The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

The few people in the concern who had ever been farther than Upington warned us that we were mad to attempt the journey at such a time, one of the hottest months of the year, telling us awful yarns of the thirst we were likely to suffer, and counselling a wait of some months till the cooler season; but the promoters were eager for the mine, and urged the danger of delay, as at any time the place might be stumbled on (after its forty years of waiting). And we were as eager as were they!

So one fine summer’s day the north-bound mail carried us 500 miles north-east to De Aar, whence we pottered for half a day back at an obtuse angle, east, about 100 miles to Prieska, when the train journey ended and the trek began.

Few years ago as it was, at that time there was not even a motor-car service to either Kenhardt, Upington, Kakamas, or any of the far townships of the German border. Twice a week a post-cart jogged over the apology for a road, with letters to the “backveld,” and occasionally a commercial traveller followed the same path; but wayfarers of any description other than local farmers or stock-buyers were rare enough to make us the object of a considerable amount of curiosity, and during the few hours we stayed in the little “border” dorp the place was humming with rumours as to who we were and where we were bound for.

We had been warned that this kind of thing would happen, and that if our true object leaked out we should be followed—perhaps forestalled. And I must say that for naïve and insatiable inquisitiveness into the doings of strangers, the inhabitants of the wild and neglected districts of the north-west are very hard to beat. At the lonely and poverty-stricken farmsteads all along the route we were invariably subjected to a regular inquisition, as to who we were, where we came from, where we were going, and above all, why, why, why had we come into those parts? Why? indeed! For there appeared little or nothing to attract anyone to this desolate and barren countryside, devastated by drought, neglected and ignored, without any of the conveniences of more favoured regions, a very Cinderella among South African districts. The advent of a rare stranger—especially if he looked a townsman and an “Engelsman”—usually gave rise to some faint hope that at length the spoorweg (railway) was coming, or roads were to be made, or a mine opened, or some kind of Gouvermentse werk to be started to benefit the country at long last.

But after all, we had little to fear from these poor chaps; the danger came from the townsmen we had left, for our coming and our object were both known in Upington before we got there, and all arrangements had been made for our being followed. However, I anticipate.

We succeeded in hiring a light spring-waggon with six good horses, and the fourth day saw us at the drift at Upington, having passed through one of the most dreary and monotonous parts of South Africa en route, a part calling for no special mention, as it is utterly devoid of scenery or of any object of interest. Dreary stretches of flat stony veldt, incredibly bare, and denuded of even its modicum of straggling vegetation, for miles on either side of the road, by the crowds of donkeys that then hauled the heavy transport-waggons from the railway to the far back-veldt, and which crawled along at a snail’s pace over the interminable distance, often taking three weeks to accomplish the 150 miles between Prieska and Upington.

Luckily we were in no such case, but trundled comfortably along, doing our thirty-five or fifty miles a day, outspanning at night and sleeping under the cart, and getting seasoned for the real work of the desert farther north. On our right hand, most of the journey, ran a long line of barren hills; these denoted the course of the Orange River, which we left at Prieska and did not see again till we reached Upington. Altogether a most dreary and monotonous journey so far, and by no means the “joy-ride” we anticipated, the only pleasurable incident being when the surly driver sat on a scorpion by the camp fire one evening. However, at last the dreary stretches of sad-looking veldt, varied only by heavy sand, became broken by a few prominent granite kopjes, and eventually, on cresting a low stony ridge, we came in sight of the long winding belt of vegetation denoting the Orange River. On its far (northern) bank, white houses were dotted along in a thin straggling line; this was Upington. Beyond, as far as the eye could reach, stretched a vast, slowly rising, undulating expanse of sad, dun-coloured, featureless country, the southern dunes of the Kalahari, the “Great Thirst Land”—the land we were bound for, and in the wilds of which we hoped to find a fortune. Away to our left, westward and at a great distance, rose a line of jagged fantastic peaks, pale cobalt against the white glare of the sky; these peaks I had cause to know only too intimately later. They were the Noup Hills, an almost unexplored maze of low mountains situated below the Great Falls of the Orange and just on the border of German South-West, some seventy miles distant from us. Before reaching the very welcome river, however, we had to toil through a terrible “drift” of the softest, most powdery sand and silt that ever hampered a team even in this country of sand-drifts; it was a sort of sand-quagmire, in fact, if such a thing is imaginable, and in it the waggon sank up to the hubs, and progress was most maddeningly slow. This silt is really that brought down and spread out on either side of the river by successive floods, and is, wherever irrigated, most astonishingly fertile. Once through it, and amongst magnificent trees we came to the river, this most welcome oasis between two deserts; for the southern country is quite as well-deserving of the name as the true Kalahari of the northern bank. In flood-time it is a broad and noble stream with some magnificent stretches of water, often 400 yards or more in width, but at the time of our arrival it was low, and we were able to drive through its shallow drifts and climb out on the north bank without recourse to the pontoon by which it is usually crossed. Along its bank’s summit runs the straggling street, knee-deep almost in Kalahari sand. A “hotel,” post and telegraph office, a church or two, and quite a number of large stores made the one street; these stores I found wonderfully well stocked considering their 150 miles’ distance from a railway, and apparently far too numerous for the inhabitants’ requirements. Many of them had sprung into being during the German-Hottentot-Herrero War, when Upington had flourished exceedingly on the enormous amount of transport passing through it on the way to the German border. Since those palmy days things had slumped, most of the store-keepers apparently living on each other and all uniting in praying for a new war. They had great hopes when Ferreira broke across the border in his German-inspired, abortive raid, but unfortunately for them it ended in smoke.

A FLOWER OF THE DESERT, SOUTHERN KALAHARI.

Flowering succulent, about 3 feet high.