I was by no means sorry to leave Luderitzbucht, for during the whole of this brief stay it blew incessantly and the air was a sort of semi-solid mixture of whirling sand, that cut and stung, and choked and blinded, and permeated every orifice and crevice, and generally made life utterly unbearable. When this prevailing wind reaches a certain violence, the whole country practically gets up and walks, big sand-dunes shift along and others come after them, like the waves of a slowly moving sea; wide stretches of hard land are denuded of every grain of sand, and others buried deep in it, and it is a curious fact that these storms actually blow diamonds! A claim deep with diamondiferous sand has often been swept clean of its contents in a few hours; sand, gravel, and diamonds being lifted up and borne away, to be deposited in some more favoured spot. Even the big dunes of a hundred feet or so in height are not stationary; though their movement is slower, it is none the less sure. In many instances these huge sand-waves have passed slowly but irresistibly over strongly built dwellings and the like, burying them completely for a time, and gradually passing onward and re-disclosing them.... We came down the coast in the _Hellopes_, an alleged passenger-boat that rolled like a hog and smelt like its sty; and we were both very glad to see Cape Town again. CHAPTER IV MORE DIAMOND RUMOURS--PROSPECTING IN A MOTOR-CAR--VAN RYN’S DORP--PROSPECTING IN EARNEST--A PATRIARCH--NEWS OF BUSHMAN’S PARADISE. In Cape Town I found rumours of new diamond deposits were as rife as they had been in German territory, and had scarcely rubbed the Luderitzbucht sand from my eyes before I was called upon to go and verify a new “discovery,” this time much nearer home. By this time the craze had so spread that people were arguing that, as diamonds were found in sand at Luderitzbucht, the sands all up the coast might be full of them, and wild and indiscriminate pegging was going on all over the place. Amongst other local syndicates, one had been formed for the purpose of investigating certain deposits alleged to still remain undiscovered on both the German coast and our own, which spots were only known to the promoter. The “plum” of these spots was an alleged deposit of “blue ground” which the discoverer claimed to have found many years before at a wild part of our own coast, when landing from a sealing cutter. The exact locality was kept a dead secret, but when, one fine morning, the papers blossomed forth with the alleged discovery of diamonds near Lambert’s Bay, about 150 miles north-west of Cape Town, the owner of the map declared that it was near enough to his “discovery” to render instant action necessary. Within a few hours the syndicate had sent for me, and the same day four of us were jammed into a small motor-car _en route_ for the spot. “Take nothing but what you stand in,” ordered the owner (and driver); “we shall be back in four days!”