The British novelist, John Bucham, visited the Poort in 1903 and wrote:
“A cliff sank sheer from the moonlight into utter blackness. We heard the different notes of the two rivers – the rapid Magalies and the sedated Crocodile; and then we came to the bank of the united streams and scrambling along it found ourselves in the throat of the pass. High walls of naked rock rose on either hand and at last, after some hard walking, we saw a space of clear star-sown sky and the land beyond the mountains. I had expected a brawling torrent; instead, I found a long dark lagoon sleeping between the sheer sides. In the profound silence, the place had the air of some underground world.

The black waters seemed to have drowsed there since the Creation, unfathomably deep – a witch’s cauldron, where the savage spirits of the hills might show their faces. Even as we gazed, the moon came over the crest: the cliff in front sprang into a dazzling whiteness which shimmered
back from the lagoon below. Forgotten Earth-dwellers, Mosilikatse, and his chiefs, Boer commandos, British yeomanry – all have passed, and their successors will pass and be forgotten. And in the sense of man’s littleness is comfort for it is part of the title of our inheritance. The veld and
the mountains continue forever, austerely impartial to their human occupants – it is for the newcomer to prove his right to endure by the qualities which nature has marked for endurance.”
(Bucham The African Colony.)
The celebrated artist Charles Bell, who accompanied Andrew Smith on his expedition to Mzilikazi’s kingdom in 1836, was also impressed by the site and painted it as a savagely beautiful scene.