The track led up and across bare rocky ridges and along precipitous slopes where a goat could scarcely have found foothold, and at times I felt much like climbing off and leaving the ironmongery to the pony’s mercy; but the little beasts were so careful, so surefooted, that I soon realised I was safer in the saddle than I should be on foot. They seemed quite tireless too, and when, after four hours’ climbing and clambering, we halted on a high grassy plateau, they appeared as fresh as ever.
The wide open space was beautiful with flowers, and there was plenty of food for the horses; but we made only a very brief halt, as we had planned to reach the Orange River that evening, and had only brought the barest ration of water from our limited supply at camp.
All the morning the heat had been great, and it was now terrific; the bush on the plateau was too stunted to afford any shade, and we were glad to get going again. This plateau was really a divide—a small tableland—about 3,000 feet high, and from it a veritable Switzerland of mountains could be seen stretching in all directions. We were accustomed to mountains by this time, but those ahead of us were so weird-looking as to appear absolutely unreal! We had passed range after range already, but in most cases the gullies, and even some of the slopes, had been covered with vegetation of a sort—queer, fantastic plants and cacti—but still vegetation! But these queer peaks were stark and bare and of the most startling colours. In serrated lines they stretched out like the teeth of a saw, and their crumbling slopes of rotten schist were of every shade of red, of brick-red, of flaring vermilion, of bright orange-red, in fact of every red-hot gradation of colour. And across their flaming flanks, in startling contrast, were drawn long broad bands of intense black, sharply defined in huge zigzags, and looking as though they had been scrawled across the scorching landscape by an enormous pencil.
Between these strange peaks “ran” rivers of glaring white and yellow sand, and riding through this uncanny goblin-land the weird stories of huge snakes and monsters told us by the Hottentots seemed no longer impossible. The whole land seemed dead, burnt up, absolutely devoid of life; not a bird or other living creature was to be seen anywhere, though the spoors of wilde paarde here and there in the sand showed where mountain zebra occasionally roamed. For hours we rode down and down the slopes till at length we entered a wide stretch of bare sand flanked by mountains; this also gradually sloped and narrowed till it became a tortuous defile, on either hand of which towered abrupt and red-hot looking cliffs. The heat was appalling; it struck back from glaring sand and rocks as from a furnace, and I was soon parched with thirst. We knew there was plenty of water a few hours ahead of us, and I for one was thankful for the knowledge. For nothing accentuates thirst like anxiety as to when it can be quenched, and luckily we felt none.
There was not a sound, for the soft sand deadened the footfalls of the horses as with drooping ears they trudged dejectedly along, hour after hour, winding and turning through narrow poorts where two could not pass abreast, flanking mountains only to find others barring our path, always descending and always getting hotter and hotter. In places, scrambling over huge masses of iron ore fallen from the black zigzags above, or tempted to clamber up to some bright deceiving outcrop of adamantine iron-glance, or to where the numerous green stains on the red rock showed the existence of copper; walking as much as possible to save the poor nags’ unshod hoofs, and only climbing to the saddle when our own feet became unbearable, we plodded and shuffled for five solid hours down that infernal ravine. I asked Klaas if it had a name. He said, “No,” that it was not a regular “path,” and that he had only been through it once—many years ago, when he was a boy. Time went on, and the course became so tortuous that at times we appeared to be doubling on our tracks; each of the peaks we passed looked exactly like the others we had already passed, and I began to think that Klaas was leading us in a vain circle! By-and-by we came to a big rock of crushed-strawberry colour with vermilion trimmings, and Ransson called Klaas back. He said, “Look here, Klaas; we’ve passed this blamed klip six times already! Now, you may think this funny, but we don’t, and I’m going to mark this pebble with my hatchet, and if we pass it again—there’ll be trouble.”
Klaas must have seen that we were not to be trifled with, for we didn’t pass the rock again after that, and in about a week—Ransson says it was the same evening, but I know better—we suddenly emerged from a narrow gap in the rock ... and there, within a hundred yards, lay a glorious shining stretch of beautiful water bordered by a broad belt of luxuriant trees; and a vivid lawn of velvet turf extended almost to our very feet!
No transformation scene could have been more dramatically sudden ... we had been riding through an inferno and suddenly here was Paradise!
The poor nags spurted at the welcome sight, and within a couple of minutes our scanty clothing was off, and we were up to our necks in the water and letting the whole of the Orange River run down our thirsty throttles.
The place is called “!!Ariep!!” the notes of exclamation representing the Hottentot “clicks” that Klaas put into the alleged word. I told him I was glad to hear it, and would take his word for it sooner than go back. It really is a most beautiful spot; the river is about a quarter of a mile wide, and upstream takes a majestic bend. In that direction it is dotted with islands covered with trees and dense undergrowth, and is a favourite spot for the few hippo still to be found in the Orange. Downstream there are rapids which, though they look very innocent, are not to be trifled with, as I found later. Opposite, on the German bank, the mountains are as bare and highly coloured as those we had passed through. Indeed, “Red-hot Valley,” as we called it, is but one of scores in this region, where, strangely enough, the peaks near the river are all devoid of vegetation. The schistose rock of which they are principally composed seems to be suffering from dry-rot, for it crumbles at the slightest touch, and in climbing a whole avalanche is eternally clattering down from underfoot.
Here and there a few ghostly-looking koker boomen, or huge twisted Candelabra euphorbia, looking like huge spiders, cling to a precarious footing, and that is all.