thing—perhaps
a gigantic kimberlite pipe, the mother of all the other pipes that were
making South Africa rich—that he managed to overcome some at least of
their objections, and won permission to travel and look in the
forbidden ground. It is doubtful if very many other prospectors,
hard-bitten crew though they are, would have been eager to make a
similar trip. Cornell had to take an oxcart for the white party's gear.
Oxcarts mean oxen, and oxen mean food and water which they were unable
to cany with them. For the livestock's maintenance Cornell and his
friends meant to depend on t'samma, a desert melon that secretes a lot
of juice. Desert-wise oxen and horses simply crunch the fruit:
Hottentots baked it in hot ashes overnight and drank the water that
collected. Hard-boiled specimens like Cornell chewed the melons without
bothering to bake them. T'samma never took away the sensation of
thirst, says Cornell, but it seemed to supply the necessary moisture.
The main trouble was finding the stuff once you were in the desert, and
there was another drawback to depending on t'samma—it destroys the
teeth. Cornell seemed slightly discomforted by losing half his teeth
on this journey, but he didn't make an untoward fuss about the mishap.
He was much more bothered when the party couldn't find t'samma. For a
few days desert oxen are able to get on without drinking or eating
melons; after that they are in a bad way, and on several occasions
water or t'samma was found only just in time. Then, too, the white men
sometimes came down with fever, and the scorpions weren't too
pleasant, nor were the snakes, but one gets the impression that Cornell
didn't really take all this too hard. He was used to it. What was annoying was that they didn't find any diamonds. They came upon indications of this and that,
