There was no sign of the herds of springbok which are at times found on Richtersfeldt, a few _paauw_--very wild and quite unapproachable--being the only signs of life; there was nothing to prospect but sand, or an occasional outcrop of white, barren and “hungry”-looking quartz, barely worth turning aside to look at; and I sat on the waggon box and looked at that distant line of blue peaks and wanted those mountains bad! That was before I got to them, mind.... CHAPTER VIII RICHTERSFELDT--ALEXANDER BAY--MOUTH OF THE ORANGE RIVER--“HADJE AIBEEP”--HELL’S KLOOF--A DESERTED COPPER-MINE--ROUGH GOING--A MAGNIFICENT VISTA OF PEAKS--AN OLD GOLD PROSPECT. The fourth day found us at Springklip, a solitary hill near the mountain range, where, between two outlying granite peaks, a few waggons, and here and there a mat hut, marked the spot on which the Hottentots were to assemble for their annual _nachtmaal_ (communion). There was no sign of a permanent settlement; indeed, with the exception of Kuboos, a day’s trek farther on, where there is a tiny stone-built mission church, these nomads have no fixed village, trekking from place to place as water and grazing dictate. During the whole of our four days’ slow trekking we had not seen a solitary human being, but now the natives could be seen coming in from all directions: parties of two or three men mounted on wiry little ponies, and followed by their women and children on foot; others mounted on powerful-looking riding oxen, saddled with horse-saddles of obviously German make, and significant of the loot brought from the farther side of the Orange River by the many refugees who had followed those doughty Hottentot fighters, Witbooi and Marengo, in the Hottentot rebellion; rickety waggons and weird-looking carts tied together with bits of riem and kept together by a miracle; others driving ponies laden with bloated and repellent-looking water-skins from the nearest water-hole at Doornpoort, some ten miles farther on among the mountains, to which spot our poor oxen had to be driven before they could quench their four days’ thirst. The natives soon came flocking round our waggon. They seemed a dejected, harmless, invertebrate lot of beings, with very little character except an inveterate habit of cadging. Tobacco was their great desideratum, but it was noteworthy that, greedy as they were for it, they invariably shared anything given to them. They were all cleanly-looking, and though their clothing was in many cases a miracle of patchwork, no rags were to be seen.