The glamour of prospecting

by Fred C. Cornell

“Yes,” croaked Du Toit, “but not the Salt Pan!”

Nor was it. The white sand which I had first seen, and taken for granted as salt, only extended round the slopes of the dunes encircling the pan, which was mainly composed of hard-baked greenish mud, covered with a glaze and as smooth as a billiard-table. Here and there lay a few pebbles of jasper and quartz similar to those found all over the north-west, but there was nothing at all approaching the “indications” we were in search of, and we had evidently stumbled upon quite a different pan from any of those described by Old Gert.

Meanwhile it was rapidly growing dark, and Du Toit very sensibly suggested that, whilst there was yet a little light, we should separate and search the pan as much as possible, to see if by great luck there might be a little water in any of the slight hollows. But nothing but a little still moist mud rewarded us, and we wearily sought a nook in the dunes and threw ourselves down to sleep. We had biltong and roster-kook enough, but scarcely a gill of water between the three of us, and our mouths and throats were already so parched and dry that it was difficult to sleep.

“Straight back over our spoors, as soon as it’s light enough to see them,” said Gert du Toit as we discussed the situation. We were a full day from water, and although in no danger, we could afford to run no risks.

In the desert the nights are often extremely cold, and before morning we were awake and shivering, and as soon as the first peep of dawn appeared we searched the vicinity for dry bush, and soon had a fire, round which we crouched till daylight. And then we did a sensible thing which, however, led to our doing an extremely stupid one. For it struck us to climb the big dune and spy out our surroundings, instead of turning straight back before the cool of the morning had gone. The dune towered a good fifty feet above the surrounding ridges, and as we reached the top, an extraordinary panorama stretched out before us. For eastward there lay pan after pan, looking exactly like little lakes left in the sand by the receding tide, their white rims and dark blue centres showing up clearly among the surrounding wilderness of reddish dunes and grey-green scrub. At least a dozen of them were in sight, and the little clouds hanging low over the farther distance showed where numerous others were situated. On more than one large numbers of gemsbok could be seen, and the thickness of the vegetation appeared to prove that in that direction at least there would be t’samma. Our resolution to return vanished instantly. Probably these were the very pans of which we were in search, and a few hours might fill our pockets with diamonds! At any rate these pans were entirely different in appearance from the one beneath us, and the deep blue colour of several of them, and their circular shape, were very suggestive. Moreover there would probably be water!

“Wait a minute,” said Du Toit, as we were making a beeline east towards them. “This is exactly how men get lost and die of thirst. Suppose we don’t find water or t’samma? It will take us half a day to reach and search one or two of them, and we shall never get back! We are thirsty now, and by noon we shall be half mad. We’d better go back.”

So far we had not looked in that direction at all, but as we turned reluctantly westward an even more wonderful sight met our eyes. For there, apparently but an hour or two away and slightly to the south, lay the Salt Pan, a wide expanse of snowy white, apparently a frozen lake covered with untrodden snow, and bounded on the far side by gigantic dunes. And beyond it, unmistakable in size and contour, rose the huge dune of “Aar Pan,” whose long blue floor could be seen extending for miles beneath it.

Apparently, then, we had passed within a mile or two of the Salt Pan about noon of the previous day, though the many dunes we had climbed had given us no glimpse of it!

Anyway there it was at last, impossible to miss, and we immediately decided to make for it, for it appeared but a trifling detour from our homeward track, and we had no fear of not finding our way back that way.

Once down from the big dune, and naturally the pan was lost sight of, but we were not taking any more chances, and worked by compass. Terrible work it was too, for we found no obliging straat leading in the right direction, but had to toil over ridge after ridge of extremely loose, bare sand, which, as the day advanced, became so hot that the hand could scarcely be borne upon it.