suddenly in this region, so, getting clear of the thicket, I hurried campward. But the way was not only long but difficult, cut up with huge mullahs that had been worn in the deep silt of the banks, impeded by rocks and thick bush; and by the time I reached the Bak River gorge it was as near “pitch dark” as it ever is in Gordonia.
Of course there was no mistaking the way, for once in the ravine it is almost impossible to get out of it; but the pitfalls and pot-holes in the ice-smooth granite are bad enough even in the daytime, and I blundered along through the thick bush of the lower end of the valley, cursing myself for being so late, and wondering how I should get on when I got to the really difficult bare and rocky part.
Thought of any danger from leopards never entered my head, for though there was abundant evidence that the kloofs were full of them, and we knew that they had killed lots of natives thereabouts, they kept out of our way, and though we heard them all round us at times, we had not seen them.
Now, on my way down, I had wasted a shot on a splendidlammer vanger, a fine specimen of an eagle that got up from a rock within shot and with a big dassie in his claws, and that I had killed. I cut hiswings, beak, and talons off, and left them hanging in a tall thorn-bush, and as I neared this spot I thought of trying to locate the bush and taking my trophy. I had just decided that I was quite near it when, just in front of me, rose a chorus of yelps and snarls, and it was evident that jackals were quarrelling over the eagle’s carcass. I was feeling around for a stone to shy at the small scavengers when I heard a sound as of a soft but heavy body landing amongst gravel and twigs, another stifled yelp and then the snarling, coughing growl of a leopard, or rather of two leopards, who appeared to be carrying on a similar quarrel to the one they had so summarily put a stop to.
I realised several things instantly. No cartridges, no trees except unclimbable thorn-trees, and no matches. A fire would have scared them immediately. No way home except past them—well, I’d have to go back! I did not like the idea of a night by the river, but even thatpis allerhad to go by the board, for as I turned to sneak back I heard the cough of another leopard in that direction. Clearly this was no place for me, but what on earth was I to do? The pheasants had bled a good deal, and I was smothered in the blood, which probably accounted for the gentlemen on my trail.
Well, something had to be done, and having heard that the human voice was feared by all animals, I left off a yell that scared me so that I dropped the gun. It echoed up among the rocks like the screech of a steam-siren; it woke the baboons on the peaks and they barked back in faint imitation; far up the ravine a big owl took up the refrain and passed it on farther. The snarling of the leopards stopped instantly, and the shuffle of a displaced stone among the rocks showed they had bounded away. So, picking up the useless gun, I took my courage in both hands and “lit out” for camp. Every few yards I repeated the first yell, but when after a bit I stopped for sheer want of breath and hoarseness I heard those blamed leopards making remarks to each otheracross the ravine; they were accompanying me on either side. Long before I reached camp I was as hoarse as a crow and my yell lacked vim. I fell over rocks and into crevasses, and once glissaded down a slope of slippery granite into about 3 feet of extremely wet cold water. But at long length I turned a corner of the defile and came in sight of the welcome fire, and heard the leopards no more.
There seemed to me to be a lack of anxiety about all of the home party. Paul was asleep and snoring within a few inches of the fire, and Borcherds and De Wet were smoking and swapping lies on the other side of it.
“Hallo,” said Borcherds. “Bit pleased with yourself, ain’t you?”
“What d’ye mean?” I asked, none too sweetly.
“Oh, we heard you singing for the last hour or more,” he said. “Thought you might have struck someone with some whisky.”
Singing!
We did not give up the search till our food absolutely petered out. The Hottentots lived for days on dassies, which none of us would eat, though they are perfectly clean and good eating. They cooked them by the simple process of throwing them in the fire. The hair burnt off, but formed a sort of shell round the carcass, and when it was sufficiently roasted, they simply knocked the charred part off and ate the rest. I never saw them make the least attempt to clean one.
When we finally trekked, our rations for the journey back to the cart consisted of two tins of sardines, about four pounds of Boer meal, and a tin of golden syrup.
