Twenty-Five Years in a Waggon in South Africa: Sport and Travel in South Africa

by Andrew A. Anderson

Thirty miles to the west is Klerksdarp, on Schoon spruit, and to the north-west of Potchefstroom, seventy miles, is Lichtenburg, a village erected in 1868. There is also between these two the village of Hartebeestfontein. Potchefstroom from Kimberley is 224 miles. Following the Vaal down west is Bloomhof, a poor miserable village, and on towards Kimberley is Christiana, another poor and desolate place; they have been the rallying-points for the freebooters to attack the Bechuana chief. The whole of this division of the Transvaal is open and uninteresting.

Between Christiana and Lichtenburg is a farm called Gestop, situated in a very pretty valley, close to a picturesque hill. On the northern slope are some ancient carvings of animals on the rocks, which are composed of a close-grained kind of freestone; several of them are on rocks at the base of the bill, others half-way up, made no doubt by the people who made the others, the workmanship being similar. Up the valley by the side of the bill was, when I used to visit it, a favourite resort for the muscovy duck, and where I have frequently gone to shoot them, but they are most difficult to get near. The only way of getting a shot at them was to hide in the long reeds that grew on the banks of the stream and wait for them to fly over, which they did regularly about four o’clock in the afternoon, where they remained the night, and away in the morning to some other favourite locality. A few hundred yards from the farm-house is a stone or rather a kind of slate quarry. The stone is of a light colour, very soft; it can be sawn into any shape required, and is much used for grave-stones; slabs of any size and thickness can be obtained; it can also be used for mantelpieces, and any other kind of work. The hills and veldt on the farm have many valuable herbs, and two kinds of wild tea, equal in flavour to that from China,—in fact, I prefer it to the imported teas, and it is a splendid tonic.

The country round is more diversified with hill and dale, and thickly wooded with the mimosa and other trees and bush. Mr Van Zyl, who occupied the farm when I knew it, sold it some time after, and treked with his family and all his belongings out of the Transvaal to be free from the Boer Government, and went into the interior hunting, where the Namaquas robbed him of all his property, waggons, and everything, and shot him and his son.

A few miles to the north of Gestop are the famous salt-pans, and Barber’s pan, of which a description has been given, and a few miles to the south-east is Reid vlei, a pretty piece of water, a great resort of wild-fowl in those days long past. It is a wonder now to see a single duck; it is pretty nearly the same with the game. At that time they could be counted by the thousand, now it takes a long ride to meet with a few. I have had troop after troop pass in front of my oxen as I have been treking along the road, by the thousand, and not ten miles from this farm; and, as I camped out in the afternoon on the plains to remain the night, have been much interested in watching the old gnu-bull standing alone doing sentry duty, keeping guard over the cows and young ones when feeding a few hundred yards from him. He would always select an elevated piece of ground to have a good view round, and every few minutes he would change his position to all quarters of the compass, and the first sign of danger give several barks as warning to the others, and then, with a quick switch of his tail, head down, gallop off to his friends and remove them further away from any enemy that may be approaching.

In all these open flats there are always to be found large dried-up pans, all of them brack, which is very suggestive of sea-water. It is not only the pans but the entire soil that is brack, from one end of South Africa to the other, some parts more than others. It is only in small pools, or at fountains, where fresh water can be obtained. To one large dry pan, half a mile in diameter, and fifty feet deep, with very nice sloping sides, I gave the name of Chalcedony pan, from the immense quantity that covered the ground, not only round the pan but for miles in every direction; and on all these high flats, every variety of agate, flint, cornelian, and other kinds of every colour and form, as also splendid specimens of petrified woods, and in the stone hills, large shells, but empty of the snails, many of them beautifully marked, also small fresh-water shells of various sizes, and I have spent many pleasant days prospecting for some of these specimens.

