“Sure his name was Preuss?”
“Ja, Herr Kaptein.”
“Wasn’t it Smith?”
“Ja, Herr Kaptein.”
“Or Jones—or Brown—or Robinson?”
“Ja, ja, Herr Kaptein.”
“Right,” I said; “this must be the spot. This Court acquits you. Any man who has been guide to the white man you describe has my sincere sympathy.”
We spent a few days in the vicinity, finding numerous copper prospects, and eventually decided to try to reach Kuboos through the mountains instead of going back by the Orange to Zendling’s Drift. En route we hoped to be able to look at the “native” copper we had heard so much about, the road to which was known to both our guides. So we planned to cross to our previous water-hole in the Gauna Gulip River.
When we arrived at this conclusion we were at a spot some miles from the Orange, up an unnamed dry river that by compass bearings appeared to trend in the direction of the Gauna Gulip, from which low, but rugged and difficult, mountain ridges separated us. So to avoid a detour of at least two days, we decided to follow up this unknown ravine instead of retracing our steps, hoping that it would ultimately converge into the right river-bed, where we should be near water, of which we had very little.
All the long afternoon we toiled up the defile, the winding sand-bed rising until the encompassing rocky walls were only a couple of hundred feet high, but still too steep for horses. At length, just about sunset, we came to the end of the crumbling schist and a granite intrusion rose on either hand—huge rounded boulders the size of cottages piled one upon another and without a vestige of earth or sand in the network of cavities between them. And after a few hundred yards of these we were faced by a low connecting granite nek, barring our progress, and abruptly ending the ravine. Over this we were confident of finding the Tatas River, from which we could easily reach our destination. I was riding ahead, and found the nek quite easy of ascent and scarce a hundred feet high. Up this I rode, crossed a few yards of ridge and looked down—and nearly fell from the pony in sheer funk!