THE RICHTERSVELD--KUBOOS--THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD REDIVIVUS--
GOLD-SEEKING--THE RAAD--MORBID SENSIBILITY--START FOR EL DORADO.
Just before the Orange River, wearied from its long travail, slides into
the Atlantic, it bends in a sickle-shaped curve. Its course for the
previous three hundred miles has been through the tremendous and almost
inaccessible gorge into whose depths it hurled itself at the Augrabies
Falls.
The incidence of those aggregates of men which pass, like the
individual, through the successive stages of youth, maturity and decay,
and which we are accustomed to term civilisations, is as much a question
of geology as of geography. Accadia and Egypt grew great and stained
many pages of the record we term history by virtue of the circumstance
that the Euphrates and the Nile, after leaving the mountains that gave
them birth, flowed respectively through low, level countries which they
enriched with precious alluvium. The Orange River was, however, sped
oceanwards over a vast plateau of hard-grained rock, several thousand
feet above sea-level. Into this the stream has been slowly biting, and
the alluvium--that meat upon which material civilisation is nourished,
was hurled through the channel and flung wastefully into the maw of the
all-consuming waves. Under different physiographical circumstances
another Alexandria might have arisen where to-day the flamingo nests
among the misty dunes at the Orange River's mouth, "and another Sphinx,
of Hottentot or Bantu physiognomy, might have stood, gazing through
forgotten centuries, across the waste of Bushmanland." [_Between Sun
and Sand_.]
The tract lying within the sickle-bend is called the Richtersveld.
Little is known of this tract or of its inhabitants. Half a century ago
prospecting for copper ore was carried on in the vicinity. Indications
of the metal abounded, but no payable deposit was discovered.
I decided to organise an expedition to the Richtersveld. There were
several reasons for doing this. One was a complaint which had been made
to the Attorney General of the Cape Colony respecting the alleged
flogging of a man under orders of the missionary at Kuboos, which is
still haunted by the ghost of an institution established by the London
Missionary Society in years long gone by. Another was a reported
discovery of gold. This, as a matter of fact was my ostensible excuse
for starting at the time I did. Third and last was my own keen desire
to explore a little-known tract and make the acquaintance of its human
and other inhabitants.
The Richtersveld, according to report, was extremely mountainous and was
said to contain only some two hundred people of Koranna-Bushman and
Hottentot descent. So remote and isolated was this region that its
dwellers were tacitly permitted to govern themselves. They had a "raad"
or council of elders which, under presidency of the missionary, settled
all disputes and generally administered justice,--informal, but none the
less just on that account. The language spoken by the Richtersvelders
is an almost extinct Hottentot dialect, full of clicks, gutterals and
phonetic excursions impossible to the average European tongue. Only a
few of the people had even the merest smattering of Dutch.
That excursion involved more difficulties than any other I had
undertaken. There was, it is true, not more than a bare hundred miles
of desert to cross, but the only definite information we had been able
to gain as to the route was to the effect that it led through a tract
practically waterless and extremely difficult to traverse. Moreover, it
was reported to be absolutely uninhabited. One thing was quite clear,--
we should have to travel with oxen; horses would have been useless under
the conditions as described.
Andries arrived bringing--not the comfortable, tilted, spring-wagon,--
but the strong, heavy, tentless "buck" wagon, with a team of sixteen
picked oxen. He seemed uneasy as to our prospects, for the coast desert
had a bad reputation and we were about to plunge into a wilderness with
the conditions of which he was unfamiliar. The map was produced, but
Andries rather despises maps. This one shewed little beyond "gaps" and
"unhabitable downs." But it indicated, roughly, our obvious route. We
would travel alongside the copper-trolley-line as far as Anenous, which
lay at the foot of the mountain range and thus on the inner margin of
the coast desert,--which is little, if at all, above the level of the
sea. From Anenous we had to trend to the north-west, past Tarabies,
Lekkersing and the northern trigonometrical beacon. Thence via Hell
Gate to Kuboos, where the wagon would have to remain. Any further
journeyings would apparently have to be undertaken on foot. Possibly,
however, we might be able to obtain pack-oxen.
Judging by the map, the course looked obvious and easy, but we knew that
the surface of the coast desert was composed of deep, soft sand, into
which the wheels of the heavy wagon would sink deeply, and that through
the sandy tract the northern range of mountains sent out spines or dykes
of rock, many miles in length. These, we were told, often took the form
of abrupt ridges extremely difficult to negotiate with any vehicle, no
matter how strongly built.
The officials of the Cape Copper Company at Anenous (which was the
jumping-off place for our hundred-mile sand-swim) knew nothing of the
country two miles on either side of the trolley-line. All they were
definite about was that no one had ever been known to arrive at Anenous
from the northward or north-westward.
