A mile or so farther on we found that rain had fallen, and at the pools of shallow water lying in the road were Namaqua partridges by the thousand. These little plump, pretty game-birds are really a sand-grouse, and to such an extent do they abound in these districts that at the rare water-holes and at their drinking hours the air is literally full of them. An hour or two after sunrise and again at sunset they come to the water, huge coveys of them whirring in from all directions, and swarming towards the drinking-place in incredible numbers. In the stone-strewn aars that are a feature of this country these little birds take advantage of their marvellous protective colouring, and I have often actually kicked against them crouching amongst, and absolutely indistinguishable from, the stones around them until they moved, when a whole covey would whirr up from beneath my feet. The driver frequently killed them with his whip from his seat on the cart, and we called down upon us his derision by shooting a few single ones that we put up by the path. He told us that was by no means the way, and that with one cartridge he would fill the pot for us, which of course he easily did by hiding behind a bush near the water and firing into the thick of them. Indeed, it is no uncommon thing to bag fifty or more at a shot in this manner, and though far from being “sport,” we soon found that on a long trip where ammunition could not be replenished it would scarcely pay to pot at single partridges; and in future we kept our big Kaffir pot filled with them by this most unsportsmanlike but profitable method. A bit of bacon, an onion, a little pepper and salt, and a potful of these little chaps, make a stew fit for a king, and with plenty of Boer meal “pap” and syrup and roster kook, G. and I sighed for nothing better; but the driver turned up his nose at the despised vogelkies and pined for his beloved vleesch. Whenever he could get a chunk of goat or sheep he filled a pot and ate to repletion of the half-cooked, tough, and flavourless contents. When he could not get it, and perforce had to eat the birds, a dozen of them were but a sort of appetiser to him. As a beverage we drank tea, quarts and quarts of it, made in the kettle itself, without milk and with an abundance of sugar, for this was a trip de luxe, during which neither food nor water ran short.
On the third day two white men overtook and passed us, on horseback, not keeping the trail but away to the right of us, and apparently anxious to avoid us. This was peculiar, as in a country where days may pass without seeing a soul by the way, the custom is to seek the infrequent wayfarer rather than to avoid him, and I began to think of all I had been told about being followed. The driver, who had seen them pass, said he was sure they were not police, and Piet, the voorlooper of the telescopic eyes, corroborated this. Again and again we caught sight of them, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind or on our flank, but they never came near us, and it soon became pretty clear that we were being “shepherded.” Once or twice we tried to signal to them by waving a handkerchief and shouting, but they took no notice, and G., exasperated at their attitude, seriously suggested having a shot at them with the rifle.
CHAPTER VI
ZWARTMODDER—THE MOLOPO—RIETFONTEIN—THE GAME RESERVE.
On the third day we reached Zwartmodder, a tiny police post and store in the old dry bed of the Molopo, whose course we were now to follow for some days. The two policemen (C.M.P.) stationed at this lonely little spot told us the horsemen had gone straight through without coming near the station, and confirmed us in our suspicion as to what these sneaks were after. Zwartmodder is a weird and desolate little place standing in a deep, narrow, rock-walled valley, whose sandy floor was the bed of the ancient river that once flowed right across what is now the Kalahari Desert from near Mafeking, westward, and then south, for many hundreds of miles, till it joined the Orange below the great falls of Aughrabies. In most places it is sand-choked to the level of the surrounding desert. In others, though still dry, it is filled with vegetation, and indeed many stretches farther north are well timbered, with fine mimosa and other thorn-trees. But, with the exception of one or two melancholy survivors, there are none of these trees left near Zwartmodder, the channel being loose sand where it is not the “black mud” from which the place is named.
Made anxious by this particular “shadowing” by men who kept ahead of us, I consulted the driver as to whether we could leave the track and give them the slip, and for the first time showed him the map old Anderson had made.
