especially gold, but when they got back to civilization the government refused to let them follow it all up.
As
I said, the continuing failure of all Cornell's treasure hunting
becomes not only suspect but almost incredible. How did he keep going
so long without the slightest encouragement? Gamblers have stamina, but
even gamblers must get the occasional windfall, otherwise they run out of resources—other people's
as well as their own. Yet Cornell must have found backing somehow, when
he couldn't back himself. In all the book there is only one passage
that isn't clear and doesn't tally with the long cheerful record of
failure. It comes near the end, just before he starts his account of
the beginning of the war. He was again near the Aughrabies Falls,
between them and Upington, prospecting at the German border and
probably sometimes across it. He refers to "the end of May, when after
six weeks of systematic work and exhaustive search in all directions, I
was in possession of data that made a trip to the nearest telegraph
station imperative." There is no more mention of the data, and then
came the war, and after the war Britain took over German South-West
Africa. In 1920 Cornell for some reason went to England. It was
generally supposed that he had gone to see a man about a deal. He may
have had a valuable secret, but he kept his own counsel. He wasn't used
to London traffic. Crossing the street soon after arriving in the big
city, this seasoned survivor of a hundred close shaves was knocked down
and killed.
It
was a geologist named Hans Merensky who with a prospecting party found
the diamonds of Alexander Bay in 1926, sixteen years after Cornell
camped there. Like Cornell,