Such Hottentots as we were able to consult all declared that it was only
under very exceptional circumstances that water was to be found between
the trolley-line and the Orange River.
Andries' feelings must have resembled those of a seaman ordered to
navigate his ship through an uncharted archipelago. Owing to our
absolute lack of local knowledge we should be constrained to do all our
travelling by day, and this meant severe suffering for the cattle. In
the old days of prospecting for copper ore, all communication with the
Richtersveld was effected by a route along the actual sea-shore from
Port Nolloth to the Orange River's mouth and thence inland along the
river bank to the sickle-bend.
We started from Anenous very early in the morning. On the previous day
we had kept the oxen without water, so that almost to the moment of
commencing the journey they might be very thirsty, and accordingly drink
their fill. We at once plunged into the waste of sand; this proved to
be so heavy that we were unable to travel at a higher rate than two
miles an hour. The country was quite different from the Bushmanland
plains; there was no "toa," but succulent plants of great variety were
plentiful. One Mesembryanthemum had the dimensions of a large cabbage.
In spite of its succulence the oxen would not eat of this vegetation.
The climate, also, was different from that of the Bushmanland plains;
the heat was not so great, but what there was of it proved exhausting.
A haze brooded over the earth; through it the north-western mountain
range loomed gigantic and mysterious. There were no roads,--unless a
wide-meshed network of half-obliterated tracks--probably old
game-paths--could be described as such. One strange peculiarity of the
coastal desert is the extraordinary persistence of spoor and other
markings on the surface of the ground. Near Walfish Bay the clear
tracks of elephants may still be seen,--and there has not been an
elephant in the vicinity for upwards of half a century.
After desperate efforts we reached Kuboos on the afternoon of the fourth
day. I never thought it possible that a wagon could travel where ours
did. We ploughed through calamitous expanses of sand, we floundered
through dusty dongas. We bumped and clattered over high, steep-sided
ramparts of rock. But the skill of Andries as a driver, the endurance
of the oxen and the strength of the wagon brought us safely through.
The quaint little collection of ramshackle buildings forming the missing
station, was perched on a ledge just below where the more or less
gradual descent of the T'Oums Mountain falls steeply into the gorge, at
the bottom of which the dry bed of the Anys River lies. In the centre
stood, skeleton-like, the inevitable unfinished church, its narrow
gables uplifted like clamorous hands to heaven in an apparently vain
appeal for funds.
The groaning, bumping wagon came to a halt before a low cottage built of
sun-dried bricks and thatched with reeds. From it emerged a figure
startling in its incongruity. This was a tall, elderly, erect man
dressed in black broad-cloth, with a bell-topper and a very voluminous
white choker. He was coloured; that was quite evident, but the stately
dignity of his stride as he advanced, and the courtly grace of his
demeanour when he greeted us, could not have been improved upon by a
Chesterfield. Self-confidence and a complete ease of manner were
apparent in every word, in every graceful gesture. He spoke in High
Dutch, before which my homely "taal" faltered, abashed. I should say
his age was nearer seventy than sixty. This was the Reverend Mr Hein,
Resident Missionary of Kuboos and Dictator of the Richtersveld.
Feeling somewhat subdued, we followed Mr Hein to his dwelling, where he
ushered us through the lowly portal. The room we entered was small and
poorly furnished, but scrupulously clean. The thong-bottomed sofa and
chairs were evidently home-made; although rough in point of workmanship
they were strong and comfortable. The walls were garnished with
illuminated Bible texts and portraits of the Royal Family. The floor
was of clay; the thatch of the roof could be seen through a gridiron of
rafters.
Mr Hein took the head of the table and played the host to perfection.
We had evidently been expected,--but how information as to our projected
visit could have reached Kuboos, was more than I could fathom. However,
we sat at the hospitable board and regaled ourselves with excellent
coffee, rye bread and honey. The members of the family,--two fairly
young men and two middle-aged damsels,--joined us. Mrs Hein was, alas,
no more. She had died under a weight of years, so we were informed, a
few months previously. The sons and daughters were darker in hue than
their father. They were obviously ill at ease before us, strangers.
The host kept the conversational ball rolling without an effort.
Andries was pathetically puzzled; the situation had got beyond him. He
was as prejudiced on the Colour Question as are most colonists; in the
abstract he hated the idea of sitting at table with coloured people.
But on this occasion he felt himself to be completely outclassed in the
items of manners and culture; consequently he became acutely
embarrassed. However, he appreciated the coffee (he told me afterwards
that his own wife, who had a wide reputation as a coffee-maker, could
not have made it better) and the bread and honey were delicious.
