The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

One of our guides had most inconsiderately died whilst waiting, but the other, with waggons and trek animals, drivers, “boys,” etc., still awaited us, and on January 26th, 1913, our little party left Cape Town for Prieska and Upington, where lay our transport.

I had two partners, E. Telfer, a young and enthusiastic Scotsman of many years’ Colonial experience, and W. van Reenen, a still younger Cape Dutchman. Both were seasoned men, and though the desert would be new to them, they were both good shots, good horsemen, and thoroughly versed in farming, transport, and veldt craft, and I had little fear as to their ability to see the thing through. Our outfit was chosen with great care, for we knew that, once away from Upington, our waggon would be the only source of supplies—food, arms, ammunition, clothing, tools, and above all, medicine. As we hoped to establish a water depot within transport distance of the nearest well, we had a number of specially constructed tanks made—designed especially to pack on camel or oxen—but these, unfortunately, were of no use to us.

At Prieska all this paraphernalia was transferred to transport-waggons, whilst with our lighter gear we hurried on to Upington to prepare for the real desert trek.

The monotony of the Prieska to Upington trail has been referred to before in these pages, and a description of it would be of little interest. The drought had not broken here for many months; in the tiny village of Marydale no shower had fallen for two years, and hour after hour we trotted through a brown, dreary, dusty, verdureless expanse, where never a blade of grass or a green leaf could be seen as far as the eye could reach.

Carcasses of horses, mules, oxen, and other animals lay by the road every mile or so, and spoke rather too eloquently of the toll the terrible drought was taking upon the transport animals, and the flocks and herds of the farmer. Our driver gave us gruesome accounts of farms whose owners had neglected to trek with their livestock whilst the veldt still held good, but had waited, hoping for the ever-promising rain, waited until their last drop of water had dried in their vleys, wells, or pits, and every nibble of herbage had been cleared off the face of the land, and who had lost every head of stock they possessed. Transport was almost unobtainable, for every pound of forage for the animals for the long trek of 150 miles had to be carried on the waggons, leaving room for little else! Water, even at the regular watering-places, was so scarce that a heavy charge was made for each animal drinking, and it seemed that, if the drought did not break very soon, the route would have to be utterly abandoned.

And day after day the heavy storm clouds gathered, dark, lowering, and threatening (or rather promising) torrents of the longed-for rain, a promise that seemed never to be fulfilled. This gloomy state of affairs was by no means encouraging, and our driver, when he found out where we were bound for, laughed, and told us that we were mad to make the attempt. He said that the farmers between Upington and Rietfontein had suffered worse than any others, and that a bare week ago he had spoken to a camel policeman from the north, who had told him that not a drop of rain had yet fallen, and there would be no t’samma! So we were most anxious to get to Upington, to find out the truth, for this gloomy account was an entirely different story from the cheery optimism of the recent letters and wires we had received.

Apparently, however, whatever might have happened in the Kalahari during the last few months, it was certainly raining there now, for as we got farther north, the whole horizon in that direction appeared covered with a dense bank of clouds, from which lightning frequently flashed. It seemed as though a perfect deluge must be falling there, and we took heart of grace, and even wished we had brought our mackintoshes.

The evening before arriving at Upington van Reenen had a nasty experience. We had outspanned at a spot only a few hours from Upington, and had made a large fire in order to roast a porcupine van Reenen had shot earlier in the day. It was nearly nightfall, and the sky was dark and lowering, whilst distant thunder could be heard northward. As we sat by the camp fire, a sudden gust of wind scattered the embers in all directions, and this was but the prelude to a furious gale that came tearing along at whirlwind speed, bearing with it not only embers, but hats, kettles, big flaming branches from the fire, and almost blinding us with a thick cloud of dust. The morsels of porcupine went flying into the cinders, and thence all over the veldt, as the wind whisked the heart of the fire away; through the blast of sand and small stones came a few drops of rain, and a vivid flash of lightning, with a simultaneous peal of heavy thunder right over us, showed that we were in for one of the sudden storms peculiar to the place and season. In a few minutes it was pitch dark, and we were scuttling all over the place, in a vain endeavour to retrieve all sorts of belongings that the wind had snatched away even from the shelter of the waggon. In a quarter of an hour the worst was over, though still the wind howled across the shelterless veldt, and we began to collect the scattered firebrands, and built another fire. Van Reenen, determined to sup off porcupine, crouched down by the embers, and began cooking fresh slivers of the rank-smelling meat, when suddenly the driver yelled to pas op (look out), for the scorpions were “trekking.” Rain, or a heavy dust-storm, will always bring out these little pests in swarms from the holes and crevices in which they hide, and I knew that in such cases they simply ran “amok,” travelling with tail erect, looking for trouble, and lashing out at anything living that came in their way. But I was hardly prepared for what followed the driver’s warning, for within a minute or two the veldt was literally alive with the venomous little pests, numbers of them walking straight into the fire, where they squirmed and sizzled horribly. Van Reenen, intent on his cooking, only swore a little as he brushed one or two aside, and took them far too lightly, for suddenly a big black specimen ran along his bare arm, and stung him on the big vein on his wrist, causing him to drop the second lot of porcupine steak, and let off a yell that scared the whole camp.

There is nothing more painful than a bad scorpion-sting, but as a rule they are not particularly dangerous. This, however, was an exception, for the symptoms that followed were alarming in the extreme. As quickly as possible the sting was scarified and treated with permanganate of potash, but within a few minutes the arm had swollen to an enormous size; and although I bound a ligature tightly above the wound, the glands of the neck, arm-pit, and groin became similarly affected, the jaw stiffened, and other most alarming symptoms showed themselves. Van Reenen was almost mad with pain, and, strong as he was, he was soon in a state almost of collapse.

We had a small bottle of brandy, and this we poured down him at once, without the least effect, and for hours we walked him up and down, to prevent him from falling into the deadly stupor that followed the first effect.