I will not weary the reader with a recital of all the asinine things that happened before we got to the spot, but suffice it to say that at nightfall one evening, footsore, hungry, ragged, and half dead with thirst, we found the little hut where the sealers lived, a most desolate spot many miles away from drinking-water. The sealers--all coloured men--were oily and grimy to a degree, but they looked askance at us when we burst in upon them in the clothes we had left Cape Town in! Tattered, torn, dusty, covered in melkbosch-juice from the thickets we had traversed, they took us for a shipwrecked crew. It was dark by the time we had explained what we were after. “Blue ground!” said the foreman, an European. “Yes, it’s about half a mile up the coast! I’ll take you to it first thing in the morning.” “So it was right, then!” we agreed. We accepted their hospitality, and, packed like sardines, tried to sleep on the floor of the hut, in an atmosphere of seal oil and rotten seals, whose huge carcasses polluted the beach for miles. By daylight I was on the spot, peering through the raw sea-fog for the “blue ground” we had come so far to find. It was there, cliffs of it, millions of tons of it, blue shale, utterly valueless, and, except in colour, bearing no atom of resemblance to diamondiferous “blue ground”!... It took us best part of a week to get back to Cape Town, and I swore that nothing would ever induce me to try prospecting in a motor-car again! * * * * * Even our short absence had allowed of more stories coming through as to rich finds in German West; moreover, there were rumours as to the finding of diamonds in Namaqualand at no great distance from the spot we had just returned from; and a week or two later I set out alone, with the intention of properly prospecting the country in the vicinity of Van Ryn’s Dorp, and, if needs be, northward into Namaqualand. But this time I did not go “as I stood,” but with a complete and compact outfit of tent, tools, gear, and provisions for a prolonged period. These I sent ahead by waggon to Van Ryn’s Dorp, following myself by post cart a fortnight later, and doing the journey in half the time and with a tithe of the discomfort I had experienced in the motor-car.