An hour farther on we found the water he had spoken of. It was a small and nearly dry pit, and the bucket or two of water left in it was filled with squirming animalcules. But the little we carried was getting perilously low, and we made a fire and boiled a billy of it for coffee, straining it through a handkerchief, and getting quite a tablespoonful of mosquito larvæ and other weird things in the process. Still, the coffee was drinkable in spite of a strong animal taste, and all might have been well had I not had the temerity to look at those animalcules through my prospecting glass afterwards. I was sorry immediately, but it was too late—the coffee had been drunk.
That evening, footsore and dog-tired, we straggled into a narrow sandy valley between rocky kopjes, the foothills of a big mountain behind and the spot long reputed to be rich in diamonds. There was not a scrap of wood, not a bush or a bit of vegetation anywhere, nor could we find any of the dry cow-droppings which can be used as an alternative fuel. We had scarcely a pint of water between us, and had to reserve that for the morrow, and long before the end of a bitterly cold night I would have given my chance of any diamonds I was likely to find for an armful of firewood or a cup of hot coffee.
It is seldom very dark on the wide spaces of the veldt, but the night was of inky blackness, and rain threatened in all directions; and as we huddled up under the shelter of a big rock the wind swept howling round us, chilling us to the very bone. Occasionally a few drops of rain fell, but luckily the threatened storm kept off, and after an interminable period of fitful naps, punctuated by an occasional tramp up and down to warm our half frozen limbs, the bright “morning star” that heralds the dawn rose and showed cheerily through the lightening clouds. Still, it seemed an endless time to daybreak, and all my attempts to cheer myself with visions of a possible Golconda to reward me brought me but scant comfort. With morning, cold, bleak, and cheerless as a bad November day in Europe, we started up the sand river, finding almost immediately large masses of rock garnet and countless quartz crystals, bright, glittering, but of course quite valueless. And though I put in a long, thirsty day, till well on in the afternoon, searching and sieving, not a particle of anything else did I find to warrant the “diamondiferous” reputation of that wretched valley. Meanwhile I had sent Sam with our water-bottles to a kloof he knew of a couple of hours’ journey away, where he had found water on a previous visit; and late in the afternoon he returned with sufficient to make a billy of coffee, for the fuel for which he brought a small bundle of laboriously collected twigs. As I had seen quite enough of this “Sindbad’s Valley” by this time, we struck out for home, not following our previous route, but striking straight across more open country to the north-west. Except that we found sufficient wood before dark to make a fire that lasted only long enough to tantalise us (and make us feel colder than ever, afterwards!), this night was a replica of the previous one, and I determined that, if I had to spend another night on the veldt, I would at all costs make for a spot where wood was to be found, if such were possible. However, late that afternoon, and when we were still a good ten miles or more of rough country from our camp, Sam climbed one of the isolated granite kopjes that form such a feature of that part of Klein Namaqualand and Little Bushmanland, and yelled out that he could see a “house.” It turned out to be the canvas “house” of a trek Boer, who, with his small flock of sheep and a few oxen, had pitched his portable residence at some old abandoned pits that a lucky shower had partly filled with water, and near which, at the foot of a big kopje, we found enough wood to keep us fairly warm that night.
He was a most naïve sort of old chap, typical of the degenerate “poor white” trek Boer of these barren, desolate and almost uninhabited wastes, appallingly ignorant and indescribably dirty. His canvas “house” was about 15 feet square, and in it he and his enormous wife, two grown sons and three strapping daughters lived, slept, and had their being. He questioned me minutely as to who I was, where I came from, whether I was married, how many children I had, etc., and at each and all of my answers in broken Dutch he and his whole tribe laughed immoderately. He himself, as he proudly told me, had seen an Engelsman before, often, but not so his children. I gave him a little tobacco, which he had not seen for some weeks, and offered to buy a goat from him to kill for our general benefit, but this he would not sell; in fact, I always found it extremely difficult to get these “back-of-beyant” farmers to sell any of their scanty small stock at any price. They lived entirely upon milk and Boer meal, which they ground themselves in a small flat stone hand-mill, catching the meal in a goat-skin below. In fact they were as primitive, practically, as the Bushman of the desert; more primitive certainly than the patriarch Abraham, after whom the old man was named. I had sent Sam on to the spot where he had seen the wood, to make a Scherm and a big fire for the night, but the old man wanted badly for me to sleep in his house! Seven adults—and four of them women—all in a tiny room where there were also several fowls, two big lurchers, and a sick kid! The fact of there being any impropriety in my sharing a room with all his womenfolk certainly never entered his head, and he evidently thought me quite mad to choose the cold night outside to the “warmth” and comfort (?) of his huis. Thanks to the roaring fire, we put in a fairly good night, and afternoon of the next day saw us back in camp—none too soon, for my stout boots had given in and I was wellnigh barefooted.
