CHAPTER XIX
RESULT OF KALAHARI TRIP—NAKOB—LACK OF POLICE ON FRONTIER—WORKING A KIMBERLITE PIPE—UKAMAS—DRUNKEN GERMAN OFFICERS—SLOW TREKKING—A BAD SMASH.
At Upington I took the preliminary steps for obtaining the right to prospect the lands to which the indications on the border had pointed, a task which proved both long and tedious. And meanwhile, whilst negotiations were still pending with the scattered and absentee owners of these huge desert farms, I at last received the Government’s decision as to the Kalahari. And it was an adverse one: admitting the interest of my report on this “unexplored” region, and even of its scientific value, but refusing to take my samples of Kimberlite, etc., as proof of the existence of diamond pipes in the Kalahari Game Reserve, and refusing me any further facilities in that direction.
So we had risked our lives and our money in vain, and all the castles we had built on those desert pipes met the fate at any time likely to overtake such edifices based upon the sand—of a Government promise.
However, it was no good squealing, and as soon as the right to prospect my newly found area was forthcoming, I started again for the border. This was on March 17th, 1914, when I left Cape Town with a full equipment of diamond-washing gear, to thoroughly test the region north of the Noup Hills, and in the immediate vicinity of the German South-West Border.
Handicapped by a heavy equipment, my progress from the railhead at Prieska was maddeningly slow, and it was not until April 8th that I at length reachedmy destination, Nakob, a tiny police post on the border, and the “port of entry” into German territory.
In spite of its comparative importance as the customs “port” for the southern trade-routes, this post at Nakob was one of the loneliest, most isolated habitations in South Africa.
It was simply a little shanty of corrugated iron so small as to barely afford shelter for the three troopers stationed there, and who, having no stable, tethered their horses amongst the thorn-trees near by. South of them stretched the wild country I have described, the Noup Hills and Bak River, with not a single inhabitant for the whole difficult day’s ride to the Orange, and more days beyond it. North of them, and wellnigh fifty miles away, was the similar post of Obopogorop where two other troopers were marooned, and thence a similar stretch of awful dune country had to be crossed to reach Rietfontein—the northern post of the camel police which I have already described, and where there were about a dozen men.
This represented the whole police force guarding (?) the long desert frontier of Gordonia and German South-West Africa—less than twenty men isolated and separated from each other by great distances of desert and difficult country, in many places cumbered by huge dunes of loose sand, through which transport was impossible, and which rendered long detours necessary. And these difficult, devious, and waterless paths were the only means of communication between them, for neither telephone nor telegraph-wire existed! Between them and their headquarters at Upington stretched a good eighty miles also of wellnigh uninhabited country, whilst their nearest store was at Zwartmodder, a tiny place in the bed of the Molopo, forty miles due east, and therefore that distance from the border.
Except for a few miserable Hottentotpondhoeksand the mud houses of a couple of Bastards, there were no other inhabitants of this important boundarypost. They had got water in a well at a little distance from the post, and I soon found that my sphere of action would be limited to a radius within reach of this water, for there was none other for a very great distance in either direction.
A few days after my arrival I was snugly encamped some miles north of the police post, and within a stone’s throw of German territory, my tents being pitched in a deep ravine running into an escarpment of higher land. These deep, abrupt ravines honeycombed the country in all directions, and in them there was a certain amount of vegetation, though the surface of the plateau or tableland above was principally a stone-strewn wilderness over which one could ride for days without seeing a human being or the trace of one.
One of these ravines was, I found, the upper part of the Bak River, in which I had discovered my indications farther south; and within a few days I had confirmed my original conviction that hereabouts was the source of the Kimberlite I had found. Much of the country was hidden by a huge accumulation of sand, but on the higher land I soon found, not one but a whole group of pipes.
On the most accessible of these I began work in earnest, though even there the difficulties were very great. First of all a road had to be made through rock, bush, and débris over which to bring stores, and, above all, the large quantity of water necessary for a rotary washing machine; and part of this track had to negotiate the almost perpendicular part of the escarpment, for the pipe lay on the top of the plateau. And at this rise, in spite of all precautions, barrels, tanks, and every other water-utensil I possessed were smashed in turn.