Near Christiana, on the Vaal river, are two extensive dry brack-pans, the largest is two miles round. On the south side the ground forms a small hill with bush and trees upon it; this is between Christiana and Bloomhof, where there are several salt-pans a few miles to the north of that town, where a large quantity of salt is procured annually of good quality. The salt can only be obtained on certain occasions, which is very peculiar, showing there must be a vast quantity of salt below the pans’ beds.

These salt-pans are quite dry and free from water for some four or five months a year, when there is no salt to be seen, and it is not until the rainy season is over, and the water that has collected in the pans during that time (some two feet deep) has in the course of a few months evaporated, that the salt appears to have been drawn from the deposit below to the surface by the action of the water upon it, and a thick deposit is left, which is collected by the proprietor, and sold at various prices. I have paid for a sack containing 200 lbs. 3 shillings and sometimes 5 shillings, according to the supply and demand. Some salt-pans do not give a sufficient deposit to pay the cost of collecting. There is a great sale for it throughout the country; but table-salt is supplied from England, as there has been no means of cleaning the native salt from the impurities it contains. The Boers and natives use it. Some of these salt-pans will yield in the season nearly 1000 nuids of 200 lbs. each, and yet there appears to be no diminution in the supply, showing there must be extensive deposits beneath the pan beds. And so impregnated are some portions of these extensive grass plains that the grass that grows upon them is called the sour veldt, and other parts, where the surface-soil has been washed down from a higher level and deposited on the flats, is called the sweet veldt. The sour veldt is easily distinguishable by the white coating on the ground, which the oxen lick when they want salt.

I always kept my oxen in good condition by giving them salt, once or twice a week, from a supply kept in the waggon for them, and it is a great preventative also against that common sickness the lungsick, which is very fatal to oxen all through South Africa. There are several salt and brack-pans in the northern division of the republic, but the most numerous and the largest are to the south of New Scotland. Lake Cressie is the most extensive, in shape something like a horse-shoe, and nearly twenty miles round, lying in an open grass country with few bushes. The water in it is permanent, and cannot be very brackish, as a hippopotamus has been known to live in it since it was first discovered. The road from Lydenburg to Wakkerstroom passes on the east side of the head of Lake Cressie, where there is a store, and a more desolate-looking country to pass through is rarely to be found.

But Barber’s pan is the most picturesque of all I have visited; this also forms a kind of horse-shoe in shape. The outer banks are high on the west, with bush and trees; the inner side is much lower, and thick bush, and was always a favourite place for outspanning, and remaining a few days for duck-shooting—and also the black and white geese, being a secluded spot, seldom visited by the white or black man. Game as well as birds could always be obtained, and plenty of wolves also. In circumference it must be some fifteen miles. A few miles to the north-east is another extensive pan, long but narrow. They both hold water all the year round, as they are deep.

At Wolverfontein, where Mr John Dunn has a pleasant farm situated near the eye of the Moi river, upon which Potchefstroom is built, I visited the limestone cave, which Mr Dunn pointed out to me. This cave passes underground for several hundred yards, and terminates at an underground river, which flows to the north-east in a great stream, and is supposed to come out at the eye of the Moi river, three miles away. Close to the cave, in the high lime formation of a light-brown colour, the rock is composed of one-half bones, teeth, entire jaws with the teeth in them, belonging to some large animal, mixed with quartz rock. It is a strange fact to find quartz so intimately mixed up with this limestone and bones. I collected several fine specimens of bone imbedded in this quartz and limestone mixture. One of the specimens of part of a jaw I measured in situ. The bone, in which the teeth were perfect, measured twelve inches, perfectly straight, sharply pointed at both ends, and one and a quarter inch in the broadest part; the shape being exactly like a canoe or some of the fast river-skiffs. A single row of eight teeth down the middle, two of the centre ones being the largest, nearly an inch square; the other three on each side were smaller, until the two end ones measured a third of an inch square; they may have belonged to a ruminant animal. The peculiar form of the bone the teeth were fixed in I thought singular. I procured four similar specimens, two of the same size, and two smaller, with several other pieces of rock, half limestone, half quartz, in which are many perfect specimens of teeth and bone.