No, Nelson’s Kop towering mysteriously on the horizon at Oban Historical Guest farm wasn’t named after lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805). But who then? What are the deep dark secrets of Nelson’s Kop?
Bamboes Berg
With a little imagination, one of the rocks on the north side of Nelson’s Kop looks like the profile of Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), a hero of the Napoleonic Wars who died at the battle of Waterloo, wearing his famous “bicorn hat”.
The ridge is large and elongated enough to qualify as a mountain, but the double meaning of “kop” probably led to the name Nelson’s Kop. On occasion, Helena Coetzee (née Uys) wrote about the kop’s name as follows: “Nelsons Kop was always Bamboo Mountain but because one Leeuw caught one of the pioneers’ or travelers’ horse there, the mountain was then named Nelson after the horse’s name and not after Lord Nelson as many people claim”.
It therefore appears as if Nelson’s Kop’s name could already have existed before the mountain was looked at with British eyes and sentiments and it was thought that the profile of Lord Nelson could be seen in one of the rocks. In early 1956 there were reports floating around about J.J. (Koos) Uys’ disappearance on 6 January of the same year and the extensive search for him which was commandeered at Nelson’s Kop and the nearby residences. Uys’ body was found more than six weeks later by a young Marthinus Jansen, who had climbed the mountain to hunt rock pigeons. Uys’ “feet were entwined with fishing line and apparently he fell or jumped from the steep cliffs. His fall was so violent that most of the bones were broken, and one of his arms was torn from his body”. During the judicial enquiry, it was found that Uys, whose family had a history of suicide and whose own mental well-being had previously been questioned, had jumped off a 90 meter high cliff.
At Nelson’s Kop, a forest of yellowwood (Podocarpus latifolius) grows at an altitude of 2,230 meters and cliff vultures (Gyps coprotheres) and bearded vultures (Gypaetus barbatus) sleep there.
The mountain must have had a lot of native wood (especially yellowwood) in the past. In the nineteenth century there was a public servitude registered where people could cut yellowwood or any other wood against the mountain. Some of the trees were so big that only one could be loaded onto a wagon at a time. The selling price for such a large piece of wood was £5.
Sourced from Die Platberg van Harrismith written by Johan Lodewyk Marais
