Having seen no other white men since we left Port Nolloth, and feeling sociable, Ransson and I swam the river with an idea of paying the Germans a visit, but I felt shy when I got out of the water, and sat down well within British territory. Ransson, however, had brought over clean pyjamas in a bundle on his head, and clad in these he coolly sauntered off to the camp, where, I believe, they turned out the guard and signalled to Warmbad for reinforcements. He turned up later with some nice biltong, and for the rest of the day did nothing but brag about the beer and schnapps he had been regaled with. He also most considerately breathed upon me now and then, and altogether I did not come off so badly.
The country near Zendling’s Drift is open and sandy. Upstream and some distance away from the river there are some extraordinary river-terraces of great height, on the flat surfaces of which sun, wind, and sand have combined to polish the beautifully coloured pebbles of ironstone, jasper, agate, chalcedony, and other stones in the most wonderful manner.
These ancient gravels gave great promise of being diamondiferous, and here and there among the pebbles a huge water-worn crystal would bring our hearts into our mouths with its perfect resemblance to a rough Koh-i-noor; but we had no means of working the gravels with us and found no diamonds. We questioned our “boys” about diamonds—they had heard vague rumours of those at Luderitzbucht, and they spoke of a big one that had been sold at Steinkopf years ago for many cattle.
Just above the drift on the German side there is a remarkable and beautiful mountain called by the Germans the “Lorelei.” It is triple-peaked, like a Bishop’s mitre, and affords a striking background to the placid stretches of tree-fringed river below it. Behind it, northward, the ranges are exceptionally high and rugged. Southward, on our bank, there is a tract of several miles of country covered with an absolute maze of quartz outcrops, literally thousands of them, but mostly hungry and barren; and in the mountains behind them there are many old copper workings, mostly dating from the time of Alexander’s venture, but some, far more ancient, the work of Hottentots, who used copper hammers and gads for their work. But by far the most striking of all the mineral outcrops that this sterile and desolate region affords is to be seen about a mile below the drift, where the river twists abruptly round a hog-backed, precipitous hill some 800 feet high. This hill is known as Jackal’s Berg, and from the southern spur of it there outcrops a most wonderful reef of hæmatite. Huge black blocks of it, each of many tons in weight, have rolled down the slope into a valley of pure white quartz adjoining it, and the effect of the glaring contrast of colour in the strong sunshine is remarkable. The reef extends for many miles, the ore is extremely high-grade and with a very low percentage of sulphur, and will some day be of great value. Near this reef, and a few miles lower downstream, there spreads a region of comparatively recent volcanic activity, a gruesome wilderness of scorched scoriæ, calcined shale, and schist, with innumerable outcrops of iron ore, all absolutely barren of any trace of verdure, dead and desolate as one imagines the craters of the moon. And below this the tangle of trees and bush bordering the river was an absolute jungle that we tried in vain to break through, and here in a patch of bare sand I saw more leopard spoors than I had ever seen before.
Thus, riding out each day in a different direction, we spent some time at the drift waiting for our waggon, living on the few things that fell to our guns—bush doves, a hare or two, and a still rarer klipbok, grilling the flesh on the ashes and eating it without bread, salt, or any other sauce but hunger to make it palatable, for the few stores we had brought in our saddle-bags were long since exhausted. Each evening Hottentots came over from the German camp, but we could get neither stores nor news from them of the native we had hoped to find there—the guide to the lost copper mountain.
Apart from our shortness of stores, our anxiety for the arrival of the waggon was accentuated by the fact that we were literally in rags, for we had nothing but the clothes we stood in, and thorns and sharp rocks had torn them to ribbons; moreover, the fierce heat had played havoc with our veldtschoens, which had to be cobbled every day with fragments of rimpi, and which had assumed such dimensions that they would no longer go through the stirrups. But at length the waggon turned up, having had a terrific time in Hell’s Kloof, and having been patched and cobbled till it matched our boots.
I now learnt from Peter that the guide we were looking for had gone to stay at Kuboos, and I therefore sent a message in, with a spare horse to bring him back.
Four days later he turned up; a tall, elderly Hottentot of grave and important aspect, who announced himself as being the one and only veritable guide to my copper mountain. His manner was so impressive that again I had great hopes that he might be telling the truth. He kept aloof from the other “boys,” expected—and obtained—better rations than they did, and altogether appeared to be a pillar of strength. But all our questioning was unavailing; he would take us to the spot, but would tell us nothing as to its whereabouts except that we should have to return upstream.
We had been bitten badly before, and as he understood Dutch we painstakingly explained to him that it was our custom to make our guides eat all copper mines or mountains that did not come up to expectations. He smiled so superciliously, and was so dignified withal, that we decided to turn back once more under his guidance. So, changing our tatters, and filling our saddle-bags anew, we sent the waggon back to Kuboos, and, guided by the egregious Jacob and with a diminutive little Namaqua as a fourth, we retraced our steps along the river-bank, upstream.
We rested again at the “Ki-man Klip” and tried to lure the big snake out by means of dynamite, but without avail. We again negotiated without mishap the various bad places, though my state of blue funk whilst crossing the sand-slide was not lessened by the fact that a big crowd of baboons kept pace with us on the rocks above, hooting, barking, and occasionally sending big stones down at us. But, scratched, torn, ragged, and sun-flayed, but otherwise sound, we at length found ourselves back in the Tatas Bergen—where several of our pegs were already standing. Soon we were on our old tracks, as our guide stalked up a well-known ravine, and I could see murder in Ransson’s eye as he chewed at his old brier. But one by one we passed the ravines leading to our other pegs, and when at length we had to leave our horses and climb, it was up an entirely new peak, and our hopes ran high.