Late in the afternoon we climbed the last rise that hid our view to the east, and saw below us a long valley widening in the distance and flanked by abrupt and lofty peaks. The range to the left was continuous and almost vertical, leading to the serried peaks directly ahead that hid the Orange. We got down a breakneck slope into this valley, and found the usual sand-river that made fairly easy going. As usual there was no vestige of a trail, the whole land being apparently devoid even of animal life, silent, deserted, melancholy. We followed the sand-river till nightfall, and slept on its clean soft bed; and we hoped by following it patiently we should surely come to the Orange, but just after our start in the morning it branched in several directions. Whilst uncertain which to follow, we came upon the spoor of a naked foot, old, but showing up clear and fresh in the sand, and so unusual a find, in this deserted country, that we gazed upon it with something like the feelings of Robinson Crusoe on a like occasion. As in all probability it would lead us to the river or to other water, we decided to follow it. It led us on for hours, up branch-ravines we should never have thought of entering, and at length into a narrow gap in the abrupt wall of mountains. At the mouth of this gap we found the “Lost Water” that Klaas had heard of, a beautiful little pool of clear spring-water surrounded by reeds and a tree or two, an ideal little oasis in the desert. But, with the exception of the solitary and obviously old spoor that led us to it, there was no sign that the place had been visited for many years. The only indication that man had ever been there before were a few bleached and gnawed human bones under the biggest tree--possibly those of him who had made the spoor!