The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

Except for a few miserable Hottentot pondhoeks and the mud houses of a couple of Bastards, there were no other inhabitants of this important boundary post. 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 hot roster-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 magnificent gom paauws were 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 (the boundary-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 belonged to a corps 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.