After only two days I was sent with six riders and a six-horse mule-cart for a ten-day patrol. Soon afterwards I undertook a similar patrol.
After returning from this second patrol and a few days in service at Otavifontein, I was given a special task for a longer patrol. I was to travel on a prescribed route to Etosha Pan, along and then across the pan, and back to Otavifontein, to determine whether the water conditions would allow a better way to transport troops to Ovamboland. Hauptmann Hinsch, declared shortly before the departure of the patrol that he wanted to join the group ‘as a guest’, and that his presence would be off-duty and not connected to his official position.
In some ways I welcomed this, because Hinsch, was a passionate hunter, and I was hoping for some decent hunting opportunities at Etosha, and now because I had the C.O. accompanying me, no one would dare say of me ‘he is going more for the hunting than for an official patrol.’
We rode over Grootfontein, Tsumeb, Lake Otjikoto, Sandhub, Narusib to Namutoni, to the beautiful forts erected on the eastern edge of Etosha Pan, with a protection detachment under the command of Leutnant Kaufmann.[44] After a convivial night spent there, one day’s march brought us to the pan by way of Arikos and Rietfontein to Gunuhab. Everywhere at Etosha we found immense herds of game, springbok, gemsbok, hartebeest, and large herds of wildebeest (a type of small buffalo); and killed a lot. We lived only off wild game meat; and ended up bringing back to Otavifontein all the canned meat we carried along as supplies. What we didn’t consume we immediately processed into biltong, and only the bones remained for the jackals.
From Gunuhab we turned to the south, riding cross country, from one reputed watering place to the next. However, we found most to be dry, or to contain only enough water for our patrol, but nowhere near sufficient for a larger numbers of troops.
After leaving the last inadequate waterhole we were now already two days without water; the heat was tremendous, and our animals and some riders began to get tired. However, one day at noon while riding ahead with my natives, I saw Bushman women and children some distance away, and knew that we had to be near water. The wild Bushman is the most cunning and repulsive of all the natives; he lives only from hunting with bow and arrow, has no home and no possessions. Bushmen never live next to a watering hole, in order not to identify them to others and so as not to scare away wild animals—their source of food. When Bushmen in uninhabited areas give you directions to water, you follow them at your own risk, they are mostly false. These women also naturally tried to direct me in exactly the opposite direction; but after I had carefully explained to them, with no possibility of misunderstanding, that they and their children would lead me, running ahead of the horses, and that if they should try to lead me astray, I would hang them all from the next tree, they took me within half an hour to Ubib. This was a delightful waterhole in the shade of tall, wild fig trees, and contained a lot of water.
At the water hole sat about 50 Bushmen armed with bows and arrows. I rode up at a gallop in between them, and told them that we had not come with hostile intent and had done nothing to them. Then I invited them ‘politely’ (with a Browning pistol in my hand) to lay down their arms together under a tree, and asked them to help us water our animals from the waterhole, which was about five metres deep. The rest of the patrol arrived, and in this beautiful shady spot we quickly forgot the misery and tension of the last two days. After man and beast had drunk their fill, we rewarded the Bushmen for our hunting with rice, tea, sugar and tobacco, and they left, apparently very satisfied. We decided to spend the night here, the horses were in pasture quite close to the camp, and also needed a rest. That night I set a sentry on the camp and another with the horses. In order to give the men as much rest as possible, I had arranged just a single sentry with the horses; after his two hours the man on guard had about 150 metres to walk back to the camp and hand over to his replacement; and as the horses were tired, well-fed and next to water I knew they would not think of running away.
At 4am I was awakened by the sentry with the good news that all our horses had disappeared. I immediately realized that the animals did not run away, but had been driven off during the unguarded ten minutes of the guard changeover by the Bushmen, who had kept us under observation.
It was too dangerous my men to search for the horses on foot in the dense bush. No, I would force Mr Bushman to bring them back himself, and they would certainly appear soon to fetch water, because there was no other water-hole within about 50 kilometres.