Of whom was it that Mr Hein reminded me? His personality set some
familiar chord vibrating. Was it--yes, it was--Parson Primrose; it was
he and none other. I tried to extend the parallel. Either of the sons
might, at a pitch, have passed for Moses. George? Well,--hardly.
Olivia and Sophia?--Oh, well--hm--that was another matter. But at all
events there was the dear old Vicar, reincarnated under a yellow skin,
in that citadel of loneliness that had a hundred-mile fosse of desert
sand and a rampart of all-but-impassible mountains,--that most remote
corner of the habitable world. Chamisso was right:--
"Alle menschen sind einander gleich."
Next morning I met the "Raad," and we discussed the matter of the
flogging. That Raad was a quaint assemblage; surely the most peculiar
parliament on earth. It was composed of elderly men, all of a more or
less monkeylike physiognomy. Mr Hein took the chair and filled it with
the utmost dignity. The members were restrained in manner, temperate in
discussion and logical in all they said. Their delivery was pleasing,
the rules of debate were strictly observed. Several of the speeches
were made in Dutch; those given in the Hottentot tongue were interpreted
into Dutch for my benefit.
The individual who had received the flogging was present. He was a
young married man with a weak chin, a shifty eye and a voluble tongue.
His face possessed a certain measure of meretricious good-looks,
evidently he was a lady-killer; one of the cheaper varieties of that
species. He, an officer of the church, had committed an offence against
the moral law. The partner in his guilt was present, looking
sufficiently woe-begone. She did not possess the fatal gift of
beauty,--at all events according to Caucasian standards. The injured
spouse, attired in a goatskin robe, was present and wept softly at
intervals throughout the proceedings. She was distinctly less uncomely
than the erring sister.
The Raad had dealt with the case and sentenced the culprit, who had
admitted his guilt, to receive three dozen with a "strop," which were
immediately and energetically inflicted. The punishment, although
illegal, had been richly deserved. I considered that the Raad had acted
with propriety,--but it was necessary to be guarded in what I said. If
the principle involved had been given formal official sanction, it might
have been logically applied to more serious cases,--those, for instance,
in which capital punishment would have been due. If, at some future
time, the Vicar under my implied authority had erected a gallows and
engaged the services of a Lord High Executioner, it would have been
awkward, to say the least of it.
Accordingly I temporised. Lothario of the shifty eye was informed that
his case would be duly considered at head-quarters. So it would,--by
the moths inhabiting the pigeonholes of the Record Office in Cape Town.
Nevertheless I should have to deal cunningly with this episode so as to
avoid raising a humanitarian howl. However, I meant, so far as I could
to support the authority of the Raad. The result of discrediting that
would have been to loosen the bonds of the moral law,--to hand the
Richtersveld over to be exploited by the violent and lawless. This Raad
interested me extremely; it was so wise and so conscientious. The
Colonial Parliament might really have learnt quite a lot of useful
things from it.
We are a curious people. The solicitude we are apt to evince for the
posterior of a blackguard is really marvellous--considering how little
we have for the victims of an industrial system under which hundreds of
thousands of men, women and children are leading lives of the most
degrading slavery. We see, with complacency, whole generations growing
stunted and vacant-eyed under stress of their bitter lot; we know--or
should know, for we have been told it often enough--that one of the
pillars in the edifice of our commercial prosperity is the sweated woman
in the garret,--old, haggard and hopeless at thirty. She stitches or
pastes for fourteen hours a day in the blind, numbing effort to keep her
blighted soul in her stunted body, and we complacently draw the
dividends her long-drawn torture helps to swell. But we forget it is
that woman's grandchildren who may have to defend ours from the Huns.
Yes,--a fatal habit of acquiescing in demoralising conditions permits us
to look on at, without attempting to prevent, the slow, relentless
murder of a race. But the blackguard's back--that is something sacred;
the mere idea of its being defiled by the richly deserved lash fills us
with horror. The divine force of indignation which is in the heart of
every man,--a holy thing when used for the right purpose--is thus
wasted, dissipated--fired off at a straw dummy held aloft, as it were,
by Commercialism for the purpose of drawing our attention from its own
foul works.
And if we came to honestly examine our own feelings on the subject we
should find that it was not so much the blackguard who was in question
as our own morbid sensibility. We--that is the ones who live on the
labour of others,--the small minority who, feasting on the deck of the
ship of western civilisation which is being steered straight for the
abyss--have sunk into what Schiller called "_der weichlichen Schoss der
Verfeinerung_" our hyperaesthesia has grown so morbid that every stripe
we see administered raises a weal on ourselves. This is a condition
perilously near that in which the contemplation of suffering becomes the
sole channel of pleasure, for morbid sensibility and cruelty have
usually hobnobbed at the same inn. It is the healthy man who does not
shrink from either enduring or inflicting necessary pain.
