The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

GOLD CAMP—THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS TO ARIEP—TATAS BERG AND COPPER PROSPECTS—A “MOUNTAIN” OF COPPER—THE GREAT FISH RIVER—THE “GROOT SLANG”—ZENDLING’S DRIFT.

Here, if water allowed, we intended making a permanent central camp from which to start our real business of prospecting, but the question—and the question above all others in these mountains—was water. Anxiously we followed the guide as he scrambled up over a ridge and into a ravine about 200 feet above our halting-place. To our consternation we found the much-desired water-hole to consist of nothing but a small pool of stagnant rain-water, teeming with animalcules, and barely sufficient to last ourselves and the “boys” a week, over and above the scanty supply in our casks. Our guide had described the place as a sort of lake(!) with banja water, and he appeared hurt to think that this little hip-bath full of alleged liquid did not come up to the glowing description he had given us—so there was no more to be said!

The position was serious. Our oxen and horses had had no water since leaving Annisfontein, two days before; they had worked terrifically, and their flanks were hollow with thirst—for though they can go for four days without great discomfort over an easy trek, it is a different thing when they have been called upon to achieve the wellnigh impossible. And certainly they could not slake their thirst here. So we hurried back to camp and decided at once that they must be sent back to where they had last drunk, though probably some of them would never reach there.

But after a long and excited palaver among the “boys,” one of them intimated that he knew of a water-hole only a few hours away, and that it was a fontein where there was plenty of water and grass for the oxen. And so we sent him off with the poor thirsty brutes, hoping he would prove less of a romancer than the other chap, which luckily he did.

Evidently spurred by this good example, Klaas Zwartbooi, the wildest of the lot, and almost a pure Bushman, came clucking around us like a broody hen, and led us to understand that he also knew of water quite near us! We followed him, and sure enough, in another rocky catchment amongst the wilderness of peaks, we found a second tiny pool. Ransson was pleased, and gave Klaas a plug of tobacco he had no further use for, and this stimulated him to further efforts; for after another severe scramble, and in the most unlikely-looking spot imaginable, he brought us to still another apology for a water-hole.

Klaas was not a witch-doctor for nothing, and I feel sure that, if we had only had a pound of strong plug tobacco to tempt him with, he would have found us a nice little private bar and some iced lager-beer in the next gully.

Anyway, there was clearly enough liquid in the vicinity to keep us going for some time, and so we scrambled back to camp, pitched our tent, unpacked our waggon, had the first square meal for days, set our roust-about to make bread, and got ready for real prospecting.

Many years ago, in one of the gullies close to this spot, a number of gold nuggets had been found. These had been brought into Port Nolloth by a Hottentot, and white men proceeded to the spot. Still more nuggets were found, and eventually the magistrate of the district, Mr. W. C. Scully, the well-known writer, is said to have proceeded to the spot and verified the discovery. But owing to its inaccessibility and want of water it was never proclaimed a gold-diggings; and though an occasional white man had made an attempt to find gold there since, no one had succeeded. Still, it was obvious to us that nothing but the veriest fossicking had been done there, and we had hopes.

So day after day we cleaned and scraped hole and hole of the water-worn gully; carefully panning the stuff in a bathful of our precious water, using the latter over and over again, and losing not a drop; and still we could not find even a “colour” of the precious metal. In the mountain slopes above there were outcrops of quartz in all directions; most of these, however, were of white, glassy-looking stuff, and showed no signs of being mineralised; but day after day, after our failure in the gullies, we tested these systematically, separating, going off in different directions with a little food and a prospect-hammer, and a boy carrying a bag, and bringing back heavy loads of samples, to be laboriously pounded down to a fine powder with pestle and mortar, and as laboriously tested—and still no trace of gold. Minerals there were in abundance—copper especially. In all directions the rocks were discoloured blue or green with it; here and there the quartz was speckled bright with the silvery-looking crystal of molybdenite, in more than one place we found rich galena; yet, though these diverse minerals were to be seen almost everywhere, in no case were they in sufficient bulk to warrant extensive work being done on them. Samples, samples, everywhere—though one or two huge cappings of hæmatite were well worth going through to see what kind of a pie their thick crust covered! It was wearying work after a while, when the hope of finding gold became less and less, hard work that tore hands to pieces with the sharp razor-like splinters of the quartz, the scorching sun turning the rocks so hot that they blistered one, and all around a glare of sun, sand, and barren mountain-sides that made one’s eyeballs burn as though they were being slowly roasted. And except for our few “boys” in the gullies near the camp, an absolute silence, unbroken except for the occasional scream of a dassie vanger, as the big eagles are called that sweep round the slopes of the peaks in search of an unwary rock-rabbit. Bird life and animal life were very scarce; though on the higher peaks the chamois-like klip bok was plentiful, and would have afforded good sport had we been there for that purpose; but we were after gold, and contented ourselves with “cookies” and the tinned food from our stores. Of human beings we saw none; indeed, we had not seen a soul except a solitary native at the little farm at Groot Derm since we had left the nachtmaal meeting at Springklip.

At length, having failed utterly to find a single trace of “pay dirt,” we decided to lay bare the whole bed of the sand-choked “river,” below which the reputedly rich gully emptied itself, by doing which, if gold existed there in a free state, we should find a trace of it. But the labour entailed would be considerable, and as the water was none too plentiful, we decided to leave the “boys” to do the rough part of the work whilst we made a rapid trip to locate and peg certain important copper deposits two days’ ride away towards the Orange. We took two guides with us, and this time carried everything we required on our horses—food, water, sleeping kit, tools, dynamite, gun, rifle, etc., being festooned about the little nags in a most extraordinary manner. Ransson looked exactly like the “White Knight” in Alice, and the clatter of the frying-pan at his saddle-bow was martial to a degree. I had just complimented him on this when the tea-kettle at my crupper got loose and went one better; then the prospecting-pan on the pack-horse joined in, and for a time we sounded like a whole troop of travelling tinkers. The baboons came out on the rocky peaks and hooted us, and Ransson, with fine repartee, hooted back.