The Karoo as experienced by a British soldier, 1901

The environment near Richmond, Karoo, as experienced by the British forces in 1901: “It was a typical South African nek [mountain pass]. An execrable path winding over the saddle of a low range of tumbled ironstone. Just one of those ranges which force themselves with sheer effrontery out from the level of the plain. Loose sugar-loaf excrescences which stud the sea of prairie with a thousand flat-topped islets, and weave the monotony of the landscape peculiar to this great continent. The rough past-cart track led down into a vast Amphitheatre, so vast that Western Europe can furnish no parallel to it. Yet its counterparts are met and traversed every day by the countless British columns now slowly darning the gaping rent in Africa’s robe of peace. Who, if they had not known, would have said that the beautiful panorama, which the morning sun now unveiled before us, was a theatre of war? Away at our feet stretched mile upon mile of rolling Karoo and blue-grey prairie. True, it was punctuated and ribbed with stunted kopjes. But still the everlasting plain predominated, until it was lost in an autumn haze which no sun could master. Immense – a land without a horizon, a land every characteristic of which inspires a sense of independence and freedom. A sensation – an intoxication, to be felt, not to be described…

“As the morning sun grew stronger, the everlasting grey of the Karoo became jeweled with brighter tints. The middle distance of the plain was spangled with a streak of winding silver. A river tracing its erratic course between the kopje islets. At intervals along its banks, the eye rested upon the patches of darker green. The home plantation of some farm, glimpses of whose whitewashed walls even now caught a glint from the strengthening sun-rays. Here was a stretch of yellow furrow – the finger of civilisation on a virgin waste. Here spots of shimmering white, where the surface of a dam reflected the flooding light of day. Here and there a flock of sheep relieved the monotony of the everlasting grey. While across our front a bunch of brood-mares were galloping in the ecstasy of day and freedom, and a bevy of quaintly pirouetting ostriches gave life to the wonderful picture…

“And presently, a little fan of brown dots opened out on the grey below – opened out and diverged in pairs. Dots so small and insignificant that they looked like ants upon a carriage-drive. Out and out they spread, till they seemed lost and merged with the brood-mares and the ostriches, now ceasing their wild movements and grouping in mild amazement at the strange invasion. And still the dots diverge. It is the advance-guard of our column – heralds of selfish man bringing horrid war into this peaceful vale. As the dots mingle with the ant-heaps on the plain, or are lost in the folds of the grey prairie, a pillar of dust rises from the centre of the fan. A larger mass of brown – the battery and its escort – a great khaki caterpillar creeping across the grey – it is time to be moving, the last mule-wagon has topped the nek [pass] and the last of the rear-guard are leading their horses up the post-cart road”.

– From The Intelligence Officer, On the Heels of De Wet, William Blackwood and Sons, 1902, p. 45-8.

[Information submitted by Doreen Atkinson]