Drinking it, three of his four horses fell dead almost at once. He and his companions got away, but no less than 43 out of the party of 46 Bastards following them were poisoned, the three who escaped being young children. Dop, Hottentots, Bastards, and white men between them had long since wiped out his tribe of Bushmen, and the old man had settled down at Upington with a new tribe of children and grandchildren; but his heart’s desire was the desert, and he was frantically eager to be back among the dunes. He knew the pan where the other Bushman had picked up the diamonds; he knew also a pan where the garnets and carbon lay thick in a soft yellow matrix, which, by its description, could be nothing but “Kimberlite”; and, more remote than any of them, he knew a similar pan, where there was a big limestone capping, in which were dotted bright green stones innumerable. I showed Old Gert my collection of stones, and he picked out my one tiny emerald unhesitatingly from among half a dozen others--green gems, peridotes, green garnets, chrysophrase, tourmalines, etc.--and in addition described the precise crystallisation that the emerald takes. Anderson was credited with having found emeralds in the Kalahari; I myself had picked up beryls--of which they are a variety--in abundance in German territory, west of where we were bound; and to add to the likelihood of there being emeralds as well as diamonds in this “Tom Tiddler’s Ground,” I heard from Mr. H. S. Harger, a well-known Johannesburg gem expert and geologist, who happened to be in Upington at the time, that some years back no less than £40,000 worth of fine rough emeralds had been sold in Hatton Garden--and that it was believed by all the _cognoscenti_ that they came from the Kalahari! On Saturday, February 17th, all was at length ready. We had discarded every bit of superfluous gear, and our waggons were packed with all that we expected to need during our long trip; our rifles and shot-guns hung from straps, ready to hand for the game we hoped to kill along the path, and we were armed with an additional permit from the Resident Magistrate, authorising us to take these weapons into the Reserve--a permission which had been omitted in the Government permit, and without which the first police trooper we met would have promptly hauled us back in ignominy. CHAPTER XV THE “PANS” OF THE KALAHARI DESERT--THE MOLOPO ROUTE--BOOMPLAATS--ENTERING THE RESERVE--SPOORS--THE WATER CAMP--THIRST--THE GREAT SALT PAN--LOST!