SOUTH AFRICA

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 153, 24 March 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

SOUTH AFRICA

on Your Way to England

Union of Many Nations Made South Africa

MANY nations have contributed to the building ot South Africa. Back in the time of Solomon merchants brought ivory and gold from the interior of the African continent and penetrated perhaps even to the Cape. The adventurous northmen are believed to have coasted to that point where the land turns east and north again and the Cape stands, a magnificent sentinel, looking out on to the Southern Ocean. But the real discoverers of the Cape of Storms were Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama, Portuguese navigator-adventurers of the fifteenth century.

IN 1620 two English sea captains claimed Table Bay for England in the name of King James; but their action was not ratified, and it was left to the Dutch to colonize the Cape. In 1648 Leendert Jansz and Nicholas Proot, cast away by shipwreck on the African shore, lived among the natives in the Table Valley. So enthusiastic was their account of the land that the Dutch East India Company decided to establish there a depot for the supply of vegetables and fruit to the lumbering Indiamen. Jan van Reibeek. founder of Cape Colony, landed there in 1652, and established his fort on the margin of a swamp where hippopotami wallowed. The infant colony was augmented in the years that followed by Huguenot families driven from France by Louis XIV. They introduced the wine-growing industry, which flourishes still in the Union. The pioneers pushed inland but little, deterred by the hostile Hottentots and Bushmen, and finally brought to a standstill a few

SOUTH AFRICA, land of gold, diamonds, strange natives and wild animals, of progress and opportunity, sunshine and sub-tropical scenery, has not had direct communication with New Zealand since the” early days of steam navigation and the last days of sail. For many years al! New Zealand’s shipping came south by way of the “Roaring Forties.” Then the opening of Panama diverted the steamer traffic, and the great deserts of the Southern Ocean lay empty, unfurrowed by any keel. Today the great Dominion Monarch has reopened the ancient seaway, and with it the trade and tourist traffic between New Zealand and the Union of South Africa. Little doubt, in the years to come the two sister Dominions will be drawn closer by this new link; just as in the past Australians have come to look upon New Zealand as a little holiday resort cf surpassing beauty in striking contrast to their own land’s peculiar charms, so too, South Africans will come down to the South Seas to seek new and differing attractions under strange skies. And , for the New Zealand traveller, few countries present a greater change from all to which he is accustomed than does South Africa, where the landscape and the people and the climate offer new prospects and a new outlook upon life.

hundred miles into the interior by contact with the formidable Bantu race, conquerors of the remote interior. hi 1795 the forces of William of Orange seized the Cape, and the English tenure was confirmed by the peace of 1814. It was from the hated British rule that the Voortrekkers fled, packing their families and chattels into lumbering covered wagons, drawn by longhorned oxen. They dared the strength of the warlike Zulu tribes, and penetrated far inland—only to be followed and overtaken by the British Government and the annexation of the newly-opened territories. The long and bitter racial conflict at the Cape lasted into modern times, and war and rebellion did nothing to smooth the difficulties. However, recent years have done much to weld the Union into a solid and single-minded nation, and whatever its internal differences of opinion, it has long since claimed its rightful place as a loyal member of the British Commonwealth.