Soon men appeared in groups of ten to twelve, carrying bows and arrows, and bearing large vessels (calabashes) to fetch water. To each party (in total about forty men had appeared) I explained that my horses had ‘run away’ about two hours ago, and there would not be a drop of water available to anyone until they went away, found the horses and quickly brought them back. I confiscated bows and arrows and calabashes, and amid a great deal of grumbling and whining that their wives and children would die of thirst, they withdrew. My assumption was true, and the sanctions worked: at ten o’clock that morning all the horses were back where the last sentry had left them, however not a Bushman could be seen. We could not ride out immediately because of the intense heat; we did so in the afternoon only with the greatest caution, as we expected to be shot full of arrows in the dense bush by the outwitted and angry Bushmen.
We taught them even more of a lesson by burning their weapons and calabashes.
After three days’ march via Dabib we rejoined the Field Company in Otavifontein after a twenty-day patrol. After only a few days back, my eight-week exercise was over, and I returned refreshed and revived to my work in Swakopmund.
In Swakopmund in the meantime a pretty young typist, Emmy Zehle, had arrived from Hamburg to work at Carl Bödicker & Co.[45] Soon after my return I met her on the Company tennis courts, and in a short while she had captured my hard old bachelor’s heart.[46] We were together a lot, playing tennis, on walks, riding, picnics, with invitations and dances, and by the time of her return to Hamburg in 1907, we were secretly engaged.
From Lüderitzbucht Mr. Ludwig Scholz was whisked to Berlin to manage the Company from there, and he was replaced in Lüderitzbucht as managing director by Mr Robert Stolz, my predecessor in the DKG.
I was appointed from Berlin as a delegate of the Supervisory Board of the Company. I was subordinate to Lüderitzbucht with its newly established branches at Aus and Keetmanshoop, and as a result for at least two to three weeks every three months I had to travel there for audits and meetings.
The Company had undertaken seal hunting at Cape Cross, including the demolition of the remaining guano camp after the English had cancelled Ehlers’ contract. But in the south, there were seals that not only lived on the small islands belonging to the Union of South Africa, but could also be caught with steel nets. As this fishing was rewarding, Scholz, Stolz and I privately founded a limited-liability seal-hunting society. We bought for 20,000 marks in Hamburg a beautiful, seaworthy sailing cutter. It was well-equipped with its own power for machinery, and in the first two years’ fishing seasons we achieved dividends of 80% and 100%.
While staying in Lüderitzbucht I learned a great secret: that the local District Officer, who was a great trouble-maker and an enemy of all commercial companies, intended to prohibit for at least two years all seal fishing at the coast. As no one else knew this intelligence, we hastily sold our boat—at full asking price—to a competitor who had long envied us. With the success of our two years in business we could really be quite satisfied. The same District Officer also instigated an evil, ugly court case against the DKG and caused one of the oldest settlers in the south, Radford,[47] to contest the Company’s ownership of Lüderitzbucht (Angra Pequena) and the so-called Radfordbucht. Since Radford himself was too old and inexperienced, a straw man, Robert Blank[48] was put forward. A very wealthy man, Blank believed that he had already won the case, but neither he nor a great number of other people involved with its future profits was able to m
ake the required payment of costs in advance. This nonsensical court case lasted more than two years. It caused us enormous trouble and hard work, and ended up naturally enough with a clear victory for the Company, a huge award of costs against the opponent and a fairly hefty snub for the District Officer.
By February 1908 I was well overdue for home leave, which had fallen due during the Herero War and for two years afterwards. I went home on S.S. Kronprinz via East Africa. From Cape Town and especially from Durban the steamer was filled to the last berth; I had a first class single cabin on deck and it was a wonderful trip, with pleasant travelling companions. We called at all the ports on the east coast, and with plenty of money in my pocket and a healthy bank account I let nothing escape me. I stayed in Naples for three days, in Rome for three days and then met my Emmy Zehle in Lucerne. She was visiting her sister Elly in Zurich, but had come to meet up with me in Lucerne. After three days there, we then travelled to her sister in Zurich, and from there after a few days, they went to Hamburg and I to my parents who now lived in Dresden.
