Over this unique combination of prison house and hospital there floated a very roughly-made and utterly tattered red cross flag, which now serves as a memento of one of the most humiliating sights it ever fell to my lot to witness, and I could not help picturing to myself the overpowering heartache those prisoners must have felt as hour after hour they were hurried farther and yet farther still through deep defiles and vast mountain fastnesses into a region where it must have seemed as though hope or help could never reach them. But "men, not mountains, determine the fate of nations"; and to-day, through the mercy of our God, that pestilential pen is no longer any Englishman's prison.
Pretty scenery, and superb.
Our next halting place was at Godwand River, still on the Delagoa line, and here we found a wee bit of river scenery almost rivalling the beauty of the stream that has given to Lynmouth its world-wide fame. At this little frequented place two rivers meet, which even in the driest part of the dry season are still real rivers, and would both make superb trout streams, if once properly stocked, as many a river at home has been.
But just a little farther on we found scenery immeasurably more grand than anything we had ever seen before. The Dutch name of this astounding place is Kaapsche Hoop, which seems reminiscent of "The Cape of Good Hope," though it lies prodigiously far from any sea. It apparently owes its sanguine name to the fact that hereabouts the earliest discoveries of gold in the Transvaal were made. But it is also popularly called "The Devil's Kantoor," just as in the Valley of Rocks at Lynton we have "The Devil's Cheesering," and other possessions of the same sable owner. This African marvel is, however, much more than a mere valley of rocks, and it bids absolute defiance to my ripest descriptive powers. It is a vast area covered with rocks so grotesquely shaped and utterly fantastic as would have satisfied the artistic taste, and would have yielded fresh inspiration to the soul of a Gustave Doré. The rocks are evidently all igneous and volcanic, but often stand apart in separate columns, and sometimes bear a striking resemblance to enormous beasts or images that might once have served for Oriental idols.
Indeed, looked at by the bewitching but deceptive light of the moon, the whole place lends itself supremely well to every man's individual fancy, and even my unimaginative mind could easily have brought itself to see here a once majestic antediluvian city with its palaces and temples, but now wrecked and ruined by manifold upheavals of nature, and worn into rarest mockeries of its ancient splendours by the wild storms of many a millennium.
What I did certainly see, however, among those rocks were sundry roughly constructed shelters for snipers, who were therefrom to have picked off our men and horses as they crossed the adjacent drift. Terrible havoc might have been wrought in the ranks of the Guards' Brigade, without apparently the loss of a single Transvaaler's life, but there is no citadel under the sun the Boers just then had heart enough to hold.
Immediately adjoining this unique city of rocks is a stupendous cliff from which, our best travelled officers say, the finest panoramic view in the whole world is obtained. The cliff drops almost straight down twelve or fifteen hundred feet, and at its base huge baboons could be seen sporting, quite heedless of an onlooking army. Straight across what looked like an almost level plain, which, nevertheless, was seamed by many a deep defile and scarred by the unfruitful toil of many a gold-seeker, lay another great range of hills, with range rising beyond range, but with the town of Barberton, which I visited twenty months later, lying like a tiny white patch at the foot of the nearest range, some twenty miles away. To the right this plateau looked as though the tempestuous waves of the Atlantic had broken in at that end with overwhelming force, and then had been suddenly arrested and petrified while wave still battled with wave. It is such a view of far-reaching grandeur as I may never hope to see again, even were I to roam the wide world round; and could Kaapsche Hoop, with its absolutely fascinating attractiveness, be transplanted to, say Greenwich Park, any enterprising vendor of tea and shrimps who managed to secure a vested interest in the same, might reasonably hope to make such a fortune out of it as even a Rothschild need not despise.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XIII
WAR'S WANTON WASTE
Day after day we steadily worked our way down to Koomati Poort, even when climbing such terrific hills that we sometimes seemed like men toiling to the top of a seven-storied house in order to reach the cellar. Hence Monday morning found us still seemingly close to "The Devil's Kantoor," which we had reached on the previous Saturday, though meanwhile we had tramped up and down and in and out, till we could travel no farther, all day on Sunday.