CHAPTER XII
BRYDONE’S DIAMONDS—THE GREAT FALLS OF THE ORANGE—MOUTH OF THE MOLOPO—BAK RIVER—THE GERMAN SOUTH-WEST BORDER—KAKAMAS—LITTLE BUSHMAN LAND.
In Cape Town I found a most encouraging budget of news awaiting me from my energetic friend in Upington. Ever since my return from Rietfontein through that unsophisticated village (?) he had been collecting and collating every scrap of intelligence he could gather relating to the old legend of a rich diamond-mine in the Noup Hills, below the Great Falls of the Orange, and which for shortness I shall refer to as “Brydone’s diamonds”; and he had come to the conclusion that not only did the spot exist, but that he had sufficient data to enable him to proceed directly to it. The only doubt he expressed was whether the spot would be found to be on British or German territory, for everything pointed to its being just about where the twentieth degree of east longitude formed the boundary between the two. Probably, had I been critical, I should have discovered that a good many of his deductions were far from logical; but his glowing accounts tallied greatly with my own belief and with the vague stories I had heard from both natives and whites, and any little hesitation I felt was finally disposed of by still another urgent letter and some wires conveying the satisfactory news that a guide had been found who could take us to the actual spot. That settled it, and I immediately set about looking for a partner, and soon found a most satisfactory one in the person of a German named Paul, who had been a most successful diamond-digger at Harrisdale and Bloemhof, and who wanted a few more. In addition to his expert qualification as a digger, I felt that I had been lucky in striking this man, for he told me, as soon as I broached the subject to him, that he had heard of this spot whilst in German West, and had even made an attempt to reach it, but had been prevented by the authorities. Here then, apparently, was additional proof that this Golconda existed; a bargain was struck, and we were soon on our way to Upington. Except for the fact that, during a bitterly cold night in a Cape cart on the veldt between Prieska and our destination, I contracted pneumonia, we reached our enthusiastic partner in safety, and after a few days’ annoying delay, during which I coughed and fumed and fretted and feared that someone would forestall us, we started off in the most overcrowded Cape cart I have ever squeezed into. Paul was a big, hefty chap; de Wet, our guide, at least a six-footer; Smidt, the driver, bigger still; and Borcherds, the “cheerful optimist,” weighed about as much as any two of them put together. We had reduced stores to a minimum, expecting to shoot for the pot; tools also were but few; for were we not to be led straight to the spot where we could pick the diamonds up? But even so, there were certain essentials: guns, a pick and shovel, a water-cask, emergency rations, sleeping-gear, etc.; and when, after several readjustments, I got all the foregoing jammed into, or tied on to, the cart, we suddenly remembered that a place had still to be found for me. However, a Cape cart is a wonderful vehicle, and at last it was managed, and we trotted out of Upington on September 13th, 1911, the observed of half its inhabitants—two of whom again paid me the compliment of trying to jump my claim by the Gordonian method of “following” a mile or two ahead. We had six spanking mules, and made good progress downstream, near the bank of the river, which is here very beautiful; smiling “lands” of wonderful fertility showing what irrigation can do with the belt of silt brought down by this Nile of South Africa: vineyards, orchards, corn-lands, lucerne, oranges, fruit-trees—and all flanked abruptly by stony sterile desert or red sand-dunes, outliers of the Kalahari stretching to the north. Into these dunes the “road” soon led, and within a few miles of Upington the mules were straining at a cart up to the hubs almost in heavy sand.
At nightfall we were at Keimoes, a most fertile little village, afterwards made famous as the scene of a fight with the infamous Maritz, who was wounded there. Here we slept, and getting away early and pressing on the whole of the day, were at North Furrow, opposite Kakamas, by nightfall, having done a good fifty miles of extremely heavy going in a little over a day and a half. Kakamas itself, the “Labour Colony,” the pioneer irrigation settlement of the Orange River, is on the southern bank and we were on the northern, and I had no opportunity then of seeing the actual village. We passed the night at Krantz Kop, with a most hospitable store-keeper named Miller, whose well-stocked little Winkel was at that time a good 200 miles from the railway (at Prieska), and the last store, indeed almost the last dwelling, in British territory. Here a few well-disseminated lies as to our destination had the effect of ridding us of the claim-jumpers, who had kept in sight of us from Upington, and who rode away before daybreak the following morning in the wrong direction entirely. From Krantz Kop downstream towards the German border the roads are atrocious for a few miles, and then cease altogether. The only track leads away from the river, crossing stony kopjes where every step tempts a smash-up, and leading directly towards a formidable barrier of red-hot-looking peaks. The surroundings become wilder at every step, and the strange shapes of the peculiar-looking vegetation, koker-boomen (Aloe dichotoma), thorny candelabra euphorbia, and a variety of melkbosch exactly like gigantic asparagus, lend a weird aspect to the landscape. The prevailing granite—pinkish and speckled with a profusion of rock garnet—is broken by numerous quartz reefs which, as one approaches the German border, gradually change from pure white through every shade of pink to the most beautiful of rose quartz, which in numerous instances becomes amethystine and ranges from heliotrope down to deep purple. Many of these reefs are full of large crystals of jet-black tourmaline, beautifully faceted, and often as thick as one’s wrist.