As always for an expatriate, the months in Germany were a sequence of recovery, pleasures and joys, and gradually dwindled until they quickly vanished altogether. On July 31 1908 we were married. We took an eight-day honeymoon in Lübeck, Kiel and Copenhagen and sailed as a young couple to South-West Africa on 9 August 1908.
After our arrival in Swakopmund we lived in a small house that my colleagues had rented for me at the former Jauch brewery, we had bought and transported with us all the furniture that we needed. I purchased from the Company a plot on the corner of Post[49] and Otavi Streets and as there were no architects in Swakopmund Emmy and I drew up plans for a private residential home, which we called Villa Emmy, which was built by a local master builder and contractor. We moved into our new home in 1909.
There was a lot of work waiting for me in Swakopmund, because in June 1908 a Cape boy who was working on the construction of the Lüderitzbucht to Keetmanshoop railway found diamonds at Kolmanskop near Lüderitzbucht, and an incredible diamond fever had set in.[50] Thousands of mineral licences were requested from our Company, which possessed the land and mining rights. They had to be issued, and often transferred again and again, and if a mistake was made the miners would be only to happy to blame us for allegedly massive losses.
As my colleague Schettler often had to spend weeks in the diamond areas, I stayed behind and managed this work alone; goods contracts, banking and land deals increased constantly, and the work often felt daunting. When Schettler returned, I had to go to Lüderitzbucht because business was booming for the branch there: new shops being built on the diamond fields, and a large new building constructed for a commercial and residential building society.
When I came to Lüderitzbucht at the end of 1908, Mr Stauch,[51] who was one of the first diamond miners, still lived in his tent in Kolmanskop. I went with him to search on the dunes for diamonds and within a quarter of an hour picked up ten beautiful stones lying in the gravel.
Countless diamond companies were founded, and shares traded on the Bourse (in the reception hall of a hotel) every day. We went in the morning for a drink in the hotel, bought one or two shares of any company for, say, five hundred marks per share. If they were up to 750 marks the following day, you sold them and trousered the profit of five hundred marks. It was incredibly busy, with some people making a fortune, and many others losing one again. At night, the miners sat in the bars, drinking only champagne, and playing cards with payment in rough diamonds.
This unsavoury life went on so long that the government founded the Diamond Board[52] and brought to an end any trading in rough diamonds. In March 1909 I took my wife to Lüderitzbucht, so that even she got a flavour of diamond fever. In June 1909, we travelled together to Tsumeb, where I had to sort out our local branch of the Company, and even went to Grootfontein, travelling there by a six-span mule cart. In Tsumeb I caught malaria again, but after a few months off I was well again thanks to a strong horse-quinine cure.
By the end of 1909 the first German South West provincial government had been created by the government. Half of the members were elected by the population and half appointed by the governor. I was appointed by the Governor as representative of the Company. At the same time local councils were also created for the bigger towns, Windhoek, Swakopmund, Karibib, Lüderitzbucht and Keetmanshoop, who had to manage local affairs with a mayor.
The National Council met usually twice a year, three to six weeks at a time, for which I had to stay in Windhoek. I often had a hard time at the meetings and some hard battles to fight; The Company possessed the mining rights in the diamond areas, and all third parties working the diamond fields needed to pay their respective taxes to them because of that. There was envy and hatred expressed against the Company, and others sought to challenge their rights and tried to persuade the government to arrange for special measures.
With the founding of municipalities a property-tax law also came into force that threatened to strangle the Company, with its immense holdings of land in Swakopmund and Lüderitzbucht. It was left up to the two communities to establish their town boundaries in order to form a development plan. So as to sting the Company for as much tax as possible, the towns had declared within their boundaries an area of land so absurdly large that even without the First World War it would have taken fifty years to build upon it, and the only solution was for the Company to cede a large part of the land to the ownership of the municipalities. The negotiations over, it took more than two years to complete the contracts and surveys, bringing more of the same daunting but exhilarating work. The biggest farm sale, which Schettler and I managed in 1909, was to the Liebig Company in Khomas Highlands, a tract of 400,000 hectares.
