Pilgrim's Rest
You enter the village of Pilgrim’s Rest in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, alongside a stream once filled with gold. Alec “Wheelbarrow” Patterson discovered gold in the stream in 1873 and his fellow prospector, William Traffard, declared, “This pilgrim has come to rest.” Thus, the camp became known as Pilgrim’s Rest and the stream as Pilgrim’s Creek.
Over 1500 prospectors rushed to find alluvial gold in Pilgrim’s Creek and build a town of tents and wooden shacks. Not long after they made their gold sluices, the early settlers built St. Mary's Church uphill from the town and overlooking Pilgrim’s Creek. St. Mary's stone walls and iron roof, compared to the village saloons and stick-built shacks, suggested a more eternal scheme of things.
How is it that no matter where we are, we have a longing for the spiritual? The Greeks built stone temples in Italy and Sicily, the Romans celebrated their gods at altars in what would become London and Paris. Here, at the end of the planet, five months by sea from England, these early settlers’ longing seems especially poignant.
It's interesting to speculate on their state of mind as they dragged along their baggage in oxcarts, a Bible tucked inside a gold sieve, with chisels for building a stone church at the end of the world -- common as the rocky dirt, yet heavenly.