Few of these Ishmaelite Hottentots can be prevailed upon to work for any length of time; a week or two, and they want the few shillings due to them, and away they trek to the nearest dorp, be it even 150 miles away, where mouth-organs, tobacco, golden syrup, or other delicacies dear to the native soon account for their little hard-earned cash. Seldom indeed do they buy a blanket or make any provision for the cold weather that they feel so bitterly. And pneumonia and kindred chest troubles carry them off wholesale. An hour farther on we found the water he had spoken of. It was a small and nearly dry pit, and the bucket or two of water left in it was filled with squirming animalcules. But the little we carried was getting perilously low, and we made a fire and boiled a billy of it for coffee, straining it through a handkerchief, and getting quite a tablespoonful of mosquito larvæ and other weird things in the process. Still, the coffee was drinkable in spite of a strong animal taste, and all might have been well had I not had the temerity to look at those animalcules through my prospecting glass afterwards. I was sorry immediately, but it was too late--the coffee had been drunk. That evening, footsore and dog-tired, we straggled into a narrow sandy valley between rocky kopjes, the foothills of a big mountain behind and the spot long reputed to be rich in diamonds. There was not a scrap of wood, not a bush or a bit of vegetation anywhere, nor could we find any of the dry cow-droppings which can be used as an alternative fuel. We had scarcely a pint of water between us, and had to reserve that for the morrow, and long before the end of a bitterly cold night I would have given my chance of any diamonds I was likely to find for an armful of firewood or a cup of hot coffee.