I soon gathered a miscellaneous gang of about a dozen “boys,” Young Gert, who had stuck to me in many a tight corner, “bossing” them very efficiently. There were Hottentots, Bastards, Damaras, and Ovampos from near the Kunene River in the north of German territory, and two Bushmen.Altogether a wild and polyglot lot, clad mostly in rags and tatters, and most of them “wanted” by the Germans over the border. However, they did not work badly, though they took a lot of feeding. Of course we were entirely self-supporting, for I had brought a large supply of meal, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and other necessities, dry wood was plentiful in the ravines, and the camp, with huge fires burning and a savoury smell of roasting buck or hotroster-kook, was a most pleasant place to return to after a long day in the pipe or the veldt. I had a terrier for companion, and was far from lonely, and once in a while rode down to the police camp and saw the troopers, and heard the news brought in by the rare waggons or wayfarers from Upington and the far-distant world beyond. And day after day, once the gang knew their work at the pipe, I explored every gully and likely spot for many miles around, generally on foot, but occasionally, for the longer distances, taking an old nag who was as surefooted as a goat and from whose back I could shoot without fear of being bucked off. Much of this prospecting was in German territory, which to the north was as wild and pathless as our own, and where the rare patrols could be avoided with ease. Buck and the magnificentgom paauwswere plentiful, and kept the camp fairly well supplied with meat: any little deficiency for the “boys” pot being usually made up by giving Gert two cartridges (at most) and my short Martini-Enfield carbine—his favourite weapon—and telling him that his shooting must be done in German territory. His weakness used to be for ostrich meat, thick luscious steaks of it usually forming the “boys’” Sunday dinner, looking exactly like rump-steak and cooked in the thick breast-fat of the huge bird, which swarmed in the locality.
The pipe I had chosen to test was peculiarly situated, on the top of the plateau and right upon the extreme edge of British territory; so close indeed to German soil that the international beacon marking the actual twentieth degree of east longitude (theboundary-line) stood within a few yards of the well-defined western wall of the pipe, and in full view of the shafts we were sinking.
From the edge of the escarpment, a few hundred yards from this beacon, a magnificent view could be obtained of both British and German territory, south-east, south, and south-west, the irregular peaks that penned the lonely Orange River being visible along the whole of the horizon in that direction. Over the whole vast space, one tiny habitation alone was visible, the little police post at Nakob, at the foot of the escarpment, and barely two miles away. From this beacon post the experienced observer could pick up several of the other signposts dotted here and there at irregular intervals amongst wild bush and rock along the twentieth degree, the actual boundary, which was, however, pathless and difficult to follow.
The corresponding German police post, also usually known as Nakob, was not built opposite our own little post, but near a very prominent granite hill some two miles south of it, where there was water on the German side, and in the vicinity of which our own post at one time stood. (These minute and tedious particulars as to the position of the two posts are necessary to enable the reader to follow what happened at this spot a few months later, at the outbreak of war.)
We saw little of the German police, who were few, and on excellent terms with our own men along the border, and whose lot, compared with that of our men, was a fairly easy one. For they were but eighteen miles from their base at Ukamas, where a couple of hundred troops were stationed, and from whence there was telephonic and telegraphic communication all over German territory. There was a doctor there, a “hotel” and store, and good roads led to it; in short, compared to our own side of the border, a measure of civilisation was within easy reach. These German mounted police belongedto acorps d’élite, each trooper having been a senior non-commissioned officer in the Imperial German Army, and they were for the most part well-educated men, and especially expert in cartography. Part of their duties lay in preparing exhaustive maps of the localities in which they were stationed, and I have been shown, by them, maps of our own side of the border, showing minute and accurate detail utterly wanting on our own charts.
For weeks I led a most strenuous life, never idle enough to have a dull moment, in spite of the fact that, except for my gang of natives, I was quite alone. Besides the clearing of the sand and débris from the pipe, the cartage of water and other routine work, there were a thousand tasks to see to: trees to fell for timbering shafts, or to be hewn into rough windlasses; charcoal to burn for the sharpening of picks; tanks to tinker and solder; the obtaining of fresh meat for a ravenous family of a dozen or more, each of whom, if left to himself, would eat half a buck at a meal; and in short the whole gamut of “jack-of-all-trades” tasks that have to be performed by a prospector in such a spot.
