The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

I was cut, scratched, and bruised very badly, but thankful to be alive at all, for had I been swept but a few inches farther from the rock, I must have lost my life; as it was I lost my hat—no light loss in the middle of summer in Namaqualand. It taught me a lesson—never to attempt wading even the most innocent-looking rapid in the Orange.

Meanwhile we also lost the goose, and for the next few days our rations were extremely scanty, an occasional dassie or small turtle-dove—as tough as leather—being all we were able to shoot.

A week spent in the grand gorges and on the precipitous peaks of the little-known Tatas Berg found us an abundance of copper indications, but never a buck, and we started our return journey to Zendling’s Drift, by this time almost rationless, our coffee and sugar gone, our tobacco likewise, and a few handfuls of meal and a little tea our only standby. And still the game fought shy of us. There were numerous small birds in every tree, brilliant of plumage and of infinite variety, but absolutely nothing to warrant a charge of “No. 6.” Occasionally a majestic fish-eagle would sail away from the top of a dead tree to a similar perch across the river, and dozens of grey monkeys chattered at us from the topmost branches of cameel-doorn and willow; here and there a huge leguaan (that monster of lizards, 6 or 7 feet in length), belonging to the monitor species, would plunge from the bank into the water, and baboons hooted at us the live-long day from the rocks above; but none of these appealed to us—as food.

One incandescent day, when we had bathed and were lolling for a midday spell on a patch of emerald sward near !!Ariep!!, we were lucky enough to witness a scene I am never likely to forget, and would not have missed for anything. Here the river is particularly beautiful; there are numerous small islands, covered with dense thickets of reeds, that are a favourite feeding-place for the few hippo still left in the Orange. Some of them are well wooded with high willows of a particularly vivid green, and on the overhanging branch of one of these I saw a baboon appear, clamber out to the extremity, stand up at full height, and dive into the deep pool beneath just as a man would do. He was followed by another and another, until there were at least a score of them climbing, diving, swimming to the bank, and up the tree again, in an endless chain, splashing each other, and enjoying themselves exactly like a crowd of schoolboys.

On the third day the sky became overcast, but we had been so long without seeing rain that we disregarded the signs of its coming. Late that evening we arrived at our old camp beneath the willows, opposite the “Ki-man” rock, the long stretch of still water a pool of liquid fire from the reflection of a most lurid and threatening sunset.

The finely powdered silt made a soft bed, and I slept well, but I awoke to find the rain coming down in sheets, and everything we had soaking wet. The willows were useless as shelter, and the silt soon became a peculiarly slimy and tenacious mud. Daylight came and still it poured; our saddles were like wet brown paper, and we decided to wait where we were till the weather changed. To pass the time, we again exploded a big charge of dynamite as near to the “Ki-man” rock as we could throw it, but no “Groot Slang” appeared. Utterly bored, and already longing for the sun we had grumbled at for months, we sent the “boy” for the horses, resolving to trek, rain or no rain, when suddenly a big troop of baboons appeared on the top of a precipitous kopje above us, and commenced turning the stones over for the scorpions on which they often feed. Almost immediately came a terrific outburst of grunts, barks, yells, and screams, and we saw them flying in all directions, leaving one of the younger ones in the clutch of a fine big leopard. It shook its prey for a moment like a cat shakes a rat, and with a bound disappeared behind a rock near the summit of the peak.

Poulley grabbed the gun. “I’m going up to get him,” he said, jamming in the cartridges.

“He’s more likely to get you,” I warned him, but he was too wet and wild to take any notice of me, and of course I could not let him go alone. So in the pouring rain we two abject idiots started climbing up an almost vertical precipice, the rocks slippery and treacherous with the wet, and giving the most precarious foothold in the best of places. Poulley was ahead with the combination gun; I followed with my heavy Webley revolver. How we got up I hardly know; every time my leader dislodged a stone it had to come my way, and once or twice big ones weighing a hundredweight missed me by inches. I would have given a good deal to turn back, but on he kept till he reached the spot where the leopard had taken his prey. What would have happened had it still been there I am at a loss to say, for we could not have used our weapons without imminent risk of shooting each other, to say nothing of falling several hundred feet. Luckily, however, he had gone, and I, at any rate, was profoundly thankful.

So we came down and saddled up and started again, and all that miserable day it rained, and all that night and all the next day, making the difficulties of the track double, for the rocks were so slippery with the slimy silt that it was almost impossible to stand on them, and the horses floundered as though shod with roller-skates. We had nothing to eat but mealie pap, for our meal was too sodden to make the more comforting roster-kook, even when we succeeded in making a fire. On the morning when we arrived in sight of Zendling’s Drift there was a gleam or two of sunshine, but the banking-up of enormous thunder-clouds showed that we were in for something worse than we had had, and we hurried on to try, if possible, to get where the trees were thick and we might rig up some kind of shelter.

I was ahead with the gun to try and get something for the pot, and was within a mile of the drift when the first big drops began to fall. Then came a flash of lightning, and, though I galloped, by the time I got to the drift I was in the midst of the most terrific thunderstorm I have ever experienced. The rain fell in sheets and the crash of the thunder was continuous, whilst all around the forked lightning stabbed and flickered and lit the murk with an incessant play of flame. The trees were worse than useless, and the water ran in at my shirt-collar and out of my boots, as for two hours I stood by my frightened horse and waited for the storm to abate, and hoped that we should not get struck—but doubted!