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Updated: June 11, 2025
On my way to the Karroo I had to pass through Somerset East, and it so fell out that I fell in with a countryman from Edinburgh, who chanced to be going to Somerset in the same "passenger-cart" with myself. His name must have been a novelty once, though much of its freshness is worn off now it was Brown. Our cart had a hood; the roads were very bad, and the behaviour of that hood was stupendous!
They are named after the small, succulent, Karroo-bush, which represents the grass of other plains, and is excellent food for cattle, sheep, and ostriches. These plains embrace a considerable portion of the territory of the Cape. The Karroo is pre-eminently lumpy. Its roads in most places are merely the result of traffic. They, also, are lumpy.
One continually sees half a dozen ostriches stalking solemnly about a huge piece of the veldt, with no farm-house anywhere in sight, and it is difficult to understand how these people contrive to catch their animals. At the lower extremity of the vast Nieuweveld range which shuts in the Karroo on the west lies the little township of Matjesfontein, a veritable oasis in the desert.
Some weak tribe of that nation, he thought, had sought refuge from an enemy by making their home in the great karroo, or desert, through which the expedition was now passing. They had poisoned the pool for the purpose of preventing their enemies from receiving a supply of water while pursuing them.
The thunder had rolled away like a bad dream. The long level silver shafts of the dawn were flooding the heights, raindrops glittered like diamonds on every kopje and karroo bush, leaving the deep donga bathed in the solemn pall of mysterious night.
Next morning Conrad completed the loading of his waggons, placed his wife and children there was still a baby! in them, mounted his horse with the sons who yet remained with him, and bade farewell to the old home on the karroo. He was followed by a long train of his compatriots' waggons. They all crossed the frontier into Kafirland and thenceforth deemed themselves free!
Some mysterious charm, hidden from the eyes of the unsympathetic tourist, dwells in the Karroo. The country folk who inhabit these vast plains all agree that to live in them is to love them.
"Afar in the desert," far beyond the frontier settlements of the colony, far from the influences of civilisation, in the home of the wild beast and the savage, the explorers now ride under the blaze of the noontide sun. They had passed over mountain and dale into the burning plains of the karroo, and for many hours had travelled without water or shelter from the scorching heat.
As we passed through the Karroo somebody remarked that a Cape newspaper had suggested that our yeomen should ultimately settle in the country and continue their pastoral life in the veldt-farms of South Africa. Evidently the journalist who wrote this article imagines that our gallant yeomen were all tillers of the soil.
At first the route lay through fertile valleys and lovely mountain scenery, but soon this changed, and for hundreds of miles the travellers had to pass through the desolate region of the Karroo desert. When about half-way through this sterile district, they came to the site upon which was to be built the village of Beaufort West, where they were most kindly entertained by a Scotchman named Mr.
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