The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

Then Poulley came up half drowned, and with the “boy” in a state of the most abject terror. As soon as they reached me he threw himself on the ground and hid his face, cringing and muttering at every peal and flinching at every flash. Below, the river was rising fast, and between the peals of thunder the rush of the rapids could be heard joining with the howling of the wind and the swish of the rain in a monstrous symphony.

At length there was a slight abatement, the clouds lifted somewhat and we could see Jackal’s Berg, a mile or so away, and the play of the lightning on the enormous iron reef that forms its “backbone” was a sight never to be forgotten. The lull was but temporary, and again the storm burst upon us with awful force, and it was nearly sunset when the heavy batteries moved slowly away towards the distant mountains, leaving us like drowned rats, but unhurt.

Our mealie meal was a mass of sodden pap, our little remaining tea spoiled, and our sole ration a solitary tin of sardines, not much amongst three hungry men. Our matches, too, were sodden, and but for the “boy’s” flint and steel we should have been in a bad plight; but he soon recovered from his scare and made us a roaring fire, for wood was plentiful.

With the lifting of the clouds we at once saw that since my last visit the Germans had built quite an imposing-looking station, with a good many rooms in it, over which the German flag was trying to fly in spite of its drenched condition. We slept as near the huge fire as possible, but in the night it rained again, and our discomfort was added to by the fact that we were still hungry and had little hope of food for the morrow.

In the morning we found a few miserable Hottentots crouching in wet pondhoeks near the drift, and tried to buy a goat from them, but they would not sell; and we were just debating whether we should not take one by force when a flock of pigeons saved the situation—and the goat. Then a brace of “pheasants” (the lesser bustard) came Poulley’s way, and we were in clover.

Here Poulley left me to ride to Port Nolloth and Cape Town, whilst I returned alone over the mountain to Ransson. He had been unable to locate a single speck of gold further than the one we had found before leaving, and we reluctantly decided to abandon the conglomerate—though I am still of the opinion that some of the innumerable beds or reefs there will eventually be found to be auriferous.

The water at “Quagga” was by this time almost putrid, and as some Hottentots had now appeared on the scene with a large flock of sheep and some cattle which fouled and further diminished the supply every day, we spent several days in exploring the many deep ravines and kloofs in the hope of finding other water-holes. One day, whilst thus engaged, Ransson had an adventure which might have proved very serious. He had descended a deep and narrow defile leading down from an old watercourse in the mountains. As he got deeper the gorge narrowed until it became a veritable cañon, gloomy, dark, and profound. The walls were in places barely 6 feet apart, and towered up on either hand perpendicularly for many hundreds of feet, and the whole of this deep rent or crack in the earth—for it was little more—was worn ice-smooth by the action of water. It was towards evening, and only a little light filtered into the place. Here and there came a straight drop of 8 or 10 feet, and it was after negotiating several of these that Ransson, peering down, caught sight of the tops of some rushes in a wider space below, and knew he was near water. He swung himself down another abrupt narrow place, and suddenly became aware of a strong bestial smell. He cocked his rifle, and peered into the gloom, and his eyes, gradually becoming accustomed to it, showed him that he was in the midst of a big troop of huge baboons. They were absolutely motionless, watching him; they were on every hand, on every projection of rock, above him, below him, before him, and behind him, for he had passed some of them without seeing them, and so near were several that he could have touched them with his rifle. And there they sat, as still as statues, and glared at him; and Ransson said that it was one of his most uncanny experiences to see all those pairs of eyes glowering on him in the gloom. To shoot would probably have meant being torn limb from limb; to turn his back on them and climb the slippery rock would have left him at their mercy; to go on was impossible, as there was a sheer drop of 20 feet into the water. In this dilemma he did quite mechanically what he could not have bettered by hours of thinking, for he pulled out his matches and lit his pipe. And as the little flame flickered up one of the big baboons—they are huge fellows in these mountains—gave a hoarse, grunting call, and away the whole troop fled, actually brushing against Ransson as they did so, clambering up the almost vertical rocks, and disappearing almost instantly.

I went to the spot the following day, taking a rope with me and a “boy,” whilst Ransson tried to reach the other end of the gorge by a circuitous route. Making fast the rope, I easily got down to the rushes, and found an abundance of water in this hollow place, which was circular and wider than the ravine, and the walls of which overhung.

At the far extremity the ravine continued downward in a cleft of about 8 feet wide, and I burst through the reeds and looked down. Below was another basin, nearly full of black water; it looked very deep, and its overhanging sides were so smooth that had a man fallen in he could never have got out. Altogether it was a gruesome-looking spot, for the sun at noonday only sent a few flickering rays into the ravine above, and never reached the black, dead water. Beyond the smooth lip of this big basin the ravine fell sheer for two or three hundred feet, and further progress was out of the question.

A day’s ride due east from Quagga, in country quite unknown to any of our “boys,” we located another fine water-hole. We wished to attempt to reach the Orange in that direction, but the “boys” said we should never get through the mountains. There was the usual tale of no water, though one of them said his father had told him of a spot in that direction where there was a big fontein, but no one had been there for years, and that it was verloren (lost). It was useless taking the “boys,” so Ransson and I set out with our ponies and two days’ water, to attempt to find a way through.