The mouth of the Orange River is simply a wide expanse of mud flats, interspersed with low islands, and here and there long, lagoon-like stretches of water. Most of these latter are stagnant and isolated, and it is only after tedious wading knee-deep in mud and water that a channel is reached which still moves almost imperceptibly towards the long sand-bar closing the actual mouth from bank to bank, and through (or under) which the river, in the dry season, percolates into the sea. Upon this bar the white Atlantic rollers were breaking, at high tide sending the salt water surging up the river several miles.
There was wild fowl in abundance. The mud flats were dotted with flamingoes standing in lines and companies and looking absurdly like soldiers; wild duck quacked till the whole place sounded like a huge poultry farm, and the “honk-honk” of beautifully plumaged wild geese made me regret that, with a laudable anxiety to do nothing unlawful, I had read up the list of protected game before starting and knew I must not shoot them. Luckily, however, Ransson had not read that list. Apart from the wild fowl the spot is absolutely uninhabited, though I believe the German bank was at that time frequently patrolled. About two miles from the mouth stands an old ruined farm, with a stone-built kraal, whose walls of enormous thickness and great height speak eloquently of the turbulent times, less than seventy years back, when these lower reaches of the Orange were infested with native outlaws, who from their fastnesses on the many islands used to sally forth to pillage and ravage the neighbouring tribes in good old Border fashion. Both pillagers and pillaged have long since vanished—unless, indeed, my mutton-loving rascals from Kuboos were lineal descendants of those bolder robbers of the old days.
A few miles farther upstream we noticed a large number of horses running on the low islands and the river-bank; they were fine-looking animals, and appeared to be quite wild and untended. I afterwards found that they belonged to a Boer farmer living at a solitary farm called “Groot Derm” some distance from the river mouth, and who breeds them extensively, finding a ready sale for them among the Germans on the other side of the river.
For some distance upstream we found the river-bank flat, barren, and uninteresting, whilst bordering it extended a long flat stretch of coarse sand and grit much resembling the diamondiferous sands of the German South-West fields. Here, in common with many a spot along the coast we had left, were standing numerous old prospecting pegs, showing where a few enterprising spirits had “rushed” from Port Nolloth just after the discovery of diamonds at Luderitzbucht, and had pegged anything remotely resembling a “wash.” They were disappointed in that they found no diamonds, but it is doubtful if anything like a systematic search was ever made by these “prospectors” except in one or two chosen spots.
Before reaching Groot Derm the banks became lined with a thick belt of vegetation, beautiful willows of vivid green, graceful mimosa thorn, many of them of great height, bastard ebony, and many other varieties of trees and shrubs, forming in places an almost impenetrable barrier to the water. Inland the country was becoming more broken and hilly, and from an abrupt bluff overhanging the water we were able to obtain a fine view of the river in both directions.
Westward stretched the long, flat lower reaches to where the ribbon-like channel lost itself in the numerous lagoons of the mouth; before us lay a broad, placid sheet of calm, unruffled water with a typical zee-coe-gat (hippo hole) mirroring the abrupt cliff on which we were standing; upstream the silver gleam of long lake-like stretches, broken here and there by the darker water of the rapids, and the whole extent in that direction fringed with a thick belt of luxuriant vegetation on either bank; bush doves fluttering and cooing in every tree, small birds of brilliant plumage darting from branch to branch and glistening like living sunbeams, beautiful trees, beautiful water—in fact, a strip of Paradise running through a desert.
For the land behind us and through which we had passed, though bush-covered and capable of supporting stock, could scarcely be called by any other name, whilst on the other bank the enormous sand-dunes of German South-West stretch back from the belt of willows as far as the eye can reach, dune piled upon dune, into veritable mountains of glaring yellow, with not a vestige of vegetation to relieve their awful desolation.
It is a peculiar fact that there are no dunes of this description on the British side of the river; sand of course there is, but it is covered in vegetation of a sort, and is good land compared to the fearful barren waste on the northern bank. A little higher up we came to the tiny farm of Groot Derm, surely one of the loneliest places in this land of loneliness! For to reach a habitation upstream the farmer would have to traverse at least 150 miles of desolation bordering the tortuous winding of the river: west of him lay the desolate beaches we had just left, and the broad Atlantic; north spread the fearful thirst-dunes of German South-West; and south, his “next-door neighbour” at Port Nolloth was a good four days’ waggon trek away.
The lonely little house was empty, its owner being away on his periodical trip for stores, and we therefore did not even outspan at this tiny frontier homestead.
A mile or so above the farm the rough cart-track left the river and we struck across sandy hills to Aries Drift, which we found deserted even of the few miserable Hottentots occasionally to be found there, living in miserable pondhoeks of leaves and branches, and existing on the milk of their goats, the gum of the thorn-trees, the few small fish to be found in the river, and the various weird odds and ends that figure in their cuisine.