The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

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 the mallin test, 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 in Cape Town than by a personal application in Windhuk.

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 fodder en 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 a smouse (an itinerant trader), whose small waggon reeked of the illicit dop he 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 this addition to our cuisine of 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 the jongen who 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 of the back-veldt, had thought to treat him as an equal.