The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

So we trudged on for three hours after the horses, which were already miles ahead.

This country was almost as weird as that which we had passed through on our way to the river. We were apparently skirting the base of a mountain of coal, jet black and glistening; the sands surrounding it were also black, but they were not coal, but titaniferous iron-sand, which I tried in vain for gold. This queer-looking peak was principally composed of hornblende, and here I also noticed huge crystals of black tourmaline, as thick as one’s wrist. At length, tired and footsore, we reached an ancient river-bed actually rejoicing in a name. “Gauna Gulip” old Ezaak called it, when we found him waiting for us with the horses under the poor shade of a few tamarisks—the first vegetation we had seen all day. Here also there were a few clumps of rushes, and the “boys” were busy scooping a hole in the sand with their hands. At about three feet, the bottom became moist, water began to ooze in, and we soon had enough for a kettle of tea. Meanwhile the horses had gone down the bed to a small open pool. I went and looked at it, but it was a squirming mass of animalcules, not fit even to boil; though, a month later, I was glad to drink the little that was left of it. We stayed at the sand-scooped hole, not to rest, for it was too hot to sleep, but patiently collecting enough water as it oozed in by the spoonful to fill our water-bottles, for Ezaak told us we should get no more till we reached the waggon, and we had two formidable ranges to cross before then. As a matter of fact, we could have drunk the whole supply as fast as it became available, for the heat that day was phenomenal—it seemed to be drying the very blood up in our veins, and converting us into biltong. Not far from this water-hole we came upon the first trace of man we had seen for many days, a faint old waggon-spoor in the sand. It led towards the fantastic peaks to the south, and Klaas told us that the vehicle had passed through some six months previously, on its way to a mass of native copper which had been discovered among the mountains there. We followed it for a short distance only, and, turning up a branch-ravine, came to the old prospect Ezaak had told us of, and which, luckily for him, was far too big to eat!

THE DEEP GORGE, 500 FEET OR MORE IN DEPTH, IN WHICH THE ORANGE RIVER IS PENNED BELOW THE GREAT FALLS.

By the time we had pegged the spot it was sunset, and a debatable point whether we should camp there and ride early next day, or try to cross the mountains by moonlight. We had eaten our last scrap of food at midday, and there was no vegetation for the horses to nibble, so we decided on the latter, though we knew we were taking risks, for Ezaak seemed none too sure of the path, and crossing pathless mountains by moonlight is scarcely a picnic. Rummaging in our depleted saddle-bags, we found a last pinch of tea, plentifully mixed with tobacco dust, and with it we brewed a kettleful of the most obnoxious fluid I have ever tasted. The water was brak (alkaline) and thick and slimy, and we had no sugar, but we got down a hot beakerful each, and started on one of the coldest rides I have ever experienced. For on the bare, sun-blistered uplands of Namaqualand there is practically no intermediate stage between intense heat and intense cold, and less than an hour after sunset my teeth were chattering and my hands so numbed I could scarcely hold the reins. Naturally, the higher we climbed, the colder it became, and I soon regretted that I had not decided to wait hungry, and do that ride in the warm sunshine. I had nothing on but a khaki shirt and pants, of the thinnest—just enough to keep the sun from flaming me—and though I had a blanket strapped on the horse, it was useless trying to wrap that about me in such a scramble as we were in for. It soon became evident that Ezaak was relying on his sense of direction to bring us to the waggon, and occasionally he was absolutely at fault. In and out among the solemn peaks we scrambled, here plunging into dark ravines, where it was impossible to do more than grope one’s way, then emerging into a blaze of white moonlight that showed every pebble in the path as clear as noonday. Once or twice, in the darker places, we had to retrace our steps, as we found the way barred by rock or precipice, and often the only warning that we were on dangerous heights was the crash of a dislodged stone or boulder falling into the depths below. But “Ou Ezaak” still scrambled on, till, after passing over two distinct ranges, we found ourselves again amongst thick vegetation, and here our experiences became even more variegated. For most of the bush was of the wachteen-beitje variety, full of hooked thorns, and as the little nags wriggled through it, it ripped and tore skin and clothing from us in the most impartial manner. It blew great guns too, and but for sheer shame I would have called a halt, lighted a fire, and waited for morning. However, Ezaak was now fairly in his stride, and after an interminable time, and when I had resigned myself to being utterly lost, we suddenly plunged down a dark ravine, and saw a fire twinkling below us. It was the waggon, right enough. We had been scrambling for seven hours. In the morning we found that a dozen or more Hottentots had pitched their mat pondhoeks close to the waggon. They had a flock of goats with them, and appeared to live entirely on the milk. We bought a little of it later, giving tobacco and tea in return. They had a great idea of the value of their commodity, and doled it out very sparingly. Their fondness for tobacco is extraordinary, the women and young girls smoking quite as much as the men, and passing the hollow leg-bone of a buck, which serves them as a pipe, from lip to lip, as they squatted by the fire.

