Page:The Little Karoo (1925).djvu/11

Introduction is an important place, and I would say naught to diminish its importance; but since even to-day it counts barely a hundred thousand citizens, the citizens of the big towns of Britain and the United States are not likely to be over-impressed by its prestige. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the Little Karoo its prestige was and is enormous, and the inhabitants of the Little Karoo have to visit the humming, bewildering metropolis sometimes. How do they reach it? Up to as late as 1913 the favourite way for the English colonists was to trek first to Mossel Bay and then to take ship, the voyage lasting in good weather a day and a night—and in bad weather any number of days. But to get to Mossel Bay the travellers had to cross the Outeniqua mountains, with passes of extreme steepness; the old Cradock pass, abandoned many years ago, was so steep that the oxen would ascend the final slopes on their knees, and when the oxen could not get up even on their knees the men would take the waggons to pieces [vii]