UNMAPPED KOAKOVELD

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 284, 26 July 1932, Page 8

UNMAPPED KOAKOVELD

GRIM RELICS FOUND OF LONG BYGONE TRAGEDIES. 8 THE WILDERNESS TOLL. Old mysteries of the desert of South Africa are being solved today by men in inotor cars. Those who penetrate those almost unknown territories — the Kalahari, the Koakoveld, and the coastal deserts of South-west Africa — have strange tales to tell when they return to civilisatioxi, says a writer in the New York Times. The unmapped Koakoveld, a territory of 100,000,000 acres where wild bushmen and elephants still roam, gave up one of its secrets recently. Twenty years ago a well-equipped German prospecting party set out 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 till 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 prospectox-s 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. Seven Years Late. Dramatic discoveries are sometimes made in the Namib Desert — the

diamond area of South-west Africa, near the port of Luderitzbucht. In the eaily days of this 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 was found in the dunes. The search was renewed, and a year later a police patrol found the body of Rogge. The money, about 20,000 marks, was' still safe; and the letters, found in a satchel, were delivered after seven years. Rogge's notebook contained 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." TJ-. «

Reminders of a much greater tragedy are sometimes brought out of the Kalahari — old Dutch chests, pieces of furniture, and muzzle-load-ing 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 waggons, thousands of head of cattle, set out boldly to cross the Kalahari. It was a daring and magnificent effort, but great disaster was to follow. Many of the waterholes 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. Hottentot Paradise. Diamonds, emeralds, and even copper — or rather stories of these treasU1.es — have lured many a prospector to his death in the thirstlands of South Africa. Even men as tough as salamanders cannot exist for long in these burning wastes. I remember one 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 achives of Windhoek, the capital of South-west Africa. Long before the World War, it seems, 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 thousands; the wizened little bushman children were playing with them. The trooper escaped from this reniote 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 "Bushman's Paradise." Later searchers cost severel more lives; but the hiding place of that hoard of diamonds h&s never been found.