There was an occasional break in the routine in the shape of a longer trip in search of other prospects, and more than one night spent far away on the wide veldt, with the path lost; but by remembering the cardinal fact that a line due south on the plateau would always bring me to the escarpment which could be followed “home,” I always got back with no worse experience than being half frozen, for the nights were now very cold, and the days glorious with bright sunshine, and the air like dry champagne. One day, in trying to make my own way to Zwartmodder, across the veldt, I got badly out of the path, and night found me in dunes as wild as any I had seen in the Reserve, and in which a bitterly cold wind froze me to the marrow as I crouched under a bush till morning, clad in nothing but a thin shirt and trousers.
I was, as I afterwards found, a bare ten miles from Zwartmodder; but in these very same dunes,only a few years back, a police trooper lost his way and died of thirst.
One other trip that will never be forgotten was to the Noup Hills again, and into the famous Oorlogs Kloof, where, with Gert and a Bastard named Nicholas Cloete, I made one more bid for “Brydone’s diamonds,” and, failing them, for thetijgersthat infested the wild gullies there.
But that I have striven all through this narrative to avoid all shooting yarns, I could let my pen run on for a full chapter over that particular hunt and the strange things I found there; but I must leave all that, and pass on to the end of May, when, after six weeks of systematic work and exhaustive search in all directions, I was in possession of data that made a trip to the nearest telegraph-station imperative. This meant Ukamas, the German township I have mentioned, and which so far I had avoided.
I therefore rode down to our own police post, and reported that I was taking a horse over the border, for which I had obtained the requisite permission before leaving Upington; thence I rode on to the German post, and had to give minute particulars as to who and what I was, whence from, and whither bound, to the little trooper in charge there. I had had several chats with the little chap before; he spoke French extremely well, and was, I believe, an Alsatian. Anyway he was a very obliging chap, and quite unlike the uncouth, brutal troopers of the regiment stationed at Ukamas. This ordeal over, and a full description of both myself and my horse entered in theNe Varieturkept for the purpose, I rode the eighteen miles into the little frontier town over good, well-defined roads laid out by the military, and with a valuable aid to the traveller at every cross-road in the shape of a stone signpost giving distance and direction to inhabited places in the locality.
Ukamas, although but a tiny village, and a very long distance from the railway at Kalkfontein, was certainly a credit to the Germans, the post-office,houses, and barracks being attractive-looking, substantially built edifices, most of them, I was given to understand, having been built by the military stationed there, many of whom were artisans.
There was one Englishman in the place, a Jew store-keeper, who had at one time been in the British Army, and who was on that account baited in the most intolerable manner by the officers and soldiers who were the principal customers of his bar. From this little outpost I was able to send a cable to Cape Town, the post-office operator being, like every other official in the place, a soldier. Here my horse had to be handed to the military vet, for themallintest, and I was kept kicking my heels for some days in the forlorn little stores, where every evening the rough troopers, in their long blue-grey greatcoats, congregated to drink beer and playscart, smoking the big cigars that form part of their rations, and cracking alleged jokes at the expense of the little Jew landlord and of the rough-looking prospector sitting so quietly in a corner.
These men, however, rough and overbearing as they were, were harmless compared with their officers, who drank to excess in front of their men, and whose intolerable treatment of the Englishman behind the bar used to compel me to get out and right away from them, lest I should be unable to control myself and get into trouble.
They picked no quarrel with me personally, for though I was roughly dressed, I had shown my Foreign Office passport to their superior, and I suppose they had been told to let me alone. But they talked at me as I sat there quite quietly pretending to read, talked about what a poor lot all “Englanders” were, anyway, and how only the worst of them ever came to Africa, and how they, the Germans, the salt of the earth, were bound, sooner or later, to take over the whole of it from the Cape to the Zambesi, and a lot of other balderdash, all in front of their admiring men. Then, as the beer began to work, they would start on D. about the BritishArmy, what rank he held in it, if all the officers were like him, and so on till they got the little man rattled. Their crowning witticism would come when he dived down beneath the counter for more beer for them, when at a signal all four of them would bring their riding-whips down on the rickety counter, with a crash close to his head, to show their men “how an English officer could stand fire”!
