The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

The mountains dimly visible from Port Nolloth are first reached at Oograbies, where abrupt sandstone kopjes of considerable height extend north and south from either side of the line. These, however, are but outliers of the formidable mountain range farther inland, which forms an abrupt barrier at Anenous, some thirty-five miles farther on. This place was for many years the terminus of the railway, the copper having in those days been brought down to it in waggons through difficult passes in the mountain. Here, as at several other spots along the line, there is a good supply of water; indeed, it appears that practically wherever water has been bored for in this so-called “waterless desert” it has been found at a very moderate depth below the surface.

Thence the mountains rise abruptly, the track ascending by tortuous curves and gradients far exceeding in steepness those of the famous Hex River Pass, and climbing some 2,000 feet within the next few miles. The scenery is magnificent: mountain after mountain on either side, peak after peak, and range after range; near at hand the vivid splashes of bright-coloured rocks showing up in brilliant contrast to the green of the melk bosch (euphorbia) clothing the less precipitous slopes, everything startlingly clear and distinct in the brilliant sunshine and clear air of the mountains, the tawny hues of the peaks in the middle distance gradually changing to a blue, which in the more remote ranges became ethereal to a degree, till mountain and sky became merged in the bright shimmer of the horizon. Around Klipfontein are the corn-lands of the natives, and on the occasion of my first visit these “lands” presented a most beautiful and wonderful appearance. For field after field of cleared plateau and mountain slopes were ablaze with gorgeous colour, being absolutely covered with the most brilliant-hued flowers, not mingled in blurred and confused masses, but in broad and clearly defined stretches of different vivid colourings. Here, morgen after morgen of glorious crimson; there, half a mountain-side of mustard yellow, in startling contrast to the other half of azure blue. Parterres of lovely heliotrope, red-hot patches of scarlet and orange of every shade, of pink, of mauve, salmon, a hundred tints, and all so thickly clustered and luxuriant, so well-defined and separated, that the general impression was that of an enormous garden of wonderful carpet bedding. The veldt flowers of South Africa are justly celebrated for their wonderful beauty, but I doubt if at any other part of the sub-continent they can be seen in such gorgeous perfection as at Klipfontein on the Port Nolloth-O’okiep line.

The season for them is, however, but a transient one, and two months later, when I again passed the spot, not a blossom was to be seen.

A few miles farther and Steinkopf is reached; from thence the track winds on a down-grade across a wide, barren, desolate plain, broken by queer-looking granite kopje, to where a high, humped mountain marks the position of the copper-mine at O’okiep.

Steinkopf consists of a mission church and buildings substantially built of stone by the natives themselves, a post and telegraph office, a store or two, and a scattered collection of miserable shanties and the circular mat huts of the natives. Flimsy as these latter are, they are infinitely preferable to the paraffin-tin built abominations usual to the locations, for they are not only more sightly, but they can easily be moved when sickness or a prolonged stay upon one spot has produced the usual awful state of sanitary affairs.

The Hottentots are miserably poor; they depend upon a few poor flocks and herds for a living, together with a precarious harvest which want of rain cheats them of. Year after year their scanty corn-lands on the slopes of the mountain, where rain is most likely to fall, have been ploughed and sown, and a promising crop has again and again sprung up, only to wither and die for want of rain long before reaching maturity. This had happened time after time at the period when I first visited the place, until no corn remained for the people to sow, the seed having been eaten to keep them from starving. There was no work in the district, the supply being greatly in excess of the only demand, namely that of the C.C.C., and present conditions rendering it almost impossible for “outside” mining ventures to work the many known mineral deposits in the vicinity at a profit.

The rain had evidently been widespread, and its fall relieved me of the anxiety I had felt about the scarcity of water on my coming trip, for which I was now able to make final arrangements. My visit had been timed to coincide with the missionary’s periodical trip to the remote mission station of Kuboos, in Richtersfeldt, where once a year the nomad Hottentots forming that community gather for nachtmaal, and this would be the most favourable opportunity for meeting the guides I needed. All being arranged, I returned to Port Nolloth, where I met S. Ransson, my companion for the trip, a tough and seasoned prospector whose recent two years on the diamond-fields of German South-West had turned him into a sort of salamander, with a hide like biltong, and a positive liking for a diet largely consisting of sand and “brak” water. With him came the whole cargo of stores necessary for such a long trip, for we had been warned that the country we were going into was practically a land of famine. The few inhabitants—Hottentots and Bastards of the Richtersfeldt Mission-lands—are wretchedly poor, practically existing upon the milk of their few cows and goats; they very rarely slaughter an animal, and are very reluctant even to sell one; they grow nothing whatsoever except a few patches of corn on the mountain-tops near Kuboos, the harvest of which, when they are lucky enough to reap one, is only sufficient to last them a few months; and when milk fails and grain is finished they exist upon a few edible roots and the gum of the thorn-trees growing on the banks of the Orange River. And as we expected to employ a fair number of these natives, and would have to feed them, it came about that, roomy as the waggon proved, its capacity was taxed to the utmost, and its team of sixteen sturdy oxen had plenty of collar-work before they got through the belt of heavy sand that stretches for miles inland from the sea.

The team, with its Hottentot driver and voorlooper, had come three days’ long trek from Kuboos to Port Nolloth to fetch us, and to our dismay we learnt from them the grave fact that, contrary to our expectation, the heavy rains that had recently fallen in the Steinkopf district had not extended to Richtersfeldt, whither we were bound, that the water-holes were dry, and that the oxen had not tasted water during the three days of intense heat that the journey had lasted. Not that they appeared inconvenienced; indeed, these Namaqualand cattle run the camel close in their ability to go for long periods without water, and their nomad owners are thus able to “run” them over tracts of veldt far distant from the precious fluid, caring little so long as they can get them to water every third or fourth day. To a minor degree this faculty is also shared by the few ponies bred in the country and called locally boschje kops, wiry little animals with a good deal of Basuto blood in them, and perfect marvels for endurance. I have on more than one occasion ridden one of these ponies three days without being able to give it a drop of water, and have seen it, when grass failed, and every bush was burnt dry with the awful sun, contentedly chewing the sapless twigs from the bushes that an ordinary goat would disdain, or apparently thriving upon the dry fallen leaves beneath the trees in the scorched-up river-beds.

The waggon track to Richtersfeldt leads north-east from Port Nolloth, and after a few hours’ trek the sand veldt becomes thickly bushed, melk bosch, zout bosch, and many other fleshy-leaved aromatic and resinous shrubs densely covering the long, undulating slopes of heavy sand, the sad monotony of dark grey-green being unbroken except by an occasional lily-like flower of a brilliant scarlet; no sign of life anywhere, the silence unbroken except for the crack of the whip or the yell of the driver, the sand effectually deadening the sound of the wheels and the tread of the oxen. As we wished to see the whole of the country we were travelling through, we trekked only by day, quite contrary to the general custom of the country in the hot season; and as the intense heat made it impossible to move during a considerable part of the day, our progress was of necessity slow. The country was quite uninhabited and we saw not a soul during the first day; but towards evening we were overtaken by some five or six Hottentot women with a perfect mob of children, who, it appeared, were also bound for Kuboos.