They had two riding-oxen with them, fine-looking beasts with a rein passed through the nostril to guide them by, and saddled with ordinary horse-saddles of German military pattern. We used them on several of our excursions later, finding them excellent, both for pace, endurance and climbing powers, which they possess to a remarkable degree.

With all this addition to the population, it was clear that the water would last only a few days; in fact, we were hard put to it to enable us to “pan” the cleaning up on the section of river-bed which the “boys” had bared for us. Still, we managed somehow, the remains of the water in which we had “panned” for gold all day serving us for making coffee at night; but in spite of all our efforts, we found no particle of gold, and reluctantly decided to abandon the spot, coming to the conclusion, at the time, that we had been shown the wrong spot, and that the gold had never been found there.

Before leaving, however, we finished our exploration of the surrounding peaks, finding numerous traces of other metals, but no gold. As an instance of the variety of minerals scattered through this region, I may state that a single stick of dynamite in a faint splash of carbonate of copper disclosed more than a hundredweight of bornite, with galena, an essay of which, in Cape Town, gave 38 per cent. of copper and 24 oz. of silver to the ton, whilst within a fifty yards radius, fine samples of molybdenum, hæmatite, and copper-glance were found, and the sand-rivers were black with hundreds of tons of titaniferous iron-sand. Many of the rarer and lesser-known metals are undoubtedly present also in this region, tantallite being frequently met with in the sands and amongst the hæmatite débris, and the very large crystals occasionally met with point to the probability of large deposits of this valuable mineral awaiting systematic search. The ravines of this wild and remote spot were full of a beauty peculiarly their own, being luxuriant with vegetation of strange form and colour: Varias euphorbia, huge fleshy-trunked succulents, with brilliant scarlet flowers, aloes of different shapes and colours, and above all, a most glorious copper-coloured bush, known locally as the “Pride of Namaqualand,” all contrasting vividly with the milk-white of the quartz, and the brick-red of the red-hot-looking schist. Here of all places, the strange Pachypodium namaquanum is abundant, and reaches a size I saw nowhere else: moreover, many of these giant succulents, of 10 feet or more in height, were many-branched instead of consisting of a single trunk, and may possibly be a different variety. Of animal life there was but little. On the higher peaks, the chamois-like klipbok could occasionally be seen standing on an isolated point and tempting a long shot, but in the valleys a few leopards and wild-cat, a slinking hyæna or jackal, were all that were ever seen.

Just before leaving, a Hottentot came in riding an ox, and claimed through an interpreter that he knew of the whereabouts of a “mountain” of copper, rumours of which I had heard from various sources before. A certain German prospector named Preuss—a man whose word I absolutely believe—had told me that some years back he had endeavoured to trek through these mountains from the vicinity of the Great Fish River—which runs through German South-West—into the Orange. Some natives had guided him; it had been an exceptionally dry season, and they had nearly died of thirst, but in a remote spot he had come upon a whole mountain of copper ore. He wanted water more than copper, and had no licence anyway, so he made no attempt to peg it, but he told me of it in Cape Town, and gave me the names of the Richtersfeldt natives who had brought him through. I had made inquiries from the Mission, and this chap was the first result. He gave us his name, but I cannot reproduce it—it sounded like a hungry man swallowing oysters. Anyway, he said he could guide us to that mountain, and that it was three days’ trek away, so we rationed him, and made him happy with tobacco, and prepared to trek. A man was sent away to bring in the oxen, which were grazing some days away; the waggon was left in charge of Peter, with instructions to meet us at Zendling’s Drift fourteen days later; and with scant rations in our saddle-bags, we started off again, under the guidance of the ox-rider. His route led us back to the Orange—a few miles above where we had struck it before, but through quite a different series of ravines, in which we again came upon numerous copper indications, all of which we ignored, in view of the “whole mountain” of it to which we were being guided.

But alas! our guide turned out to be a bigger romancer than Klaas Zwartbooi, for after two days of hard trekking, he landed us at a little patch of green carbonate the size of a tea-tray, and solemnly pronounced this to be the spot we were looking for!