The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

We were strengthened in this resolve by what we heard from a relative of Du Toit’s: a certain Stuurmann, who had been in German employ during the whole of the Hottentot rebellion, and was one of the many Dutch transport-drivers living in the Boer camp just outside Luderitzbucht. This chap had at one time followed the Orange River from its mouth up to the Great Falls, and the account he gave of certain spots on its banks, and notably of huge stretches of gravel near the Great Fish River mouth, made us all eagerness to get there as soon as possible. The description of these gravels tallied, it is true, with the blank patches we had gone so far after, but in this case, we argued, they were near that possible source, the Vaal River Diggings; and though we had followed similar patches in vain from Prieska down to below the Great Falls, there remained this 150 miles of the almost unknown lower reaches, and they had always appealed to us!

Moreover, Stuurmann said that in places he had noticed innumerable bright crystals sparkling in the gravel there, and had never even picked them up, as in those days he had had no thought of diamonds. At any rate, here was a place where a prospecting party would not be handicapped by being followed by “claim-jumpers,” as was happening here at Luderitzbucht, or have to contend with constantly changing mining laws; besides, there were no Germans there, and that appealed to us almost as much as the diamonds! But a properly organised expedition would be necessary, and to arrange this we decided to return to Cape Town first.

This Stuurmann was a most interesting man to talk to; he had been all through the Hottentot campaign, and had the greatest contempt for the fighting power of the Germans. Towards the latter end of the campaign, he said, they had begun to learn a little and adapt themselves to the conditions the country demanded of them; but even so he (Stuurmann) considered that with a good commando of burghers he would take German South-West from them any day! And this was the opinion of his mates, between whom and the Germans there was very little love lost; though to be but just, their employers, the Government, paid these Boer transport-drivers extremely well.

Stuurmann also gave me much interesting detail as to the terrible treatment meted out to the unfortunate natives, both Herero and Hottentot, who were unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the Germans.

I had seen something of this myself, and had heard more from ex-German soldiers themselves, who with extraordinary callousness used to show whole series of illustrated postcards, depicting wholesale executions and similar gruesome doings to death of these poor natives. One of these, that enjoyed great vogue at the time, showed a line of ten Hottentots dangling from a single gallows, some still standing on the packing-cases with a noose round their necks, waiting for the soldiers to kick their last standing-place away; some kicking and writhing in the death struggle, for the short drop did not break their necks, but only strangled them slowly, and one having a German soldier hanging on to his legs to finish the work more quickly. And each and every German soldier in the photo was striking an attitude and smirking towards the camera in pleasurable anticipation of the fine figure he would cut when the photo was published. This, I repeat, was only one of many that enjoyed a big sale in German South-West for the delectation of admiring friends in the Fatherland. Absolutely no mercy was shown to these unfortunate creatures: they were made to dig big graves, and were shot down by the hundreds beside them, whilst practically the whole remnant of both races who escaped this fate were exterminated in the detention-camps at Luderitzbucht and Swakopmund. Towards the end of the long, dragging war, the Germans conceived the plan of sending Herero prisoners captured in the north for internment to Luderitzbucht, where they were strangers to the country and where escape was hopeless, whilst the Hottentots captured in the south were sent north to Swakopmund.

There is a small low-lying promontory in Luderitz Bay known as Shark Island, and here the Herero prisoners were crowded in thousands, shelterless, with no proper supply of food or water: and here, huddled together like penguins, they died like flies.

Often on a blazing day, such as is common in Luderitzbucht, they received no water whatever, either having been forgotten, or the supply having failed; the food(?) supplied them was never sufficient for a tithe of them, and they often fought like wild animals and killed each other to obtain it. There were also a large number caged in a wire enclosure on the beach; these were slightly better off, as, although they received no rations from the military in charge of them, a few of their number were let out each morning and went ravenously foraging in the refuse-buckets, bringing what offal they could back to their starving fellow-prisoners. Cold—for the nights are often bitterly cold there—hunger, thirst, exposure, disease, and madness claimed scores of victims every day, and cartloads of their bodies were every day carted over to the back beach, buried in a few inches of sand at low tide, and as the tide came in the bodies went out, food for the sharks.

Now, Stuurmann and the other men who told me these things were no negrophiles (a Boer as a rule has an excellent idea as to how to keep a native in his place as the white man’s inferior), but so terrible had been the treatment of these natives by the Germans that even these case-hardened transport-drivers spoke of what they had seen with the utmost horror and abhorrence. Yet these men are looked down upon as an inferior race by the Germans, who themselves, as far as the troops and officials in German South-West are concerned, are utterly devoid of all humanity when dealing with natives. I saw much of the trait myself later; it is unpleasant and distasteful, and bodes but ill for the future relations of white and black in the German colonies.

I was by no means sorry to leave Luderitzbucht, for during the whole of this brief stay it blew incessantly and the air was a sort of semi-solid mixture of whirling sand, that cut and stung, and choked and blinded, and permeated every orifice and crevice, and generally made life utterly unbearable. When this prevailing wind reaches a certain violence, the whole country practically gets up and walks, big sand-dunes shift along and others come after them, like the waves of a slowly moving sea; wide stretches of hard land are denuded of every grain of sand, and others buried deep in it, and it is a curious fact that these storms actually blow diamonds! A claim deep with diamondiferous sand has often been swept clean of its contents in a few hours; sand, gravel, and diamonds being lifted up and borne away, to be deposited in some more favoured spot. Even the big dunes of a hundred feet or so in height are not stationary; though their movement is slower, it is none the less sure. In many instances these huge sand-waves have passed slowly but irresistibly over strongly built dwellings and the like, burying them completely for a time, and gradually passing onward and re-disclosing them....

We came down the coast in the Hellopes, an alleged passenger-boat that rolled like a hog and smelt like its sty; and we were both very glad to see Cape Town again.