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Updated: October 18, 2025
There is a gradual descent to the west; from occasional hilly ranges those dwindle to kopjes, and to still less elevated "randjes" occurring in clusters more and more apart, until yet further westwards one gets to the merely undulating sterile approaches of the Karoo and the plains around and beyond Kimberley, which merge at last in the still lower Kalahara desert.
About forty years ago the Karoo plains, the Orange Free State, and Transvaal were, so to say, monopolised by milliards of game. Almost all those vast herds have disappeared since, having been killed off by natives and Boers for their hides and for food, or else scared away farther north, where rinderpest extirpated nearly all the rest in 1895-1897.
At this moment an object came under the eyes of Von Bloom, that at once arrested his attention. It was a curious appearance along the lower part of the sky, in the direction in which Hendrik and Swartboy had gone, but apparently beyond them. It resembled a dun-coloured mist or smoke, as if the plain at a great distance was on fire! Could that be so? Had some one fired the karoo bushes?
I travelled all through that night, and the whole of the next day, through the most remarkable kind of country I ever saw. This is the wonderful tract of country called the Great Karoo. Not a sign of animal life is to be detected, at this period of the year. During the summer months it affords pasturage for large flocks of sheep.
We felt instinctively, or somehow, that the little General could be trusted to dig for diamonds. The news of "Bobs" made a chink in the cloud and disclosed its silver lining. Kitchener, who accompanied Lord Roberts as Chief of Staff, had shown in his generation some skill as a pioneer of deserts; the Karoo would be child's play to him.
In the stony African Karoo, where every plant is eagerly sought out for food by the scanty local fauna, there are tubers which exactly resemble the pebbles around them; and I have little doubt that our perfectly harmless English dead-nettle secures itself from the attacks of browsing animals by its close likeness to the wholly unrelated, but well-protected, stinging-nettle.
And then veldt and then veldt. Plenty of nice, sandy karoo where all the sand-storms come from! But there are always the hills beyond. I am going to explore them some day." "May I come too?" he said. She smiled at him. "Of course, partner. We will have a castle right at the top of the world, shall we? There will be mountain gorges and great torrents, and ferns and rhododendrons everywhere.
To a Dutch country wedding guests start up in numbers astonishing to one who has merely ridden through the plains of sparsely-inhabited karoo.
Soon it was filling the valley and mingling with the other force already encamped, and now everyone is busy washing or eating near the picturesque little cluster of Kaffir kraals and big shady trees; for the region of karoo and shadeless plain has been left far behind.
At this period of the war between twenty and thirty thousand Cape colonists were under arms. Many of these were untrained levies, but they possessed the martial spirit of the race, and they set free more seasoned troops for other duties. The opening of the year saw the mobile column of Free Staters 150 miles over the border, pushing swiftly south over the barren surface of the Karoo.
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