I found Ransson still asleep, but when he awoke he said that though he felt better he had been light-headed a lot, imagining he’d heard a big church bell ringing all the time! I told him about what I had been doing with the copper, and he seemed much relieved to find that the noise had been real instead of imaginary, and would not hear of resting any longer, though he was obviously unfit to ride.
The guide’s idea had been to cross from this spot to the Gold Camp, and thence through Hell’s Kloof to Kuboos, where we had sent the waggon; but this was old ground to us, and we wished to try a new route.
At length Jacob said that he had once been through a pass which would make a much shorter journey for us, but it was very difficult on foot, and he doubted if horses could be got through. But after our experience of the day before anything might be possible, and we decided to try it.
As it would be moonlight we did not start till the cool of evening. Our track led across difficult foothills of granite débris, broken by innumerable ravines, to where a gap in the mountain barrier marked the entrance to the pass. Long before reaching it we struck a dry river-bed, pleasant with cameel-doorn, mimosa, and other greenery, whilst here and there thick beds of reeds showed that moisture was still in the soil. Altogether a very pleasant valley, but gradually the encircling peaks of tilted quartzite narrowed in, and at dusk we entered a gloomy ravine that led us to a narrow point. Through this, and we were in an absolute cañon. On either hand the river cliffs towered up hundreds of feet, in places absolutely overhanging, whilst the narrow stream-bed up which we struggled was a chaos of fallen rocks, débris, and huge boulders.
Through this cramped Krantz the wind, concentrated as though driven through the nozzle of a huge bellows, tore with such force that we could scarcely make headway even where the going was fair. But hour after hour we blundered and stumbled and fought our way through this hideous gorge, in almost Cimmerian darkness, for we had been wrong in depending upon the moon; her light could scarcely reach us for hours after the open country had been made almost as light as day. Ransson was delirious and talking all sorts of rot, and yelling and singing defiance to the wind, and I was thankful indeed when at length the moon did appear overhead, and light up our difficult path. Then, suddenly, the profound gully ended, and we had to negotiate a slope of quite 45 degrees with scarce foothold for a cat, scrambling up, and up, breathlessly to a great height. A brief rest on a saddle-back ridge, a downward plunge into darkness again, through rocks, thorn, and other impedimenta, and again we were in the gorge. At length we emerged into a deep crater-like valley surrounded by high peaks, where we off-saddled and slept beside a tiny pool of water. Morning showed us most surprising surroundings. We were, in truth, in an actual crater, the huge encircling walls of which were of a new and extremely interesting formation. A huge upheaval had taken place at some remote period, and the riven rocks now reared aloft in abrupt peaks were of alternate layers of quartzite and of a conglomerate of a similar nature to the so-called banket of the Rand. Enormous masses of this “pudding stone,” fallen from the peaks above, now cumbered the slopes on every side, and the beds of the ravines were full of it. The peaks showed over a thousand feet of alternate beds of this ferruginous conglomerate, and its resemblance to the gold-bearing reef of Johannesburg was so great that we thought we had stumbled on a new El Dorado.
However, our first few eager pannings were disappointing, for they showed no free gold; but we had neither tools nor time for a proper test, for our stores were exhausted, Ransson was still full of fever, and the fact that a leopard had taken old Ezaak’s dog, quite close to us, as we had lain sleeping the sleep of exhaustion by the pool, and without a fire, warned us that we should have dangerous neighbours if we stayed.
Still, we should certainly return, so with the few samples we could carry at our saddle-bows we climbed by dangerous paths out of this strange abyss, passing over ridge after ridge of the same sort of rock, till late in the afternoon we could see, through a gap in the mountains westward, yet another range whose characteristic shape showed them to be granite, and beyond the spur of them a wide, dim expanse of plain. “Kuboos,” said Jacob, pointing to where mountain and plain met, and late that night we rode into a dry river-bed where, close to a beautiful trickle of actually clean water, our waggon was waiting.
Kuboos is really the only “permanent” centre for the Richtersfeldt Hottentots, for here they have a tiny stone-built mission church, round which cluster a variable number of mat pondhoeks. Practically the whole of the population called on us the following morning, bringing goat’s milk in various weird receptacles, amongst them a number of women and girls of all sizes, all chattering and laughing gaily, in absolute contrast to the taciturnity of the men. Many of the younger women were quite good-looking, though their faces were mostly adorned with the hideous smears of soot and ochre with which they delight to paint themselves. Each woman carried at her waist a small tortoise-shell as a “beauty box,” in which was kept these “beautifiers,” together with a hare’s tail, some sweet-smelling buchu leaves, and other weird toilet essentials.
Kuboos itself is absolutely without interest. The church, huts, etc., stand upon bare foothills of decomposed granite without a sign of vegetation, for the only “lands” the natives cultivate lie high up on the top of the magnificent granite range that towers above the settlement, the path to them being so steep that the corn is brought down in sleds.
Prominent amongst the soaring peaks of this bold granite barrier is a striking castellated cluster known as “Kuboos Tower,” the pillars and buttresses of which might well have been piled aloft by some titanic builder.