This never failed to bring down the house, and send me flying out before I got into serious trouble. How the man stood it beat me! It is true that these officers were subalterns only, but in any other army in the world they would have been cashiered, for never a day passed but that they were vilely and blatantly drunk in full sight of their men. Especially was this the case on the Sunday when they were celebrating the approaching departure of the veterinary surgeon for Germany, and when, at eleven o’clock in the morning, they reeled from their quarters arm-in-arm and staggering drunk. In the bar for the rest of the day they excelled themselves, and I again heard the toast of “The Day” being drunk, though I did not imagine, as I sat there with my hands itching, how soon that “Day” would come.
Altogether, with the exception of the doctor, who was not so bad, they were a trio of contemptible, bullying cads, and I thanked God when my horse was at last pronounced to have passed themallintest, and I was at liberty to clear back over the border, to bad roads and tumble-down shacks, it is true, but to free air again, where a man could go and come as he liked, free from anything even remotely resembling the detestable junkerdom of this “Kolonial” edition of Prussianised Germany.
Once back “home” in my gully I had to make immediate plans for a trip to Cape Town, not only to arrange for further development north, but to make preparations for working in German territory if needs be, which I believed could be managed better through the German Consulate-General inCape Town than by a personal application in Windhuk.
BoundaryAN INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY BEACON BETWEEN GERMAN (LATE) SOUTH-WEST AFRICA TERRITORY AND BRITISH (GORDONIA).
AN INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY BEACON BETWEEN GERMAN (LATE) SOUTH-WEST AFRICA TERRITORY AND BRITISH (GORDONIA).
AN INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY BEACON BETWEEN GERMAN (LATE) SOUTH-WEST AFRICA TERRITORY AND BRITISH (GORDONIA).
Unfortunately, there were no travellers coming through about this time, and as I had a large amount of samples to take, my horse was useless; but a few days later a donkey-waggon which had been to Ukamas with oranges from Upington returned to British territory on its way home, and I jumped at the opportunity.
It took us eight days to cover the eighty-odd miles to Upington, partly on account of the scarcity of fodderen route, and partly because of the weak and half-starved donkeys, but principally due to the terrible sand-dunes that cumbered the path (?) chosen by the driver.
This was an entirely new route to me, partly down the wide sand-choked bed of the Bak River to an old deserted house called Aries, thence across pathless, boulder-strewn mountains into an absolute crater called Noedap, where dwelt a few Hottentots, to whom my driver wanted to sell the remainder of his oranges, and thence into a weird and picturesque spot in the Molopo bed known as Cnydas, where there were fine water-pits sunk in the deeply silted dry river-bed to a depth of about 40 feet, and operated with a long pivoted pole with a weight at one end, exactly like those in use in Egypt.
Meanwhile we were having a rough time of it for food, for, relying on seeing plenty of game, and knowing that I should easily keep pace with the waggon even when ranging for miles on either side of it, I had brought no food but a little meal, and when for three solid days I hunted in vain without pulling trigger, the meal had gone; and as Nicol the driver was as badly off as myself, we had to live on oranges! Then we fell in with asmouse(an itinerant trader), whose small waggon reeked of the illicitdophe had been selling to the Hottentots and Bastards, but who had little left but the smell. All he could do was to sell us a few dried apricots full of sand and tough as leather, and with thisaddition to ourcuisineof oranges and an occasional Namaqua partridge we “managed” till we got to Upington. By this time motors had become a regular means of conveyance between Upington and Prieska, and in about the same time as it had taken us to negotiate a mile or two of dunes, I had been whisked to the line and Cape Town, where I made the necessary arrangements for extending my operations in both British and German territory, and on June 23rd, 1914, I left Cape Town again for the border.
