That night we put in three hours’ more hard trekking, starting at moonrise, winding in and out peaks and always keeping at a great height, skirting deep gullies and precipices, floundering over stony slopes where the wheels dislodged big boulders and sent them bounding and leaping hundreds of feet down into the black depths of the Krantzes below. The need for haste was imperative, for the oxen were thirsty, and should we find no water at our destination they would barely get back. A cold outspan in a cloud of driving mist, and we were glad to move on again before sun-up. By eight o’clock we were bumping and skidding down a mountain-slope to where, far below, wound a tortuous silver ribbon of dry sand that once had been a river. On every hand rose mountains, and beyond these more mountains. I don’t know how the waggon got down, for I took the rifle and cleared on ahead on foot, and I was hard put to it in places to keep my footing. But get down it did, in a very short space of time, and wonderfully little the worse for wear, considering the battering it had had on Namaqualand “roads.” An hour’s trek beside the sand and we came to our destination, a few brilliantly green willows, rising from the dry river-bed, marking a natural camping-place, and the spot where gold had been found many years before. CHAPTER IX GOLD CAMP--THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS TO ARIEP--TATAS BERG AND COPPER PROSPECTS--A “MOUNTAIN” OF COPPER--THE GREAT FISH RIVER--THE “GROOT SLANG”--ZENDLING’S DRIFT. Here, if water allowed, we intended making a permanent central camp from which to start our real business of prospecting, but the question--and the question above all others in these mountains--was water. Anxiously we followed the guide as he scrambled up over a ridge and into a ravine about 200 feet above our halting-place. To our consternation we found the much-desired water-hole to consist of nothing but a small pool of stagnant rain-water, teeming with animalcules, and barely sufficient to last ourselves and the “boys” a week, over and above the scanty supply in our casks. Our guide had described the place as a sort of lake(!) with _banja water_, and he appeared hurt to think that this little hip-bath full of alleged liquid did not come up to the glowing description he had given us--so there was no more to be said! The position was serious. Our oxen and horses had had no water since leaving Annisfontein, two days before; they had worked terrifically, and their flanks were hollow with thirst--for though they can go for four days without great discomfort over an easy trek, it is a different thing when they have been called upon to achieve the wellnigh impossible. And certainly they could not slake their thirst here. So we hurried back to camp and decided at once that they must be sent back to where they had last drunk, though probably some of them would never reach there.