EL DORADO 197 



So far as I could make out El Dorado was 

 about twenty miles from Kuboos. As we pro- 

 ceeded the track improved. The guide now 

 calmly informed me that we had passed the 

 worst of it. Therefore all the trouble and ex- 

 pense of hiring the pack-oxen and their owners 

 was unnecessary. Here evaporated another 

 illusion; these people had developed business 

 instincts; the serpent of guile had found its 

 way even to the Richtersveld paradise. I 

 scribbled a note asking Andries to follow on 

 our spoor with the wagon. This note I sent 

 back by one of the camp followers. 



It was fairly late in the afternoon when we 

 reached our destination. The guide pointed 

 out to me the exact spot where the nugget was 

 alleged to have been picked up. It was on 

 the side of a little gully which scarred the ter- 

 raced bank of the dry T'Cuidabees River. 

 The bed-rock was of soft shale ; it almost pro- 

 truded from the surface, so sparse was the 

 covering soil. There was no such thing as 

 ' wash ' in the ordinary sense, but merely 

 earth to the depth of a few inches, with which 

 a good many angular quartz pebbles were 

 mixed. I had once found gold, in an almost 

 exactly similar formation, at a spot in the 

 north-eastern Transvaal. 