At Prieska I met Maritz, then a Major, and Commandant of the Defence Force in charge of the North-West Districts. I had heard much of the man, of his courage and strength, and his dare-devil exploits when with the Boer forces during the Anglo-Boer War, also of his doings in German South-West Africa, whither he had migrated, like many another “irreconcilable” after Vereeniging. There he had been transport officer for the Germans during the Hottentot and Herero Rebellion, and had become far more Germanised than most of the freedom-loving Boers who had tried to make a home in that country, the majority of whom had soon been extremely glad to get back once again to British rule.
But the hectoring, bullying manners of the German officers were apparently much to the taste of “Maanie,” and when at the formation of the Union Defence Force he returned to the Union and soon blossomed forth as a Major in command of the North-West District of the Cape Province (the wild region bordering German territory), he soon showed thejongenwho came under his sway that the days of the old, easy going commando system of their fathers was a thing of the past, and that rigid discipline had come in place of it. He soon became a perfect terror to them, and many a tale had I heard at Keimoos, where the Upington men had gone for training, as to the shock he had given many a young Boer who, fresh from the lonely farms ofthe back-veldt, had thought to treat him as an equal.
But, martinet as he had become, and feared as he was by them, he undoubtedly won the respect of these ignorant and impressionable young fellows, many of whom had never seen a railway or heard anything of the outside world, except from the biased and embittered lips of the irreconcilables and so-called “Hertzogites” (or Nationalists) who formed the bulk of the scattered population in these remote regions.
To his men his great argument was that by discipline alone could they ever become a fighting force worthy of the name, and that, had the Boer forces been properly disciplined, the British could never have won the war.
Whatever may have been his faults, Maritz was no hypocrite; he never professed to have any other feeling than that of hearty detestation for the English; and though the Union Jack floated over his training-camp, there can be no doubt that he hoped from the first that in the Defence Force he was helping to forge a weapon that would some day be turned against theUitlanderwhose hated symbol it was.
Maritz, then, was in command of the Defence Force training-camp at Prieska when I arrived there, and as I had some business with himrea motor-car of his which had been burned in Namaqualand, I went up to the camp to see him. Rebel and traitor as he became, and probably was at heart then, it would be useless for me to say that he gave me a bad impression; on the contrary, he impressed me most favourably during the hour or so I was in his company. An alert, bluff, soldierly man, well groomed and of medium height, he looked the officer to perfection; but though sturdily built, he showed little signs of the enormous strength he was known to possess. His English was good, and his manner that of an educated man—though I have often heard him described as illiterate since his defection!
He was full of curiosity as to where I had beenin G.S.W., and what I knew of German doings there; like every other Boer who had seen their troops in the Herero and Hottentot rebellions, he expressed unbounded contempt for their fighting methods, and made the same assertion as most Boer leaders used then to make, that with a commando of 500 Boers he would take the country, any day!
And I believe he meant it, for at that time the contempt of the German for the Boer was only equalled by the contempt of the Boer for the German.
I got through to Upington without mishap—it was something of an undertaking even those few short years ago—and then, as I was preparing for great things, luck turned dead against me.
I fell ill, and was laid up for days at the little hotel, and when at last I got under way again, worse was to follow. I had taken my friend the orange merchant for the return journey, as he had proved a very good chap, and I needed a white man for transport at the camp, and by his advice we had taken the back trail through Cnydas (where Maritz afterwards turned rebel) and through a mountain-encompassed hollow called Noedap, where one of the natives had a horse I greatly coveted. It was nothing to look at, a shabby-looking little blue roan (blaauw schimmel) pony of about 14.2, but a perfect marvel for endurance up to forty or fifty miles a day, in sand and over mountains, and capable apparently of living on stones. I intended working two gangs at least that distance apart, and this pony, if I could get it, would enable me to run both at once. We got into the crater—it merits the name—and after a day’s delay I became the possessor of the little nag.
