SECRETS OF AFRICA

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3214, 9 August 1932, Page 3

SECRETS OF AFRICA

DELVING INTO THE UNKNOWN. MYSTERIES OF THE DARK CONTINENT. Old mysteries of the deserts of South Afr.ca are being solved to-day by men in motor cars. Those wno penetrate those almost unknown territories the Kalahari, the Koakoveld, and the coastal deserts of Southwest Africa —have strange taies to tea when they return to civilisation, says a writer in the New York Times recently. The unmapped Koakoveld, a territory of 100,000,000 acres where wild bushmen and elephants still roam, gave up one of its secrets recently. Trweuty years ago a well-equipped German prospecting party set outf into this wilderness with carts packed with diamond sieves, washing machines, food, water, and horses. They were never seen again. Three British prospectors, however, recently found an abandoned cart, still packed with the rotting, rusting outfit. Faded papers in a leather case proved that this was the missing expedition; but the exact tale of the Germans is still unknown. “ They must have perished of thirst or have been devoured by lions—or both,” said the prospectors. On the waterless coast of this territory the prospectors found more tragic relics. They saw something white in the burning yellow sand, stopped the car, and found the skulls and bones of three white men. Close by were the rotting timbers of an open boat. Here were sailors who had) escaped shipwreck only to die of hunger and thirst on a barren coast.

Dramatic discoveries are sometimes made in the Namib Desert—the diamond area of South-west Africa, near the port of Luderitzbucht. In the early days of the former German colony a military surgeon, named Rogge and a trooper, Fiebecke, set out on horseback from Luderitzbucht with mails and pay for the men of a lonely outpost. The desert swallowed them up. In 1911 Fiebecke’s bayonet and belt were found in the dunes. The search was renewed, and a year later a police patrol found the body of Rogge. The money, about 2000 marks, was still safe, and the letters, found in a satchel, were delivered after seven years. Rogge’s notebook conained a farewell letter to his mother and sister in Germany. “ The horses have run away. I have lost touch with Fiebecke; and to avoid death from thirst I am going to shoot myself,” ran the surgeon’s last message.

Reminders of a much greater tragedy are sometimes brought out of the Kalahari—old Dutch chests, pieces of furniture, and muzzle-loading rifles. These are relics of the great Boer trek from South Africa to Angola in the ’sixties. Hundreds of men, women, and children, scores of wagons, thousands of head of cattle, etc., set out boldly to cross the Kalahari. It was a daring and magnificent effort, but great disaster was to follow. Many of the water-holes were found to be empty; the cattle stampeded and were lost. Hostile natives attacked the long caravan. Lions and other wild animals exacted their toll. Only a few score survived that Kalahari trek.

Diamonds, emeralds, and even copper—or, rather, stories of these treasures—have lured many a prospector to his death in the thirst-lands of South Africa. Even men as tough as salamanders cannot exist for long in these burning wastes. I remember a hard, sun browned prospector telling me the legend of the “Hottentot’s Paradise ” —something more than a legend, really, for the main facts are filed away in the official archives of Windhoek, the capital of South-west Africa.

Long before the World War a sandstorm swept down on a German military patrol near Swakopmund, the seaport north of Walvis Bay. One soldier, separated from his companions, was found delirious by a band of wandering bushmen and taken to their secret stronghold. Here, in a rocky pool of fresh water, were diamonds by the thousand; the wizened little bushman children were playing with them. The trooper escaped from this remote spot, fitted out an expedition to re-discover the place, and was found dead with a bushman’s arrow in his body. In his pocket were four rough diamonds and a vague map describing the route to the “ Bushmen’s Paradise.” Later searches cost several more lives; but the hiding place of that hoard of diamonds has never been found.