We decided to attempt to get the old horse down the Bak River, and thence up the Orange bank, to a path that would get us back to the cart, and so, at daybreak one morning, we reluctantly bade farewell to our camp and took the back trail.
Most of the morning was spent in getting Stoffeldown smooth granite slopes by strewing sand over them, and many a slip and scramble did the old thing get, but at length we stood on the bank of the Orange; where he gorged himself with grass, and we turned to and made a big pot of “mealie pap,” and divided the sardines and syrup amongst the eight of us. And leaving the “Bak” behind us, we reluctantly abandoned our first attempt after Brydone’s diamonds. I say “reluctantly,” for every man of us still believed that somewhere in the immediate vicinity of our late camp lay a diamond-mine.
Our journey back to the cart was a hungry but uneventful one. We found the driver on the point of clearing for Upington with the news of our being lost or captured by the Germans, for we were long overdue, and he had consoled himself by eating practically every bit of our remaining stores. Three days later we were back at Kakamas North Bank, where at the store Borcherds ransacked the whole stock for a pair of pants large enough for his ample proportions. For his only pair were in rags, our boots were in shreds, and altogether a bigger lot of ragamuffins rarely straggled over a frontier. Of course, we had had no news from the outside world since we left Kakamas on our way down, and our first anxious inquiry disclosed the fact that a messenger had been chasing me for days, with telegrams which he had brought all the way from Upington. We located him later, and one of the telegrams brought me news that immediately sent our despondent spirits up with a bound. Before leaving for the trip, I had vainly endeavoured to obtain the name of a certain individual who, years before, had sold a very large diamond at Steinkopf, which he said he had found somewhere near the Great Falls, and who, after obtaining a considerable sum for it, had gone back to Gordonia. And this wire, which had been following me for weeks, conveyed the welcome intelligence that he was a certain Hendrick, living at Kakamas—the very place inwhich the wire reached me! Here was luck with a vengeance, luck which might atone for all our misfortunes—for Steinkopf credited this man, above all others, with knowing where there were plenty more to be picked up!
Cautious inquiry elicited the fact that the man was well known, and lived but a mile or two away. And without loss of time, Paul and Borcherds set out to find him. He was a sly-looking Bastard, who at first strenuously denied that he had ever been to Steinkopf, or knew what a diamond was; but when he found we were not police, and that he had nothing to fear, he owned up. Yes! he had found three—big ones. One he had sold at Steinkopf, the others he had buried beneath a tree close to where he found them, for he believed that the police were watching him, and had feared to go near the spot again. We showed him our licences, and as he assured us the spot was on Government ground, we felt that all was indeed well in this best of all possible worlds.
The wily old fox drove a hard bargain with us, and in nowise would he tell us the whereabouts of his discovery. It would take us three or four days to reach it, that was all he said, and when, in trying to pump him, we mentioned that we had been to Bak River on a similar search, he smiled grimly and said, “You were on the wrong side of the river [Orange].”
This hint excited us more than ever. How if, after all, we had been on the wrong side, and the diamonds were lying within a mile or so of us, but across the water? True, the narrative seemed to apply to the north bank; but was it not possible that some point of the journey had been omitted, and the man who found the mine might have crossed to the south bank to reach the spot? Anyway, this remark of old Hendrick made us close with him. We held a council of war, and within a few hours had crossed the river into Kakamas, and were arranging to leave at once for a flying trip—somewhere.
De Wet had reluctantly to return to Upington, and our driver would in nowise consent to stay a day longer with us, and so we gave him our blessing, and let him go back likewise.
Kakamas, the celebrated “Labour Colony,” a community of over 3,000 souls living in isolation, five long days’ trek from a railway, is worthy of far more space than I can afford it here. Its one long straggling “street” extends for miles along the Orange River bank, the broad, flat alluvial stretches having by irrigation been connected into one of the most fertile spots in South Africa; fruit, vegetables, and cereals growing in a profusion unsurpassed.
There are numerous schools and churches, but never a hotel or boarding-house, and the nearest doctor for this populous place was at Kenhardt, full two days’ ride away. As a result, Borcherds was in demand immediately he was seen and recognised in the village, and within an hour was being mobbed.
