Asbestos Mountains

The Asbestos Mountains is a range of hills in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, stretching south-southwest from Kuruman, where the range is known as the Kuruman Hills, to Prieska. The range lies about 150 km west of Kimberley and rises from the Ghaap Plateau.

The mountains were named for the asbestos which was mined in the 20th century and is found as a variety of amphibole called crocidolite. Veins occur in slaty rocks, and are associated with jaspers and quartzites rich in magnetite and brown iron-ore. Geologically it belongs to the Griquatown series.

The Griquas, for whom Griquatown was named, were a Khoikhoi people who in 1800 were led by a freed slave, Adam Kok, from Piketberg in the western Cape to the foothills of the Asbestos Mountains where they settled at a place called Klaarwater. John Campbell, (1766–1840), a Scottish missionary in South Africa, renamed it Griquatown in 1813. The mission station became a staging post for expeditions to the interior - here David Livingstone met his future wife, Mary Moffat, daughter of the missionary Robert Moffat - William Burchell visited here in 1811.

John Campbell described the mountains in his book "Travels in South Africa: Undertaken at the request of the Missionary Society":

Daylight discovered the beauty of the scenery that surrounded Hardcastle. It lies in a valley not above three miles in circumference surrounded by the Asbestos Mountains of diversified shapes. There are four long passes between the mountains, leading from it in different directions, which not only increase the convenience of the situation, but add greatly to the grandeur of the prospect around. Some of us walked after breakfast to examine the asbestos rocks, where we found plenty of that rare mineral between strata of rocks. That which becomes, by a little beating, soft as cotton, is all of Prussian blue. When ascending a mountain alone, I found some of the colour of gold, but not soft, or of a cotton texture like the blue; some I found white, and brown, and green &c. Had this land been known to the ancients in the days of imperial Rome, many a mercantile pilgrimage would have been made to the Asbestos Mountains in Griqualand. Were the ladies' gowns in England woven of this substance, many lives would annually be saved, that are lost by their dress catching fire.

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