And cheered by this fresh proof of Anderson’s accuracy, within an hour of our arrival we again set out on foot, thinking to be able to walk straight to the “valley of diamonds” we had come so far to find. But alas! the map--so correct up to now--failed lamentably upon this most vital point of all, for certain physical features there laid down were utterly lacking in the direction the chart pointed to, and after spending the rest of the day in a vain search we came back considerably discouraged. And day after day the same thing happened. Having failed to find the spot at once, I obtained the services of one or two of the older Bastard inhabitants, as also an old Bushman, and under their guidance I wore out two pairs of strong boots in systematically searching the locality, putting in eight or ten hours of walking each day, and only giving up after ten days of this wearisome search, when I had absolutely convinced myself that no such place existed anywhere upon the ground I was entitled to prospect, or indeed anywhere within many miles of the position marked so clearly upon the map. And so we had come nearly a thousand miles, over three hundred of which had been by trekking through a desert and difficult country, for nothing, simply upon another wild-goose chase! I do not wish to say that no such spot ever existed. In fact, I have no doubt that Anderson made the discovery much as he described it; but my opinion is that he did not make the map till many years after his visit, and that the locality was wrongly marked by many miles. Yet Kimberlite existed in the vicinity; indeed, a “blank” variety, containing but few inclusions, was to be seen in many of the dry watercourses that honeycombed the country, and I found garnets and ilmenite in one or two places, but none of the other minerals described and brought back by Anderson and shown me in Cape Town. The fact having been reluctantly forced upon me that the map was wrong, I had at length no alternative but to abandon the search, our one consolation being that the two would-be “claim-jumpers” who had turned up at a neighbouring farm a day or two after our arrival, and who had laboriously followed me about the wild country ever since, had also had their trouble for nothing, besides being considerably mystified into the bargain. In spite of my failure, I should much have liked to put in a few months’ systematic prospecting in the locality, for there were quite sufficient “indications” to warrant it, and such work might well have led to valuable discoveries. But I had been instructed simply to verify the existence or otherwise of the place mentioned in Anderson’s map, and there was nothing for it but to turn back on our long trek to civilisation.