He had plenty of time, and stayed a whole day with me, and when he heard what I had been after he told me a tale that almost sent me back to the wilds of German territory again. It was the tale of the first discovery of diamonds in German South-West, years before they were found in Luderitzbucht, a tale of a German soldier on patrol, separated from his comrades and lost in a blinding sand-storm. He had struggled on for days, lost to all sense of direction, and when at his last gasp had been found by wandering Bushmen, and taken to an oasis in the desert, where not only was there an abundance of water, but diamonds by the thousand. Here he was kept captive, but eventually escaped and got back to Swakopmund, where he had been struck off the rolls as dead. His one idea was to organise an expedition to go to this spot for the diamonds, but no one believed him; his tale was laughed at, and it was thought that his sufferings in the desert had driven him mad. One fine day he was missing again, and it was found he had taken mules and a considerable amount of water, and no more was heard of him, until some months later his body was found in the sands near Swakopmund, bloated and swollen with the poison of a Bushman’s arrow, that had pierced him through and through. His rags of clothing had been rifled, but in an old pocket-book near was found a rough diary he had kept of his route, and four large rough diamonds. This was the tale that Brand told me, and this had been the origin of the belief of the existence of the oasis usually known as “Hottentots’ (or Bushmen’s) Paradise” to which I have previously alluded, and the search for which from Luderitzbucht had already cost several lives. Well, Mr. Brand assured me that he was one of the four men who had seen both the diamonds and the pocket-book with the original map. And, seeing I was keenly interested, he said, “Why not go after it yourself? I will help find the money. But you must take camels and work from the coast. And you must land near Hollam’s Bird Island, at Strandlooper’s Water, and go straight east.” And although I had not told Brand so, this was close to the spot at which we had searched the beach, and from the dunes of which Du Toit has seen an oasis in the heart of the dunes eastward. So that, although I abandoned the Van Ryn’s Dorp district as a bad job, I had much food for thought on my way back to Cape Town. CHAPTER V “ANDERSON’S DIAMONDS”--PRIESKA, UPINGTON--THE SOUTHERN KALAHARI.