Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South AfricaAnderson, Andrew A.
History
Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa
Anderson, Andrew A.
Africa, Southern -- Description and travel; Anderson, Andrew A. -- Travel -- Africa, Southern
The principal roads through this part of the country to the interior
pass through Hope Town in the Cape Colony to Kuruman, the mission
station where the Rev. Robert Moffat spent forty-five years of his life
in missionary labour, which station has been largely increased by the
addition of an extensive college erected of late years at a great
expense for the teaching of native youths for missionary purposes. The
site is admirably situated, having an unlimited supply of the purest
water from a spring some few miles above the station, which issues from
a cave in the side of the hill in a picturesque locality. The mission
houses and church of the London Missionary Society are substantial and
well-built, and have fine gardens well stocked with fruit trees, and the
orange and lemon grow to great perfection. Mr. Chapman, who has a large
store, takes great interest in his garden, and grows every kind of
vegetable known in England. Twenty years ago there were several stores;
three at Upper Kuruman, about a mile from the mission station.
The bold outline of the lofty range of hills at the back of Kuruman,
distant some six miles, adds greatly to the beauty of the adjoining
country, which is undulating and well-wooded, with open plains and
Kaffir gardens, and is one of the most healthy parts of South Central
Africa. The roads from Kuruman branch off in every direction to the
several natives' towns. The main transport road from Kuruman and
Diamond-Fields goes to Maceby Station on the Molapo, in the chief
Montsoia territory, and very pretty roads to travel over. On leaving
the station there are several small kraals on the road to Kopong, which
is a large native town situated on the Matlarin, a tributary of the
Kuruman river, which latter flows past Bakclaris, and then south, past
Comopere, from thence through a wild uninhabited country for 180 miles,
where it joins the Hygap river, which is the lower portion of the
Molapo. The main road continues on from Kopong, through a fine forest
of kameel-doorn trees for many miles, then enters upon open veldt,
passing little and great brack-pans to the Setlakoole and Moretsane
rivers, then bush again to Maceby's station Pitsan; the distance between
Kuruman and that town is 154 miles. Several roads branch off from it to
different parts; one goes to Melemas on the Molapo, another to Marico,
and also others to Monkuruan's at Taungs. Maamuosa, where the Koranna
Captain Moshoen and his people live, a bad and wicked tribe, who have
been helping the Boers lately to make war on Monkuruan, and whose land
the Boers have taken from him. The principal main transport road from
the Cape Colony and Diamond-Fields runs direct to Taungs in a north-east
direction to Maceby's and then north, which has by the late Convention
with the Transvaal been preserved. There are no very lofty hills in
this part of Bechuanaland. The principal ones are those at Kuruman,
those near Taungs and Swaatberg.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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