The Raad was dissolved--dismissed with my blessing which, however, I
felt constrained to express in more or less guarded terms. I regarded
that body with deep and sincere admiration. It might be of incalculable
benefit to the British Empire if the speakers of the respective
parliaments of the self-governing Colonies, led by the speaker of the
House of Commons, were to visit the Richtersveld and sit on that arid
hillside listening to the Raad's deliberations. I should be prepared
personally to conduct the tour.
With the Vicar's kind assistance I proceeded with the necessary
preparations for my gold-seeking adventure. He lent me some carpenter's
tools, and I soon altered a small gin-case I had brought into a very
fair imitation of a gold-digger's cradle. The next step was to hire two
pack-oxen and secure the services of a few labourers. On the following
morning we would start for the supposed El Dorado. In the meantime I
again called on my interesting friend the Vicar, drank some more of his
excellent coffee, and, after contributing according to my means towards
the building fund of the unfinished church, bade my host a cordial
farewell.
It was a quaint caravan which next morning scarped the north-eastern
shoulder of the T'Oums Mountain, in search of El Dorado. The guide--a
little, wizened creature, certainly more than half Bushman--and I, led
the procession. Next came the pack-oxen, conducted by their respective
owners, but generally under Hendrick's charge. The loads were
miscellaneous in character, but not heavy. They comprised my bedding,
provisions, delving tools and receptacles for such reptiles, insects and
plants as we might find it worth while to collect. From the top of one
load the handle of the cradle pointed towards heaven--or rather it would
have had it not swayed so much from the gait of the ox. I wished for a
small flag to attach to it. Next came a mixed crowd, about twenty in
number. These were mere camp followers, but they insisted on
accompanying me. They included men, women and children. Among the
latter were two ape-like babies, slung on their mothers' backs.
Andries, for the time, had remained behind with the wagon.
The track was unexpectedly good; much better in fact than the one over
which we had travelled before reaching Kuboos. To the left, in the
direction of the Orange River, the scenery was comparatively tame,--that
is to say it looked as though one might pass over the country without
inevitably breaking one's neck. But to the right lay chaos, confused
and titanic. The strata were completely inverted--in some instances
almost turned upside down. But the general suggestion was as though
several miles of the earth's surface-crust had been placed on end. The
soft layers had disappeared; the hard remained standing. Alternate deep
chasms and jutting, mountainous buttresses of rock were the consequence.
That sickle-bend must have been the result of a tremendous cosmic
upheaval--an earth-throe which flung aside like a wisp the from thirty
to forty miles of double mountains bounding the then-steep river gorge.
A good deal of the former surface of the bend had disappeared. Then the
river, no longer a captive in adamant bonds (as it still is farther
inland) doubtless took advantage of the unstable conditions brought
about by the cataclysm, laid hands on the shattered earth-ribs and
hurled them, piecemeal, from its path. So that there, although the
mountains were even loftier than those farther to the eastward, they did
not press upon the river as though trying to strangle it.
So far as I could make out El Dorado was about twenty miles from Kuboos.
As we proceeded the track improved. The guide now calmly informed me
that we had passed the worst of it. Therefore all the trouble and
expense of hiring the pack-oxen and their owners was unnecessary. Here
evaporated another illusion; these people had developed business
instincts; the serpent of guile had found its way even to the
Richtersveld paradise. I scribbled a note asking Andries to follow on
our spoor with the wagon. This note I sent back by one of the camp
followers.
It was fairly late in the afternoon when we reached our destination.
The guide pointed out to me the exact spot where the nugget was alleged
to have been picked up. It was on the side of a little gully which
scarred the terraced bank of the dry T'Cuidabees River. The bedrock was
of soft shale; it almost protruded from the surface, so sparse was the
covering soil. There was no such thing as "wash" in the ordinary sense,
but merely earth to the depth of a few inches, with which a good many
angular quartz pebbles were mixed. I had once found gold, in an almost
exactly similar formation, at a spot in the north-eastern Transvaal.
But how to test the ground; that was the question. My principal object
in sending for the wagon was the conveyance of a few loads of gravel to
the nearest water,--wherever that might be. In the meantime I set a
party of my followers to work loosening the soil and picking out the
stones. By the time darkness set in we had as much "wash" ready as we
would be able to deal with.
The Trek-Boers used to say that rain always followed me to Bushmanland.
