Lower down this “Zout” river I came into an astonishing region of brilliantly coloured clays and marls, ranging in colour right through the gamut of reds, yellows, and blues, as also a fine deposit of milk-white Kaolin; and these in turn gave place to high banks of a sort of volcanic mud, or ash, of a bright blue colour, through which the stream had cut a deep bed. These high banks or mounds exactly resemble the huge tailings of the Kimberley diamond-mines, both in appearance and in substance: and, indeed, this deposit is apparently analogous to Kimberlite minus its various inclusions. I should have much liked to explore this wild and desolate part of the country farther, but water was now our chief anxiety; moreover the land from hereabouts was private property, upon which the hampering restrictions of a prospecting licence did not give me the right to prospect “without the consent of the owner!” This owner, I found from my boys, was nothing more than a coloured man who leased the land from Government for a few pounds per annum to run his goats on; moreover he did not live on the property, but a good two days’ trek away, so I did not trouble to obtain his consent. I merely mention this _en passant_ to show by what absurd conditions a prospector is bound. Here was a man, absolutely ignorant of minerals, and with absolutely no right to them (for they are Crown property in such cases), and yet a miserable lease, which only granted him surface rights, still made him the arbiter as to whether a licensed prospector should set foot on his 10,000 morgen or so of land! Of course there was no one to stop my prospecting, but had I done so and made any discovery I could not have legalised it without his consent, and being made to pay through the nose for it! The system is utterly wrong. There are millions of acres of land in the Cape Province held under such terms, the owners or lessees of which will neither put a pick in themselves nor allow the prospector to. By this time the weather was getting bitterly cold, hoar frost lying thick every morning, and the water freezing even in my little patrol tent. And as there was no firewood obtainable, and the two “boys” were suffering badly at night, I decided to work upstream toward Little Bushmanland, as I had heard that the upper reaches of this little river had plenty of wood. So we loaded up and trekked for a day towards a “farm” rejoicing in the name of “Douse the Glim.” In this direction I found wood in abundance, and the “boys” built themselves a tiny _pondhoek_ of boughs and branches, and by keeping a roaring fire going just outside of it all night they managed to keep from freezing.