He was a most naïve sort of old chap, typical of the degenerate “poor white” trek Boer of these barren, desolate and almost uninhabited wastes, appallingly ignorant and indescribably dirty. His canvas “house” was about 15 feet square, and in it he and his enormous wife, two grown sons and three strapping daughters lived, slept, and had their being. He questioned me minutely as to who I was, where I came from, whether I was married, how many children I had, etc., and at each and all of my answers in broken Dutch he and his whole tribe laughed immoderately. He himself, as he proudly told me, had seen an Engelsman before, often, but not so his children. I gave him a little tobacco, which he had not seen for some weeks, and offered to buy a goat from him to kill for our general benefit, but this he would not sell; in fact, I always found it extremely difficult to get these “back-of-beyant” farmers to sell any of their scanty small stock at any price. They lived entirely upon milk and Boer meal, which they ground themselves in a small flat stone hand-mill, catching the meal in a goat-skin below. In fact they were as primitive, practically, as the Bushman of the desert; more primitive certainly than the patriarch Abraham, after whom the old man was named. I had sent Sam on to the spot where he had seen the wood, to make a _Scherm_ and a big fire for the night, but the old man wanted badly for me to sleep in his house! Seven adults--and four of them women--all in a tiny room where there were also several fowls, two big lurchers, and a sick kid! The fact of there being any impropriety in my sharing a room with all his womenfolk certainly never entered his head, and he evidently thought me quite mad to choose the cold night outside to the “warmth” and comfort (?) of his _huis_. Thanks to the roaring fire, we put in a fairly good night, and afternoon of the next day saw us back in camp--none too soon, for my stout boots had given in and I was wellnigh barefooted. Next day I struck camp and started back to Van Ryn’s Dorp, disheartened with my fruitless search and eager for news, for I had heard nothing for six weeks. In the dorp I found letters from Cape Town, telling me of still more marvellous finds in German South-West, for now parties had struck south from Luderitzbucht, and the fabulously rich Pomona fields were upon everyone’s lips. There was talk of a bucketful of diamonds having been impounded and lying in the “Deutsche Bank” waiting for a decision as to their rightful owner; of the first prospectors picking up diamonds by the handful, filling their pockets with them (which they literally did!). And I thought of Jim and his offer to take us south, and wept and would not be comforted!