It had apparently followed me to the Richtersveld, for as we sat at the
camp fire a menacing black cloud climbed into and filled the northern
sky over the mountains of Great Namaqualand; every few seconds it was
illuminated by fantastic lightning explosions. As the cloud drew nearer
the thunder began to speak. Soon a black fog rolled down on us and a
veritable thunderstorm set in. For upwards of an hour the rain fell
heavily. We got wet through, but I was much consoled in the discomfort
by information from the Hottentots to the effect that there was a deep
hole some few hundred yards down the river-course, which held water for
several days after the rare occasions upon which rain fell. Soon the
storm had passed away, so we built up a huge fire and got our clothes
more or less dried. Then to sleep.
In the morning the cradle was conveyed down the valley to where the
water was supposed to be. Sure enough, the hole was as described; we
found it full to the brim of muddy water. Although only a few feet in
width it was deep. Probably it held four hundred gallons. Work was
started at once,--all my followers, male as well as female, carrying
down the loosened gravel in their skin garments which, to my
embarrassment, they discarded (as clothing) for the occasion. The
cradle stood at the side of the pool, so that the water, after it had
passed through the sieve and over the trays, could run back. One of the
men lifted the water in a bucket and poured it slowly into the top of
the cradle, while I rocked. After running through the equivalent of a
few barrow-loads I removed the top tray and examined what lay behind the
lip. Yes, veritably--there were a few tiny specks of gold.
This was what gold-diggers call "a pay prospect," for the gold was rough
and not water-worn. It was quite evident that this gold had never been
under the influence of water at all, but had lain _in situ_ where the
decomposing matrix had deposited it. I kept the cradle going until the
water in the pool had the consistency of pea-soup; then I perforce
stopped. The result was a nice little "prospect" of some seven or eight
pennyweights. This was distinctly a payable proposition--or rather it
would have been had permanent water existed in the vicinity.
Andries arrived with the wagon at about midday; he was much impressed by
the find. Then we began an examination of the surrounding country,
taking small quantities of "wash" here and there from likely-looking
spots. These were sent back to the water-hole with instructions that
the various lots were to be kept separate. When the liquid had cleared
a little I recommenced cradling. However, except in one instance, I did
not find a single "colour." The exception was in respect of a parcel of
"wash" taken from the margin of the dry bed of the river. This was
found to contain a small speck,--one most likely washed down from the
terrace where we had worked in the first instance. However, the
existence of a practically payable gold-field in that vicinity was
inconceivable, in view of the almost unmitigated aridity.
The country had the appearance of being highly mineralised; quartz reefs
ran like white threads in every direction. Copper-carbonate stains were
to be seen on many of the rock-ledges and I was able to trace a narrow
vein of galena for a considerable distance. A systematic examination of
the geological formation of that region would have been of great
interest.
There was little or no animal life, and what little existed did not add
to one's comfort. While the sun was shining existence was made a
burthen by a blue fly which continually fed on one; it was about the
size of a horse-fly. The bite, not felt at the time, was followed by a
flow of blood and afterwards caused considerable irritation. We killed
several poisonous snakes. The only antelopes we saw were klipspringers,
but they were too far off to shoot, and our time was too limited to
admit of our pursuing them.
Mr Hein had told me that there was a small troop of zebras to be found
high up on the T'Oums Mountain. The mountain zebra is the wariest
animal alive; it never lies down, but sleeps in a standing posture, with
the muzzle resting on a stone.
I spent another day prospecting in the vicinity but could find no more
gold. When, in the evening, we were sitting at the camp fire, an idea
struck me. I then determined to take some food, a kaross, the guns and
the collecting plant, and pay a flying visit to the area contained
within the sickle-bend. With Hendrick and a couple of bearers I should
be able to cover twenty miles a day. My plan was to strike north-east
across the veld until I reached the river; then to follow, so far as
possible, the course of the latter down to Arris, beyond Kuboos.
Andries was to take the wagon back to Kuboos and thence to Arris, where
he would wait for me. My journey, if I put my best foot forward, should
not consume more than three days, and it would take Andries fully two by
the more direct route.
I could but ill afford the time, but really all that was involved was
the loss of one day. In all probability I should never have another
opportunity of exploring the Richtersveld.
Andries grumbled at first, but eventually gave in. I reminded him that
he might fill in his day of waiting by taking a walk from Arris to the
mouth of the Orange River. An inspection of our stores shewed that we
were still fairly well off. So Hendrick was sent to the scherms of our
followers to call for volunteers--men who knew the country well--who
would act as guides as well as carry our baggage.
My only regret was that I should lose the opportunity of bidding
farewell to my excellent friend the Vicar.