Georg Ludwig Engelhard Krebs

In 1830 Carl Julius Kemper and his uncle, G.L.E Krebs, the specimen collector, were on a trip to the Orange River. Kemper assisted his uncle to collect specimens for Henry Lichten-stein, director of the Berlin Zoo, who had undertaken extensive travels in South Africa. A local resident at tZamenkomst showed them the beacon. Kemper took time to draw two puzzlingly different sketches of what remained of the beacon. One was later copied by the owner of Quaggasfontein. In September 1844 James Michael Howell, a resident of Colesberg, stumbled across the beacon while hunting. He was unable to identify what he had seen and wrote to the Graham’s Town Journal to report his observation. The report prompted Kemper to respond in the Journal a few days later and to include with his letter a copy of his drawing. The story of the beacon then went quiet for almost sixty years. Residents in the region knew of the beacon but could not find it. In 1892 the brothers Henry and George Murray re-discovered the beacon soon after they had bought Quaggasfontein. George was a surveyor from Pretoria who had seen a survey that had been conducted in 1838 (or a copy of it). From the survey he estimated the likely position of the beacon relative to the north-west corner of Quaggasfontein. After some searching the brothers eventually found smoked-stained, but recognis-able, fragments scattered on the ground. Presumably the local indigenous folk had used the beacon site as a “braai-plek” (barbecue). For thirteen years the Murrays displayed the fragments on the stoep of their home.