The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

CHAPTER V

“ANDERSON’S DIAMONDS”—PRIESKA, UPINGTON—THE SOUTHERN KALAHARI.

In Cape Town I heard that the prospecting craze had reached Port Nolloth, that the whole of the beach there had been pegged, and that parties of prospectors had spread northward up the coast towards the Orange River. Apparently, therefore, Du Toit and myself were forestalled in our cherished scheme of trying the gravels along the lower reaches of that little-known stream; but I wrote immediately to my old partner, telling him of all I had heard from Brand, and asking him to join me in an organised attempt to reach Bushmen’s Paradise. Unfortunately, however, my letter crossed one of his announcing his immediate sailing from Durban for Australia, and I never heard from him again.

Such an expedition as I proposed would undoubtedly have located the spot had it existed, but whilst the scheme was yet in embryo I had an offer which drove all thoughts of it out of my head for some months.

One day I was asked to examine a small collection of stones brought from a remote part of the Kalahari Desert, and give an opinion as to what kind of deposit they might denote. And I found this little “parcel” to consist of an almost complete assortment of various minerals usually found in or associated with diamondiferous “blue ground”—or Kimberlite. Garnet, olivine, chrome-diopside, ilmenite (often called “carbon”), all were there, as well as one or two of the rarer minerals generally found in the same company; and although there were a few extraneous fragments of other stones having no bearing on or connection with the rest, I had no hesitation in saying that if they had all been found together they certainly denoted an occurrence of “blue ground” in the immediate vicinity.

I was then told the romantic story of their discovery, a tale of forty years back, of a time when diamonds had but recently been discovered in Kimberley, and little was known of the true nature of the pipes there. At that time a traveller named Anderson, who had seen the new mines, entered the Kalahari on an exploring and shooting expedition—one of many he made in that region—and somewhere in the vicinity of Hachschein Vley he had come upon a valley enclosed by rocks similar to those forming the walls of the Kimberley mines, and a slight excavation he had been able to make in the limestone capping had produced not only these samples, but “hundreds of garnets,” and certain green gem-stones that he had afterwards sold in Cape Town. The hostility of a native tribe in the vicinity had prevented his following up his discovery, and he had been forced to leave the spot, to which he had always intended to return, but had never been able. He was now dead, and certain of his papers, including a description of the spot and how to reach it, a map and the samples, were now in the possession of the gentleman who had shown them to me.

The opinion expressed by me as to the probable source of the stones was corroborated by several well-known geologists; an expedition to endeavour to locate the spot was finally decided upon, and I was commissioned to undertake it.

Now, the Kalahari is practically what it was in Anderson’s day (though since then the whole of it has become British), and the Bushmen that were a menace to the old traveller, though still existing, are a dying and scattered race, too few and too timid to be taken into consideration to-day.

And though an examination of the old map showed the spot to be marked in close proximity to where the most northern of our border camel police posts has since Anderson’s day been established, the region is still wild, remote, and very little known, so little, indeed, that it was almost impossible to obtain any exact information in Cape Town as to the best route to follow to get there.

In those days, and indeed up till after the war broke out, Prieska formed the railway terminus in that direction; beyond it there stretched 150 miles of very bad, almost waterless country, wellnigh uninhabited, before Upington could be reached; and even when this little border dorp on the Orange River was arrived at, it was but the “kicking-off place” for the Southern Kalahari, and a good 200 miles of the desert had to be traversed before the truth of the traveller’s tale could be confirmed or otherwise. So here was an adventure worth having; a long trek through a little-known country, almost untouched by the prospector, with sport and adventure en route, and who knew what riches waiting to be discovered at the end of it? And within forty-eight hours of the decision to send us, my fellow-adventurer and myself were ready for our long trip. Except the lightest of prospecting-gear, arms and ammunition, and a box of stores, we took but little from Cape Town, for the trip was in no sense meant to include a long stay at the spot—simply a verification of its existence, and as rapid a return as possible to the nearest base of communication to send word of the result.