Thus, riding out each day in a different direction, we spent some time at the drift waiting for our waggon, living on the few things that fell to our guns--bush doves, a hare or two, and a still rarer klipbok, grilling the flesh on the ashes and eating it without bread, salt, or any other sauce but hunger to make it palatable, for the few stores we had brought in our saddle-bags were long since exhausted. Each evening Hottentots came over from the German camp, but we could get neither stores nor news from them of the native we had hoped to find there--the guide to the lost copper mountain. Apart from our shortness of stores, our anxiety for the arrival of the waggon was accentuated by the fact that we were literally in rags, for we had nothing but the clothes we stood in, and thorns and sharp rocks had torn them to ribbons; moreover, the fierce heat had played havoc with our _veldtschoens_, which had to be cobbled every day with fragments of rimpi, and which had assumed such dimensions that they would no longer go through the stirrups. But at length the waggon turned up, having had a terrific time in Hell’s Kloof, and having been patched and cobbled till it matched our boots. I now learnt from Peter that the guide we were looking for had gone to stay at Kuboos, and I therefore sent a message in, with a spare horse to bring him back. Four days later he turned up; a tall, elderly Hottentot of grave and important aspect, who announced himself as being the one and only veritable guide to my copper mountain. His manner was so impressive that again I had great hopes that he might be telling the truth. He kept aloof from the other “boys,” expected--and obtained--better rations than they did, and altogether appeared to be a pillar of strength. But all our questioning was unavailing; he would take us to the spot, but would tell us nothing as to its whereabouts except that we should have to return upstream. We had been bitten badly before, and as he understood Dutch we painstakingly explained to him that it was our custom to make our guides eat all copper mines or mountains that did not come up to expectations. He smiled so superciliously, and was so dignified withal, that we decided to turn back once more under his guidance. So, changing our tatters, and filling our saddle-bags anew, we sent the waggon back to Kuboos, and, guided by the egregious Jacob and with a diminutive little Namaqua as a fourth, we retraced our steps along the river-bank, upstream.