We now made our way down the river towards Zendling’s Drift, finding but little difficulty for the first day or two. The banks were mostly densely wooded; at places this belt of virgin vegetation was half a mile or so in width, in others the abrupt flanking peaks crowded in upon the stream, leaving but a narrow belt of vegetation clinging to their base. There was plenty of grass for the horses, pigeons for the pot, and dassies (rock rabbits) for the “boys.” Skinned, they looked like rabbits, and smelt very nice when cooking, but I could not bring myself to taste them. Though small birds were plentiful, and there were wild duck and geese in abundance, and monkeys and baboons galore, we saw no trace of larger game here by these solitary reaches of the Orange; if we except the splashes of some large animals in the pools between some of the numerous islands, which the “boys” assured me were hippo. These latter, of which there are but a very few left in the Orange, are usually found on the islands near where the Great Fish River joins the larger stream, after running for hundreds of miles through German South-West. We passed this spot on the second day, and here saw the first sign of former habitation, two or three abandoned _pondhoeks_ made of branches, long since dry and leafless. And here we came upon stretches of fine sand and gravels which showed signs, here and there, that they had been worked superficially, doubtless for diamonds, for there were the gravels that Stuurmann had told me of in Luderitzbucht, and, as he had described them, they were sparkling with “bright stones”--pretty but worthless crystals. We found no diamonds, but we had not the means for systematic sieving, and some of the old river terraces near this spot looked very promising indeed. The mouth of the Great Fish River, where it debouches into the Orange, is choked with a huge accumulation of sand, through which, after rain, the water finds its way in various small channels to swell the larger stream. There are numerous small, well-wooded islands in the vicinity--these were the haunts of the hippo already alluded to. The spot is one of the wildest and most remote and difficult of access of all spots in this deserted region; even on the German bank there is neither settlement nor habitation within many days’ trek in either direction.