So steep was the climb out of Noedap in the direction we were going that the donkeys utterly failed to get the waggon up the terrific slope, and eventually a team of oxen had to be inspanned by the Bastards to get it to the plateau above. Meanwhile I rode on ahead, finding the pony all that could be desired. A few hours later I came to thesteep descent into the Bak River near Aries, a most lonely and desolate place, but with water in the stream-bed. There was no path down the steep, rock-strewn slope, and my pony was picking its way down most gingerly when I suddenly spied an old folding stool, strung with rimpi, and such as the Boers use in their waggons, lying amongst the boulders a few feet away. How long it had been there it would be hard to surmise, for there was no path and nothing to tempt a wayfarer that way, and, feeling curious, I stopped the pony, and tried to dismount and pick it up. I say “tried,” for my big heavy boots had jammed in the small stirrups, and as I struggled to clear them, the pony caught sight of the stool, shied violently and threw me with a sickening crash on to the sharp rocks. One foot caught, and as the pony sprang forward, I struck the pointed boulder with my full weight, right beneath my outstretched left arm, smashing in three of my ribs with a gruesome crunch, and for the time knocking me senseless. Luckily the pony dragged me only a yard or two and then stood stock-still on the steep slope, whilst I hung with one foot still jammed in the stirrup.
I came to still fixed in that fashion, my face and shoulder badly cut and bruised, and blood running from my mouth, and my broken ribs apparently pressing into my lung, for my breath whistled like a pair of broken bellows, and every breath was an agony. I thought I was about finished, and certainly, if the horse had started again, I should have been. One arm was helpless, and for what seemed an eternity I tried in vain to release my foot, fearing every fresh effort would make the pony bolt. At last I got my hunting-knife under the laces and ripped them and got my foot free, and fainted. I was in a bad place, the waggon was an hour or more behind, and would not come within nearly half a mile of the spot; I was so badly hurt that I could not stand, and might easily lie there days before I should be searched for. If the driver did not find me, no one would;and if once he passed me and trekked on he would conclude I had gone on to Nakob, and I should not be missed till he got there a day or two later. Anyway I was in such agony that I thought an hour or two would finish me, but after a bit I remembered my rifle, and tried to get it from where it had been flung with me from the saddle. And at last I was able to fire a shot, and felt all the better for the rifle, for there were four or five vultures already on the scene—though I afterwards found they had other legitimate business on hand in the shape of a dead ox about a hundred yards away.
At length, when I had given up hope, and was wondering whether I could ever crawl to the water about half a mile away, or whether I could live two or three days where I was till they began to look for me, I suddenly saw an angel in the shape of a “Bushman,” the little black urchin of avoorlooper, who came creeping through the rocks as though stalking me. I found afterwards that, hearing the shot, he had left the waggon and cleared to a high ridge to see what game I had got, and from it had seen me lying among the rocks a long distance away. Even then he simply thought I was “creeping” a buck, and it was only when he had waited a long time that he came along to see what I was about.
However, there he was, and never was angel more welcome. We had no brandy, but Nicol, my driver, soon made me some tea, and after washing me and making me as comfortable as possible amongst the rocks, he rode off on the innocent cause of all the trouble to see if any help could be obtained at Nakob.
The night was bitterly cold, and in spite of my blankets I was about frozen by the time he returned at midnight with a young trooper named Human. Unfortunately, they had no bandages or first-aid appliances, and could do little, but as my breathing was terribly bad and I was in great pain, the young trooper galloped off again with the promise that he would ride into Ukamas, in German territory, and try to get the doctor. For on our own side ofthe border there was no medical man nearer than Upington, and to send a wire there one had in any case to cross the border to Ukamas.
As it happened, there was no doctor at the little German post when Human got there, and he wired to Upington, where my old pal and fellow-adventurer Dr. Borcherds started out to look for me immediately, and by commandeering cars, laying violent hands on Cape carts and other vehicles, eventually got to me, in a Scotch cart drawn by six bullocks and driven by himself, after forty-eight hours of almost incessant trekking.
So, after being within a few hours’ distance of my mine, I had to be taken back to Upington by slow degrees, for practically all one side of me was badly smashed, and I was extremely lucky to have escaped with my life.
Cooped up in a chair and swathed like a mummy, I made extremely slow progress in Upington, and feeling that I should never get better unless I got once more on the veldt, I at length cajoled the doctor into letting me start again, though I was still bandaged, and so weak I had to be lifted into the waggon and propped up in a chair. With me came my old fellow-voyager of the Bak River, Mr. Ford-Smith, anxious to try still another new gun, and to add to the store of hunting yarns for which he was already famed.