The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

Far ahead, through the already shimmering heat, lay the dark winding belt of trees bordering the Orange, and faint against the glaring sky showed the high, fantastic peaks in German territory.

We were accompanied by two of the Namaqualand District Police, whose unenviable task it was to search for the body of a Hottentot supposed to be dead of thirst somewhere in the mountains beyond Hell’s Kloof. He had been missing for some time, and a relative—a guide who knew the mountains well—had found his spoor in the Dabee River—close to where we were returning to try for gold. They are wonderful trackers, these Hottentots, and this guide could tell that the missing man had been staggering and in an exhausted condition when he had left our old water-hole—which was long since dry—and as he (the guide) knew of no water for a full day’s trek in any direction, he concluded the man was dead.

Neither of the police had been through Hell’s Kloof before, and they did not care how soon their unpleasant task was over. A long day’s ride brought us to near the Numees mine, and early the following day we started through Hell’s Kloof. The six sturdy oxen were either of them individually capable of dragging the light cart and its contents over the greater part of the track—bad as it was—but unfortunately they were not used to being yoked to anything smaller than a waggon with a span of about sixteen beasts, and the task of driving them was an extremely difficult one, as often they were pulling in different directions. But we successfully negotiated bad spot after bad spot, and had arrived within sight of the formidable ascent out of the Kloof which had hung us up before, when, on going down a short but very steep slope, the leaders jibbed and stopped, the wheelers kept on and ran into them, and the cart took charge. It side-skidded a yard or two, and then went down with a run. Smash went the disselboom, into a steep face of rock went the cart, and bags, boxes, tools, dynamite, bottles of acid, pestles and mortars went flying in all directions. The detonators were in my pocket, but still the little hair I have remaining rose as I saw the case of dynamite describe the arc of a circle in the air a few feet from me, and come down with a bang on a rock, splitting it open and scattering the cartridges in all directions. A large glass jar containing “aqua regia” (a potent mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids) also came down on the stones, and, remarkably enough, although the stopper was broken sheer off, the jar was otherwise uninjured. And among the débris of our belongings the six oxen plunged and cavorted, and by the time we had cut them clear everything was stamped flat.... But the cart! It was a mass of splinters, the disselboom in fragments, and the whole of the forepart wrecked, the ironwork twisted and broken, and practically nothing intact but the wheels. At first sight it appeared impossible to ever make a cart of it again, even if we had a whole waggon-builder’s staff and tools at our disposal; as for doing it in Hell’s Kloof, the idea was preposterous.

So we called philosophy to our aid, and sat down and had some grub by the ruins, our police friends bidding us good-bye and riding on ahead to look for the dead man. And looking at the melancholy wreckage, we got vicious—that blessed cart had let us down badly at Brakfontein, and again it had chosen a remote spot to turn and rend us! And Poulley, after some unpublishable remarks, said, “I’m not going to be beat by that blamed one-horse shay. I’m going to mend it, or bust!”

Ransson filled his pipe and grunted and waded in to put the pieces together, and seeing that they would not be disheartened, I got my pony and rode back to the old deserted mine at Numees, where I had noticed several old crowbars lying about at the mouth of the adit. They were about 5 feet long, and heavy and strong, and might serve to lash together the splintered disselboom, for there was not a stick of straight wood big enough to cut a new one within days of us. And by dint of lashing, screwing, nailing, and patching for hours, we at length got the ruins to look something like a cart again, and could chance trekking. The oxen rested all these hours, and as the moon would be high and bright we decided to trek all night, and being utterly reckless now, we did the rest of the journey at top speed. We took risk after risk, but our luck held, and also the lashings, and towards morning we found ourselves again in the sands of Dabee River. We were dog-tired, but full of curiosity as to where our new guide would take us. Would it be under the big white reef in the ravine to the left, where I had always wished to try, or in the gully a mile eastward, where Ransson had always believed it to be?

On we went by the light of the now sinking moon, over the white sand, where the waggon spoor of our last trip lay distinct and fresh, between the dark and solemn mountains, passing unexplored and mysterious ravines we had never penetrated, on and on over the old spoor, till at last our guide, who was leading, held up his hand for us to stop.

It was the spot—the same spot we had worked at before, after all!...

We were too tired even to swear, but flung off our saddles and slept like logs, where we fell.

When we woke we found that Poulley’s head was within a foot of a tiny bush in which lay coiled the biggest puff-adder I have ever seen, so big indeed, and so strangely marked, that I believe it to have been a new variety.

Our guide smiled superiorly when we showed him the work we had done on our previous visit, and said he would find us nuggets in less than no time! So we gave him all the “boys” and told him to go to work and find them; but though we ourselves again searched, washed, and prospected most thoroughly for several days, neither he nor we could find the slightest trace of gold! The day after our arrival, the two police with their guide passed our camp on their way back, having failed to find the body they were searching for. They were surprised to see us, as they had believed it impossible to mend the cart and bring it over such a track. They were glad to replenish their water-bottles, for they had found no water and had anticipated a thirsty ride back. The body of the unfortunate Hottentot was eventually found within half a mile of where we were camped, and the fact that he died of thirst brought home to us very vividly the dangers of these terrible mountains. Once lost in them without water, and death is almost certain ... yet water exists here and there, and, terribly enough, this poor native was within half an hour of plenty of it when he died of thirst—had he only known the spot.