During the short time we spent at Rietfontein we were most hospitably entertained by the officer in charge of the few camel police there, and found that he, in common with his men, was perfectly contented with the solitary life they were forced to lead. He said that new-comers sometimes nearly go mad for the first month or two of their lonely and monotonous existence, but that they almost invariably get so attached to the place and the life that they seldom apply for a transfer, and the few who do so are usually anxious to return to the desert within a very short time. Yet the life is both hard and perilous, for their long patrols take them many days’ distance into the desert, and often, in the waterless tracks near the Oup and Nosop “rivers” to the north or the equally thirst-stricken wastes eastward, they are faced with the danger of a death from thirst. With a view to minimising the danger of getting lost in these pathless dunes they usually patrol in couples, and some of their adventures in tracking down Bushman or Hottentot cattle-thieves in the heart of the desert would make most excellent reading. Most of these chaps pooh-poohed the idea of a mine near their camp. “Pity you can’t go into the Game Reserve,” they all said; “that’s where the diamonds are, out towards Tilrey Pan.” But beyond the assertion and their evident belief, they had no data whatever to confirm what they said. They had all heard vague rumours as to rich mines existing there, tales, too, of Bushmen and Hottentots bringing out diamonds and obtaining cattle and waggons for them; but it was impossible to trace these stories to their source or confirm them, and beyond a flying trip or two when water had been too scarce to allow of any delay, they had seen but little of this forbidden ground themselves. A few of the nearer “pans” in that region lay within their patrol, and their description of the rocks and gravels to be seen there excited my curiosity to an extraordinary degree, whilst they were unanimous in saying that, from the high dunes they had visited there, numerous unknown and unvisited pans could be seen dotting the desert eastward. But this mysterious region, long coveted by prospectors, had for many years been closed against all prospecting, a tract of country half the size of England having been proclaimed a Royal Game Reserve, to the exclusion even of travellers.