Beside still waters
The tale of this hamlet, situated northeast of Ermelo in Mpumalanga, starts with a Scotsman who had a plan, Alexander McCorkindale. He journeyed by ship to the former Natal in 1856 along with his wife, Mary, and several other family members. Alexander’s idea was to establish a Scottish settlement that other Scots could immigrate to, but his proposal was turned down in both Natal and the Free State.
In 1863, he travelled to the region southwest of Swaziland with one of his in-laws, David Forbes, who was a big-game hunter, trader and land surveyor. Here, Alexander reportedly felt that “the Scottish Highlands had been transported to the African wilds”.
So it was with fresh zeal that he approached the president of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR), MW Pretorius, to discuss his plan to establish a community of Scottish immigrants amid the rolling grass plains and large lakes. The president was impressed with the Scotsman’s proposal, because the area was still fairly uninhabited after Swazi King Mswati II had given it to the Voortrekkers in 1855–the aim being to provide Swaziland with additional protection against the Zulus. What’s more, the ZAR government was feeling the pinch… and the promise of a financial injection sealed the deal.
The Glasgow and South African Company was founded in 1866 and the ZAR sold 200 farms to this entity. Alexander named the settlement New Scotland, and renamed Zeekoei Pan as Miss Chrissie’s Lake after President Pretorius’s daughter, Christina, of whom the
