The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

We consulted again as to the route, and the natives soon demonstrated that, although the valley we were in led eventually to the Orange, it was impassable in that direction, for the lower end consisted of a series of huge sheer precipices of polished granite which led like gigantic steps to the river, and down which this side-river had at one time poured in cascades similar to that of Aughrabies. To go round upstream would be possible, but it would mean about three days with the cart, which we were reluctant to leave again.

The alternative was to climb the almost vertical mountains that barred our way, cross their flat tops and descend on the far side, a distance, we judged, of not more than ten miles as the crow flies. Time was an object, and we decided not only to attempt this path, but also to try to take a pack-horse over with us. It looked impossible, but Paul had spent a few hours in clambering the slopes and thought it could be done. So Stoffel, one of the leaders, an old horse who was used to pack-work, was chosen and packed with a miscellaneous load of food, tools, blankets, etc., round which was wound the stout rope with which we proposed to negotiate the crater in which were the diamonds—should we find it. The Hottentots were well loaded too, and altogether we had sufficient in the shape of stores to make us independent of the cart for a long time. The cart was to remain by the water-place, which was nothing but a hole scraped in the dry sand of the river-bed, but into which water soaked as fast as we could use it.

That climb was a thing to be remembered. The first hour was fairly easy, for the lower slopes, though encumbered by huge blocks of rock, were negotiable by cautious zigzagging; but steeper and steeper grew the incline, till the “capping” of about two or three hundred feet was reached, and this was almost vertical. By working along the face, however, we found here and there a steep gully where water had worn a way, and in which there clung quite a lot of thorn-bushes and other vegetation. Up one of these we got the old nag, until it seemed impossible to get him farther, and we unpacked him and sent the “boys” on with his load to the top, where the others had long since arrived. I was loth to abandon the idea of getting him up, seeing how near the top was, and therefore started making a path, pulling here and there a rock away and making it possible for him to scramble up, disturbing more scorpions in so doing than I had ever seen before. Within 50 feet of the top, and when I could hear the other chaps laughing and talking above, I got tired of this road-making and tried to pull the old horse up by his rein. He had just reached up for a mouthful of dry grass growing in a crack, and as I snatched him a bit he reared, lost his balance, and went over with a crash. Of course I thought he was finished, for the rock went sheer down, but on looking over I found that he had only fallen about 10 feet full into the middle of a thick thorn-bush, and there he lay, on his back, with his legs wildly pawing and the bunch of dry grass still in his mouth, looking about as ludicrous an object as it would be possible to imagine. My yells soon brought the whole party down, and somehow we managed to get him out and up to the top, full of thorns, but with no bones broken, and still munching the bunch of grass.

The tableland on which we now stood was remarkable. Apparently it extended as far as the eye could reach, for this was the true level of the country, and the valleys from which we had emerged simply water-worn by erosion towards the bed of the Orange.

So sheer did these numerous valleys go down that at a few yards from the brink it was impossible to see that such depressions existed, the whole country appearing as an unbroken flat. The vegetation was entirely different to that of the lower levels, whole forests of koker-boomen and other aloes, and thick-leaved succulents and resinous plants abounding.

Reloading, we made our way across this flat due west, and eventually came upon a descent as steep as the face we had climbed, along the brink of which we searched for an hour or more for a possible path, which at length we found, and got Stoffel down to a similar valley to the one we left the cart in. This, however, trended due west; it was full of pleasant vegetation too, and, better still, full of game. Here we camped, and an hour’s trek in the morning brought us among formidable peaks again, whence we soon looked down into an ancient river-bed deep worn in smooth granite, and seemingly quite inaccessible.

This was the Bak River, its steep walls at this lower part of its course worn a good 500 feet in the rock, and its farther bank German territory.

And the Hottentots knew a way down, though they were already on the qui vive for a German patrol, and ready to bolt back into the mountains every time a dassie moved in the rocks. In this strange river-bed we made our camp, choosing one of the few spots where sand and soil had lodged and a thicket of reeds had sprung up, through which ran a trickle of water as clear as crystal, but very salt to the taste. Both above and below this spot for miles the actual bed of the river was worn so deep and smooth in the living granite that it was almost impassable for a man on foot, and out of the question for horses. In no part of the mountains bordering the Orange, where erosion has been so widespread and enormous, have I seen anything to compare with this polished granite river-bed, through which for many thousands of years huge volumes of water must have rushed from a region which to-day is one of the dryest in the world.

From the spot where we camped a side-gully led conveniently into the western bank and German territory, which at this part is as wild and unknown as the British. About a mile upstream we found the first international beacon, standing in the actual river-bed, a pile of rough rocks surmounted by an iron plate bearing on one side the inscription “British Territory,” and on the other “Deutsches Schutzgebeit.” These beacons extend at irregular intervals from the Orange River right up the twentieth degree of east longitude for many hundreds of miles; many of them are in almost inaccessible places, and have probably been seen by few, if any, white men since the International Boundary Commission first erected them; some have been thrown down by animals or the natives, and several that I have seen have been used as targets, the iron plates being perforated with bullet-holes. For this region formed a fastness for the guerilla bands of Hottentots that put up such a game fight against the overwhelming odds of the Germans in the “Hottentot Rebellion” of 1903-6.

We soon found that, though this Bak River ravine answered to the description of the place we were after even better than the country near the Molopo, the natives who had brought us to it could not, or would not, show us the actual spot. They had all heard of it, all said it was near where we were, but there their knowledge ended.