Bridges

Some time ago, in a galaxy very far away, someone contacted me from the USA and told me that he was putting together a list of people who put together lists. As I had just published a "List of 19th Century Mission Stations in Southern Africa" he thought I qualified for the honor, and would I mind if he included me in his List of Lists or, more accurately, his List of Listers. At first I was a little put off. After all lists are boring, and who wants to be on a list of boring people, but then, after thinking about it for a little while, I eventually wrote back and said that, as he seemed to be harmless enough, he was welcome to my blessings. I have never heard from him since then, nor did I ever find out what did happen to his "List of Lists", but as no such book has ever made it onto the CNA's Best Seller List, or the Shortlist for the Booker Prize, I have always assumed that it never got published. Which fact made me very sad as I eventually came to realise that lists are the very foundation of a structuralist research methodology, a system of gathering data which seeks to find common ground between seemingly disparate snippets of information. I also came to realise that even telephone books have their place in a research library, and that the Directories published by the Likes of Donaldson & Hill before the...

The Vaal river, a formidable obstacle at times, had to be crossed by the early settlers to open the way to the North. One of the crossing points in the days just after the Voortrekkers arrived was Viljoen's Drift. Josua Jacobus Viljoen had occupied the farm, Oshel, to the south of the river opposite what is now Vereeniging. The name Oshel (translated ox hell) came from the sandy ground which made life difficult for the oxen pulling a wagon. He selected a convenient point for an ox-wagon to cross the river, made some improvements and opened it to other farmers in the area.

The Drift in the 19th century (Africana Library Johannesburg)

The original caption of the image above reads: 'the last two wagons of a transport rider's convoy crossing the Vaal River… heading north with timber.' There is a bit of a problem with this. Studying the shadows it appears that the convoy was actually heading south. In addition to this, the mountain range in the background does not make sense (but looking from the south it could be the Suikerbosrand).

In 1857 Josua’s son, Hans Viljoen, placed an advertisement in the Staats Courant in Potchefstroom offering a ferry service to take loads across the river; wagons, horses, large and small...