Westward stretched the long, flat lower reaches to where the ribbon-like channel lost itself in the numerous lagoons of the mouth; before us lay a broad, placid sheet of calm, unruffled water with a typical _zee-coe-gat_ (hippo hole) mirroring the abrupt cliff on which we were standing; upstream the silver gleam of long lake-like stretches, broken here and there by the darker water of the rapids, and the whole extent in that direction fringed with a thick belt of luxuriant vegetation on either bank; bush doves fluttering and cooing in every tree, small birds of brilliant plumage darting from branch to branch and glistening like living sunbeams, beautiful trees, beautiful water--in fact, a strip of Paradise running through a desert. For the land behind us and through which we had passed, though bush-covered and capable of supporting stock, could scarcely be called by any other name, whilst on the other bank the enormous sand-dunes of German South-West stretch back from the belt of willows as far as the eye can reach, dune piled upon dune, into veritable mountains of glaring yellow, with not a vestige of vegetation to relieve their awful desolation. It is a peculiar fact that there are no dunes of this description on the British side of the river; sand of course there is, but it is covered in vegetation of a sort, and is good land compared to the fearful barren waste on the northern bank. A little higher up we came to the tiny farm of Groot Derm, surely one of the loneliest places in this land of loneliness! For to reach a habitation upstream the farmer would have to traverse at least 150 miles of desolation bordering the tortuous winding of the river: west of him lay the desolate beaches we had just left, and the broad Atlantic; north spread the fearful thirst-dunes of German South-West; and south, his “next-door neighbour” at Port Nolloth was a good four days’ waggon trek away. The lonely little house was empty, its owner being away on his periodical trip for stores, and we therefore did not even outspan at this tiny frontier homestead. A mile or so above the farm the rough cart-track left the river and we struck across sandy hills to Aries Drift, which we found deserted even of the few miserable Hottentots occasionally to be found there, living in miserable _pondhoeks_ of leaves and branches, and existing on the milk of their goats, the gum of the thorn-trees, the few small fish to be found in the river, and the various weird odds and ends that figure in their cuisine.