If only on account of its remoteness and isolation, this tiny frontier post of ours merits description. Separated by nearly 150 miles of sand-dunes from a doctor or a telegraph station, or any of the conveniences of life even to be found at Upington, and almost double that distance from the nearest railway at Prieska, it surely vies with the police posts of the Canadian North-West border for loneliness and inaccessibility. Its only connecting-link with the Empire it belongs to is by this wearisome southern route that we had followed, for north of it there is no other post along the whole 600 miles of British-German border where the Bechuanaland Protectorate and German South-West march together to the Caprivi belt and the Portuguese territory of Angola. East stretches the whole breadth of the Southern Kalahari, pathless, waterless, and a forbidden land, between them and the Kuruman district, whilst westward they are bounded by foreign (German) territory. The nucleus of this forlorn little settlement was the old mission station belonging to the Rhenish Mission, and dating from the days of the Bushman kraal old Anderson had seen. It was a substantial stone-built dwelling, flanked with a chapel and standing by the all-important water-hole. There was the usual tiny oasis in the shape of a small garden with a few fig-trees, and half a dozen large _cameel doorn_ in the sand near showed where the “river” at one time flowed; but other than this there was no sign of vegetation and the surroundings were barren and desolate, even for the desert. A small thatched building that served for Court-house (for Rietfontein is the seat of a magistracy), as well as residence for the magistrate and officer in charge of the police, a fairly well stocked store, and the few miserable hovels that housed the Bastard and Hottentot community of the mission, and the equally tumble-down quarters of the police troopers, constituted the whole of the most important police post along our whole frontier. [Illustration: A BEAUTIFUL GORGE OF THE ORANGE RIVER (NEAR “AUSENKEHR”)] Of course the Rietfontein missionary was a German; moreover, although he was a J.P. of the district he had never taken the trouble to learn English, and his flock of coloured ragamuffins were as nearly Germanised as he had been able to make them. He proved to be the possessor of a very old map of the locality which gave all the old native names, and which I covet to this day, and upon which we were able to verify our idea as to Rietfontein and Quassama being identical.