Next day I struck camp and started back to Van Ryn’s Dorp, disheartened with my fruitless search and eager for news, for I had heard nothing for six weeks.
In the dorp I found letters from Cape Town, telling me of still more marvellous finds in German South-West, for now parties had struck south from Luderitzbucht, and the fabulously rich Pomona fields were upon everyone’s lips. There was talk of a bucketful of diamonds having been impounded and lying in the “Deutsche Bank” waiting for a decision as to their rightful owner; of the first prospectors picking up diamonds by the handful, filling their pockets with them (which they literally did!). And I thought of Jim and his offer to take us south, and wept and would not be comforted!
The local news was startling, too; diamonds, and prospecting for them, were on everybody’s lips, and rumour was persistent that a large number of stones had been found by the party who had gone north. One of these prospectors, it appeared, had passed through the dorp post-haste on his way back to Cape Town, and had let drop many hints as to the richness of his finds. One man solemnly assured me that, although he had not seen the actual stones, he had been shown a fragment of the rock with the holes in it from which they had been picked, like currants from a bun! “There was the shape of the facets quite plain,” he concluded triumphantly, and there were many other “confirmations” of a like nature. But, absurd as most of these rumours were, there appeared to be too much smoke to be quite without fire, and I determined to try to reach that prospecting party and see what truth there might be in it. But its exact whereabouts was hard to discover till by luck a waggon came in from a distant part of the backveld within a few miles of where this party were working. These waggoners were bastards of a queer breed, German on the father’s side with a Hottentot mother, and their Dutch was worse than my own—which sweeping assertion I make with all due consideration. And as a result we got on very well together, and they agreed to go as soon as they had had their burst out, and got their provisions in.
Three days did this, and taking nothing but some food and my sleeping gear, I turned back again with these peculiar mongrels, who were still so full and reeking of bad dop that I was afraid to smoke anywhere near their breath. They were genial kind of savages, however, and once the dop was finished we got on very well together. We had to make a detour by way of their dwelling, a canvas huis similar to friend Abraham’s, but decidedly cleaner, and where I slept cosily on the corn-sacks in the waggon; and three days after leaving the dorp I came up to the prospecting party, in very wild country, at a place called Davedas. I heard them blasting long before I reached them, and extending to them the prospector’s etiquette learnt in an older country, I did not go near their shaft, but sent one of the drivers to say that I should like one of the “baases” to come over to my waggon.
He came back telling me that he had been told to voetsack, and a few minutes afterwards a white man came across to me and surlily told me to do the same. I politely told him that all I wanted to know was how far his ground extended and where his pegs stood, and he explained that the whole earth was his and that I could get to hell out of it. Altogether he was a most polished and obliging kind of chap. Meanwhile the men had outspanned, and here we stayed the night. After dark several of the “boys” came down to our fire, and to my astonishment and delight I recognised one Jonas, a Cape boy who had worked for me on the diggings some three years before. He was as pleased as I was, and told me all about it. He said that, as far as he knew, not a single diamond had been found, nor had there been any trace of diamondiferous ground or “wash,” except in a sand river some miles back on the road. As for where they were sinking a shaft, well, he thought they might be after copper, for they had gone down on green stains in a quartz reef in granite, but as for diamonds——? As all this coincided with and confirmed what I could see of the country itself, I decided not to trouble about the matter, and get back as soon as possible. So I gave Jonas enough twist tobacco to make him happy, and having heard how one of his “baases” had met me, he went back with the avowed intention of “putting the wind up” that same surly individual.
What peculiar variety of lie he used I don’t know, but it was effective, for the next morning he turned up with a broad grin, and a bottle of milk, and a polite message as to where the pegs were.