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DIAMOND
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might
travel fast and get in at the head of the rush after due investigation
of his chances. There was nothing else for a prospector to do except
load up his gear and set off. Cornell's life during some of his
explorations was definitely rugged, especially when his researches took
him into desert regions. He was tough and he stood up to it, but it is
impossible not to wonder sometimes, in reading his book of memoirs, if
he wasn't perhaps more than usually optimistic even for a prospector.
There was for instance his hopeful belief in an "Emerald Valley," in
pursuit of which he nearly died in the swamps of Portuguese Africa.
"It
is alleged," he wrote, "that a party of Boers, hunting on the
Portuguese side of the Labombo Mountains, which form the boundary
between Portuguese territory and the North-Eastern Transvaal, came upon
some ancient workings which they failed to penetrate, owing to noxious
gas; but that at the mouth of one they found skeletons, and with the
bones a small skin bag full of rough emeralds. They got away with the
stones, which fetched a large sum in Europe, but for some unexplained
reason were never able to reach the spot again."
The
end of that passage is typical of Cornell's most cherished stories.
After a while the reader's mouth stops watering and he grows wary. Or
at least he would grow wary if, like me, he had ever been indulging in
dreams of following up these clues, as Cornell did, and going treasure
hunting. Cornell himself never lost his enthusiasm. Where one or at
most two long exhausting journeys into desert wilderness, in the vain
search for fortune, might suffice for you or me, especially if the
journey entailed getting lost and going without water and racing for
life with leopards as seems to have happened to Cornell not infre-
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