We now made our way down the river towards Zendling’s Drift, finding but little difficulty for the first day or two. The banks were mostly densely wooded; at places this belt of virgin vegetation was half a mile or so in width, in others the abrupt flanking peaks crowded in upon the stream, leaving but a narrow belt of vegetation clinging to their base. There was plenty of grass for the horses, pigeons for the pot, and dassies (rock rabbits) for the “boys.” Skinned, they looked like rabbits, and smelt very nice when cooking, but I could not bring myself to taste them. Though small birds were plentiful, and there were wild duck and geese in abundance, and monkeys and baboons galore, we saw no trace of larger game here by these solitary reaches of the Orange; if we except the splashes of some large animals in the pools between some of the numerous islands, which the “boys” assured me were hippo.
These latter, of which there are but a very few left in the Orange, are usually found on the islands near where the Great Fish River joins the larger stream, after running for hundreds of miles through German South-West.
We passed this spot on the second day, and here saw the first sign of former habitation, two or three abandoned pondhoeks made of branches, long since dry and leafless. And here we came upon stretches of fine sand and gravels which showed signs, here and there, that they had been worked superficially, doubtless for diamonds, for there were the gravels that Stuurmann had told me of in Luderitzbucht, and, as he had described them, they were sparkling with “bright stones”—pretty but worthless crystals.
We found no diamonds, but we had not the means for systematic sieving, and some of the old river terraces near this spot looked very promising indeed.
The mouth of the Great Fish River, where it debouches into the Orange, is choked with a huge accumulation of sand, through which, after rain, the water finds its way in various small channels to swell the larger stream. There are numerous small, well-wooded islands in the vicinity—these were the haunts of the hippo already alluded to. The spot is one of the wildest and most remote and difficult of access of all spots in this deserted region; even on the German bank there is neither settlement nor habitation within many days’ trek in either direction.
Our leisurely and easy trek downstream now came to an end, for just after passing the Great Fish, we came to a bend where the mountain converged upon the river, the course of which became tortuous in the extreme; and at length an apparently impenetrable barrier of peaks stretched before us, through which it appeared impossible that the river could penetrate. And then trouble began. In places we scrambled for hours along precipitous slopes, cumbered with fallen rocks, and with swirling rapids below us; a mile or so of easier going where the country was more open, and again a mountain spur would shoulder the river aside. This time the abrupt slope would be dense with high and tangled thorn-bush through which we had to cut a way, whilst here and there a huge fallen rock or a whole landslide from the cliffs above would bar further progress, till we had crawled round, over, or under them, at imminent risk of breaking our ponies’ necks or legs, as well as our own. At times we were obliged to descend into the actual river-bed, and had the water not been low, these traverses would, of course, have been impracticable, and a sudden freshet upstream would certainly have accounted for the lot of us, had the flood caught us in one of these spots.
The worst going for the ponies was over these places, for the huge rocks and boulders were rounded, slimy, and slippery with mud, exactly like boulders on a sea-beach at low tide.
But, to me, the biggest nightmare of a spot was where, on the steep slopes of a mountain rising abruptly from the water, a big drift of sand rested. I do not know at what angle sand will rest, but certainly it was steeper than 45 degrees, and dry and loose. We could not get above it, for there the cliff was vertical, and the men warned us that we must keep going as fast as possible, as to stand still a minute meant being half-buried, and slipping down with the sand to the swirling water below. The ponies would scarcely face it, and were plainly scared out of their wits, and I did not like it myself.
But there was no alternative, and no time to stay and think about it, for it was nearly dark, and we could not stay where we were, whilst about a mile ahead we could see open ground and grass. I don’t know how we managed that mile; it was one wild flounder and scramble, a case of plunging through loose, shifting sand up to one’s knees almost, dragging a frightened pony behind, and always climbing upwards as well as forward, to compensate for the slipping-down of the whole bank of sand.
I was heartily glad when it was over, and though I have crossed that sand-slide twice since, I have always funked it.