In 1909 I received from the Chairman of the Supervisory Board in Berlin, Direktor Koch of Deutsche Bank, a letter telling me that the Board had decided to appoint me as co-director of the Company in Berlin. However, he asked me to reply and say openly and honestly whether this was currently feasible, or whether the wider interests of the Company required that I remain at my post in the diamond fields. This was a difficult decision for me because the position of director in Berlin was very tempting, but I had to answer truthfully that my current role was more important for the longer-term interests of the Company in South-West Africa. I was then appointed as deputy director in the diamond fields.
At the end of 1909 the Berlin Board sent out an assessor, Dr Ratjen, to rule in the legal matters in all the contracts with the government, the municipalities and diamond companies. I worked with him for a long time in Lüderitzbucht to achieve the land transfers to the local municipality. My colleague Schettler had an interest in a diamond company whose rights had been challenged by the Company. In 1910 he was suspended from his position and resigned from the Company, and in his place came Dr. Reuning,[53] who had founded the Deutschen Diamanten Gesellschaft in 1909. He joined me as deputy director, and I worked well and harmoniously with him until 1921. But I did at the same time obtain a special sole power of attorney for cases when the two of us could not agree. Dr. Reuning, as a geologist, had the whole of mining and our own small tin, scheelite etc mine operations under him.
1910 diary
In February 1910 I undertook a ten-day trip by horse and bullock cart with a former Schutztruppe captain called Steinhausen, who came out for a German sheep-breeding society.
21 February 1910
12.40pm from Swakopmund via Otavi station. 7.40pm evening in Onguati.
22 February 1910
7.30am from Onguati, 10am Omaruru. Met Hauptmann Steinhausen.
23 February 1910
Afternoon, 3pm ox cart in direction Okombahe, evening thunderstorms and heavy rain.
24 February 1910
Rode out at 7am, rain. Cart 9.50am at Otjompaue North (Kemnitz Farm). River open water, good grazing. 4pm, cart set off, we arrived 5.10pm riding. 6pm in Johannesbank, plenty of water, 3 kilometre ride, cart arrived 8 am, outstpanned for night.
25 February 1910
5am cart, we rode out 5.45am. 7am Okarundu (Sager Farm) 7.15am (Sander) 7.30 last pondokkies of Okarundu (Bastards). Cart came 8.30am. Poor pasture, water far away on the other side of the river, deep waterhole. 3.15pm, cart further on, rode at 4.20pm. 5.20pm Kawab (Graf von Bentheim’s Farm) beautiful landscape, Area with high forest cover, good pasture. Unsaddled about 3 kilometres behind Kawab, cart arrived 7pm, stop for night, rain overnight.
26 February 1910
All off at 6am, we arrived 7am at Okombahe, cart 8am. Outspanned at the end of the village, poor pasture at Okombahe, no open water in river. Practically the only thing the kaffirs grow in their gardens is tobacco. Set off again 4pm, very hard road, crossed the river five times, twice within a couple of kilometres. In Dawetsaub no pasture and no open water, abandoned settlements, outspanned in grass about three kilometres further on at 7.45pm. Heavy rain overnight. In the afternoon killed three puff-adders and five scorpions.
27 February 1910
Started at 7am, very difficult road, often going up steeply; beautiful landscape, high tree cover but grazing bad. 9am outspanned about six kilometres from Tsumtsaub, strong west wind, rain and thunderstorms. At 11.40 continued in the rain to Aubinhonis, where we arrived 12.40. Location very dry, poor pasture in an area away from the river. There is always open water here in the river, now just a six-metre-deep water-hole at the edge of the bank. A lot of kaffirs here with their cattle, but not growing anything. Heavy rain during the afternoon and night.
28 February 1910
We spent the morning at Aubinhonis because, according to the natives, there was neither pasture nor water further along the river, Lewater quite dry, and Hasselund spoiled by cattle. For the sake of the oxen we could not therefore carry on via Achas and Lewater but had to strike out across country and try to meet the track between Okombahe and Spitzkopje.
The Autobiography of Eugen Mansfeld Page 8