Considering the time that had elapsed since it was drawn, we had found it so far astonishingly accurate. It showed the old traveller’s road from Griquatown along the northern bank of the Orange to “Klaas Lucas Kraal,” a native stadt in those days, and now Upington; it gave the route northward to the Hygap (the Hottentot name for the Molopo) and Zwartmodder, and thence clearly to Hachschein Vley and the spot we hoped to find a fortune in. And the driver, after perusing it, told us that, whatever we might do when we arrived at the vley, we must follow the present road that far. For eastward stretched the unknown, waterless, and forbidden wastes of the Game Reserve, and westward, and nearer to us each day of our trek, was the frontier-line and German territory, to enter which and trek north would mean endless red tape and obstruction. So there was no help for it but to keep on as we were going, up the dry bed of the Molopo. The following day we struck an oasis in the shape of a clean, comfortable, and well-furnished dwelling, the farm “Bloemfontein,” whose then owners were an object-lesson to their benighted neighbours as to what comfort can be obtained by a little trouble and expense, even here on the fringe of the desert. Here I was shown some very fine-looking “yellow ground” from an adjoining farm near the German border which was being worked for diamonds. It looked extremely promising, and contained plenty of “carbon,” garnets, etc., but the other stones shown me in conjunction with it were zircons and not diamonds, as had been believed. This gentleman also told me of many strange “pans” in the real desert eastward, where diamonds were supposed to exist, but in which direction all prospecting and even trekking was now forbidden, and his experiences so interested me that I resolved sooner or later to explore those “pans” myself.
At Witkop the following day I had further evidence shown me of the abundance of diamondiferous “indications” that are such a feature of Gordonia, for here “yellow ground,” with all its usual inclusions, was to be seen in close proximity to the road, and indeed there is proof everywhere in this locality that pipes, fissures, or other occurrences of Kimberlite exist, and need but a little systematic prospecting to locate. Whether they are diamondiferous can only be proved by working them, but the fact that at various times diamonds have been picked up here and there in the vicinity certainly makes such a supposition reasonable.
However, we had neither the time nor the right to prospect these places and pushed steadily on, hearing occasionally from the far-apart farms or an infrequent wayfarer that our friends the would-be “claim-jumpers” kept about an hour ahead of us. Meanwhile we were getting deeper and deeper into the dunes, and frequently these now vied with the biggest I had ever seen in the sand-belt of German West. These, however, were different. The sand was redder, and only the crests of them were bare, the long “valleys” between their regular wave-like lines, and much of their slopes, being covered with low bushes and tufts of Bushman grass. They lay right athwart the path, and trekking over them was a most tedious and slow operation. Their usual slope was about 45 degrees up to within a short distance of the summit, where the sand, loose, soft, and unbound by vegetation, was often piled up by the prevailing wind into an apex that fell away on the leeward side almost perpendicularly. And after laboriously straining at our light cart up the rise, the oxen would go floundering down this declivity in a wild scramble, slipping, falling, and dragging each other and the cart in a jumble of confusion till they reached firmer footing below. To ride was impossible; indeed everything on the cart had to be made fast, or it stood a great chance of being thrown out and lost. In any case, however, we rode but seldom, ranging out on either side of the path all day with gun and rifle, hoping for the chance of a shot that seldom came. Game there was, for we saw spoors in abundance, but unfortunately these do not fill the pot, and in spite of the solitariness of the region both fur and feather were extremely wild. Paauw, that most magnificent of bustards, was abundant but almost unapproachable: klompjes of four or five together rising repeatedly a few dunes ahead of us, but always well out of gunshot. Indeed, except at the hottest time of the day, when they, like the steenbok, can occasionally be caught napping in the shade of a bush, they are seldom obtainable with a gun, stalking them and shooting them through the head or neck with a rifle, at 200 yards or more, being the sportsman’s only chance. The larger variety, known as the gom paauw, often weighs from 30 to 40 lb., and has been recorded up to 50 lb. or more. One of the largest I ever saw must have been well over that, for it stood quite five feet in height, and I took it to be a young ostrich when, in the grey light of morning, I one day came silently upon it within 40 or 50 yards. I had a rifle, but never dreamed of firing at an “ostrich,” and stood staring open-mouthed when, after a run of a few yards, the huge creature got up and sailed majestically away.
Most frequent and most annoying among the larger game-birds was the korhaan, whose irritating croaking cackle could be heard on all sides, and which seemed to take a mischievous delight in disturbing other game of a less suspicious nature, whenever we were engaged in attempting a stalk.