On the east of Hogskin vlei is a large salt-pan or vlei, twelve miles in length from north to south and two broad. It is worked only by the Griquas living at Meer. This settlement was established in 1870. I was told by an old Bushman, that they took the bush children and made them work, and would not give them back. In 1871 Meer had become quite a tidy village, of about twenty-five houses, some of them built of red brick. The chief was Dirk Falander, who held a magistrate’s court and tried prisoners; it is a little republic upon a small scale, not more than 100 all told, except the Bushmen slaves. There are close to the village two large ponds or pans; the banks on their sides are seventy feet in height. The country round is open grass veldt. Between Meer and Hogskin vlei is a large pan, surrounded by high sand-rocks, called Klein Meer, a very pretty and picturesque lake, two miles in length, with fine bushes and grass lining the banks; five months of the year it is dry. Sand-dunes are round it in every direction.
There is a considerable traffic and trade carried on by the Griquas and the Cape Colony. Roads cross the Orange river at Koran drift, Kakaman’s drift, and Orleans drift; the two latter meet at Kanardus, close to extensive lime-pits, where water is obtained, by the side of a dry river-bed, where there are some of the prettiest trees I have seen in Africa, spread over the veldt, park-like, and dense bush between lofty granite hills, which in consequence of water is the general outspanning place. I came here one evening after dark and nearly lost many of my trek oxen, in their eagerness to get at the water, which is twenty feet from the surface. They were supplied by sending my boys down with buckets, by that means filling a hole dug out for the oxen to drink.
These pits are fifty miles north of Kakaman’s drift, and twenty-five miles on is Swaat Modder, in the bed of the Hygap river, the road passing along its bed between sand-cliffs 150 feet in height. Between these two watering-places the Back river enters the Hygap; the sand in its bed is mostly composed of ruby sand, which I believe would make a fine red glass.
At Swaat Modder the right side of the river has cliffs 100 feet in height; the left bank has sand-dunes, where I found several flint borers, many of them in a finished state, for making holes in the shell of the ostrich egg to form beads. Under these cliffs, in an old Bushman cave, I built a stone house, where we remained six weeks waiting for the rains. All this country is under the Koranna chief Puffadder, and his people are spread over the country in small kraals. The road still continues north, past other pits in limestone at Bloomfontein, and at Kebeum, springbok, etc.; Abequas pits, a large Koranna kraal; then passes over sand-dunes for thirty miles, and arrives at Anoerogas, where there is another Kaffir station, also a store kept by a Mr Redman, of whom I bought some tobacco for five bags of gunpowder, and a medicine-chest, and a variety of goods I was much in want of. A captain of the Bundelswaarts is here, to give notice to the Bastards to clear out. Coal abounds in this part, garnets are found in all the river-beds, and in many parts mixed up in the sand of the desert. Lions are so plentiful here that it is dangerous to leave the waggon without your rifle. A Koranna man was killed and eaten last night, a short distance from the waggon. This station is 180 miles north from Kakaman’s drift, on the Orange river, and three miles south of Hogskin vlei; here the roads divide. One goes to the salt-pan, another to Meer station, a third to Quassam on to Damaraland, a fourth past Knaas, in a north-north-west direction to Ovampoland, and a fifth turns south-west, and leads to Barth, where the Bundelswaarts people live, besides others to different parts of the desert.
The other portion of the Kalahara takes in the southern part from the Orange river to the Molapo river, 190 miles to the north, and from the Hygap river to the Langberg range of mountains, which is the eastern boundary of the desert, 100 miles in width. The lower portion, near the Orange river, is better adapted for farming, as there is good grass, and the karroo bush, upon which sheep and bucks get fat. I purchased of Klass Lucas, the chief, living at his large kraal on the banks of the Orange, near Orleans drift, a large Africander sheep, for 2 lbs. of gunpowder. It weighed, without the tail, 62 lbs., and the tail produced 12 lbs. of pure fat.
Between this station and sixty miles to the north, called Blue Busk Kalk, there is a fine fountain and large vlei, with a stone kopje on the north side, where the rocks stand out in grotesque forms of granite formation; there are in the intermediate distance several very peculiar granite koptjies; they average about 200 feet in height and 600 feet in circumference at the base, large masses of huge rocks, piled one upon another, and without any vegetation; the country round is perfectly level; they have the appearance of ruined pyramids; the highest I measured was 275 feet.
The mountain, called Scheurberg, is another peculiar range, with its many pointed peaks, with wood in the valleys and kloof; fifty miles in length and twelve in width, a road passing through the centre, a great resort of lions, wolves, and other beasts of prey. The continuation of the Orange river up from the junction of the Hygap is particularly picturesque, and in many places fearfully bold and rugged, with lofty and almost perpendicular cliffs, with fine timber, beautiful bushes, tree-ferns, and other subtropical plants, which add much to the landscape.
It was at the point of the Langberg, close to the river, where the berg seems split up into several magnificent hills, between which and the river is almost a level but thickly wooded space of several hundred yards in width, where we came to outspan, for the purpose of making a new tent to my waggon. My driver happened to capsize it into a sluit two days before, and, to complete my misfortune, I lost four of my best trek oxen in the river by sinking in the mud. The next day one died of the melt sickness, and I had to shoot another from lung-sickness.
The willow trees along the bank gave us plenty of wood, and in two days the tent was completed. Mr Staple, who was with me, suggested we should make a boat of wicker-work, after our Welsh coracles, which we soon completed, by small branches being bent the proper shape, with cross-pieces, each tied very carefully together, forming a strong and firm framework, over which we stretched two raw bullock-hides, well sewn together, and when dry painted it red,—two seats, two paddles, a mast, and lug-sail; the length was seven feet, and twenty inches deep, in shape like half an egg cut through lengthways. This little work occupied us a week. When perfectly dry we took it down to the river to launch it, not thinking of its lightness. As soon as it was floated I brought it close to the rock, and put one foot into the boat, and then made a spring in, when I was no sooner in than I was out on the other side into the water, a regular header—fortunately it was deep water. However, on landing, I took off my clothes to dry on the rocks, and Staples got some Koranna girls who were sitting on the bank watching our work, to bring some stones to put in as ballast, which took some time, as few were to be found.