On the horizon, westward, a jagged line of fantastic-looking peaks show faintly blue in the shimmering heat, prominent among them being the two pointed spitz kopjes which mark the spot where the Molopo joins the Orange. Away on the left, and across the river, lies a long ridge of queer-looking peaks outlined like a cockscomb, and especially noticeable even in this land of violent colour contrasts, for they are jet-black as though made of coal. There is no sign of habitation or life, for with the exception of the small farmhouse at “Omdraai” (“Turn back”), the whole country is uninhabited, except for a few nomad Bastards or Hottentots.
By midday we were at “Waterval,” where, in a canvas hut, we found Oberholzer, a Dutch farmer who probably knows more about the Great Falls than anyone living, and who had acted as guide to most of the rare visitors who have from time to time made their way to that most marvellous natural wonder. To reach the Falls, or a view of them, a guide is absolutely necessary, for access to them from the north bank is both difficult and dangerous, and indeed can only be obtained when the river is low.
Above the actual cataract the river, split up by numerous islands, is almost a mile in width, and to reach the main channel where it takes its huge leap several minor streams have to be first negotiated.
The first of these we waded through, following our guide most carefully, for the water was up to our waists, and the current strong and rapid; moreover, we had to grope for footing on a narrow ridge of rock, uneven and slippery, full of sharp points and pitfalls, and with deep water on either side of it. Orange River water is always turbid, and the treacherous bottom was quite invisible; moreover, the ridge did not run straight, but zigzagged, and altogether the passage of this preliminary channel was by no means pleasant. Another foot of water would have rendered it perilous, two feet would have made it wellnigh impossible for the strongest swimmer, for the rapids immediately below lead to one of the side-falls.
Once across and we were on an island of sand and silt, split up into deep channels by past floods, and with plenty of big trees; then came more rapid streams, which, however, were easily negotiable over the huge granite boulders that encumbered them. The last of these side-streams was running in absolutely the contrary direction to the others and the general course of the river, and, following it, we came to an open, boulder-encumbered spot, where it disappeared, but where we could still hear it rushing swiftly deep beneath us. And then came chaos: huge monoliths of riven rock, the size of houses, strewn and heaped about in the wildest confusion, piled on each other, balanced and tottering, a maze of bare stone without a vestige of vegetation. And now the dull murmur that had scarcely been noticeable became a muttering thunder of appalling depth: and emerging from a rift in the labyrinth of granite, we stood suddenly on the edge of a profound chasm, over the farther lip of which, a few hundred yards upstream, the huge muddy volume of the Orange was hurtling in one stupendous spout. The scene was absolutely terrifying, for the dark precipice, smooth as though chiselled, and dank and slippery with the incessant spray, fell sheer away from our very feet, and where it did not actually overhang, offered no foothold even for a baboon, whilst clouds of spray drove round us, and the solid rock trembled with the monstrous music of the fall.
Rapidly converging from its width of a mile upstream, the Orange at this spot becomes pent in a deep channel, self-worn in the solid granite, until, when it takes its final plunge, it is concentrated into a terrific spout barely twenty yards in width, which hurls itself with incredible velocity over the precipice a sheer four hundred feet into the gloomy abyss below. And with the plunge it practically disappears into the unknown, for many miles penned in a gloomy cañon, quite unapproachable and scarce to be obtained a glimpse of, till it emerges into a slightly wider bed close to the German border; thence it winds a tortuous course through solitary, wellnigh unknown and uninhabited country, for the last two hundred miles of its course to the sea; surely the most lonely and deserted of South African rivers? For, with the exception of the tiny police posts at Scuit’s Drift and Ramon’s Drift, not a habitation stands on or near its banks, through all those tortuous reaches that wellnigh encircle the mountains of Richtersfeldt, whose solitary peaks and ravines I have already made shift to describe.