So clamorous, indeed, were the population for his ministrations, that to us laymen it appeared quite needless for him to go away again looking for diamond-mines, with a gold-mine ready to his hand; but somehow he seemed a bit dubious about the gold!
Meanwhile we were busy. A Cape cart and good-looking team was engaged, stores were laid in, and long before Borcherds had got through with his patients we were ready. We gave him a little grace, and he lost no time in emptying his little travelling medicine-chest and joining us, and away we went westward again, this time at a spanking rate; for on the south bank there were at least some alleged roads. For many miles we still passed the straggling houses of the Kakamas colonists, which became poorer and poorer until they gave place to the hut, tent, waggon, or makeshift abode of the new-comers, who had as yet had no time to build. On through an even more remote outpost, the tiny little hamlet of “Rhenosterkop,” where an enterprising Hebrew had what was not to be found in all Kakamas,a fully licensed “hotel.” And thence through country scarcely less wild and but little less solitary than that of the northern bank. Part of Little Bushman Land, this northern extremity of Kenhardt, and notoriously a waterless country. But here and there a tiny farmhouse was to be found, at each of which Borcherds was received with open arms, and even we others basked in his reflected glory. Anyhow we got milk, eggs, and fresh meat, and began to realise that he was well worth his place in the cart. This time we visited Brabies, Nous, and Onderste Zwartmodder, whence a long waterless trek of twenty-odd miles brought us again to the wild country trending down to the Orange. We finally landed on the bank of the latter again, at a place called “Nourasiep,” considerably below Scuit’s Drift, and many miles lower than we had reached on the northern bank. Here we found a solitary inhabitant, a Hottentot herd, who was supposed to be minding cattle, but who had evidently heard of Borcherds’ being on the way, for he too was “sick.”
Hendrick now told us we were within half an hour of the spot where he had picked up the stone he sold, and two others which were still buried there, and our impatience to go and fill our pockets was so great that, without waiting for a meal (and we had had none that day), we urged him to take us to it at once. He led us away from the river, uphill, among a region of wide, well-defined quartz reefs, which were here and there very highly mineralised; and after a walk of a couple of miles he brought us to what he pronounced to be the actual spot where he had found the stones.
It was a small gully between granite dykes, which were seamed with quartz reefs, and a big outcrop of hæmatite in the latter had strewn the slopes and bottom of it with black crystals of that very widespread and—in such a place—worthless metal. And amongst all this débris of iron, he swore he had found the stones. There was not the remotest indication of any diamondiferous soil of any kind anywhere near the spot, and unless the diamondshad weathered out of the granite, or had been dropped there by ostriches, they could never have been there at all. Anyway, as Paul said, after we had searched every inch of the locality for hours, “How about those two that Hendrick had buried?”
The gentleman now said that the tree was no longer there; which was true, in so far that nothing but a couple ofkoker-boomengrew within a mile of it. Nor was there any trace of any tree having ever grown there; and reluctantly we were forced to come to the conclusion that we had been fooled again.
I am sure that, had Paul had the man on the opposite bank of the river, in German territory, he would have shot him, and I am not sure that we should have tried to prevent him.
But there was nothing to be done—he stuck to his tale, and we could not prove it a lie, and there was nothing to be done except—go back! Later, we found that, as the river was very low, the granite bed was exposed in many of the channels into which it was here divided, and in them there were many extraordinary “pot-holes” worn in the hard stone, deep and perfectly circular cavities varying in size from a quart pot to a hogshead, or larger: and we spent a day in emptying some of these, and washing the gravel always found at their bottoms. But we had no luck: garnets, iolite, water opal, and some fine amethysts there were, but never a diamond. And, sadder and poorer men, we made our slow way back to Kakamas, Upington, Prieska, and civilisation.
Whilst on my way back, I again heard news as to diamonds having been found by Bushmen in the pans of the Southern Kalahari, and this time the information was so precise that I made up my mind to apply for a permit such as had hitherto never been granted to a prospector, a permit from the Government to search for diamonds in the vast, forbidden “Game Reserve.”