Taking the term South Africa to include all the country south from the Zambesi and Lake N’gami to Cape Agulhas, it may be said that few territories possess more varied natural features; nevertheless, through it all, from Walfish Bay to Algoa Bay, from the Zambesi to Cape Town, there is in it a certain unity. No South African set down in any part of it could fail to recognize it as his native land; and he could hardly mistake any other for it.

The most noticeable feature in first looking at it, is the strip of lowland country running along the entire south and east coast, and bordered everywhere inland by high mountain ranges.

In the Western Province the coast belt consists of chains of huge mountains forming a network over a tract of country some hundreds of miles in extent, the mountains having at their feet level valleys or small plains. …many of them seem to have been hurled up by one convulsive act; bare strata of rock thousands of feet in extent are raised on end, their jagged edges forming the summits of vast mountain ranges. In the still, peaceful valleys at the feet of these mountains are running streams; in the spring the African heath covers them with red, pink and white bells, and the small wine-farms dot the sides of the valleys with their white houses and green fields, dwarfed under the high, bare mountains. Here and there are little towns and villages, built as only the old Dutch-Huguenots knew how to build, the long, straight streets lined with trees on either hand, and streams of water running down them; and the old thatch-roofed, gabled, white-washed, green-shuttered houses standing back, with their stone stoeps, under the deep shade of the trees, and with their vineyards and orchards behind them. No one can build such towns now. They are as unique as their mountains.

Perhaps one sees the Western Province to best advantage in the Hex River Valley, with its mountains of solid rock rising up… contorted into fantastic shapes, and below them the smiling valley… Hardly less characteristic is Cape Town itself, the capital of the Province and of the whole Colony, which lies on its promontory at the extreme end of the continent. In a valley between two mountains, one high, flat and of pure rock, its stupendous front overhanging the town, the other lower and rounded, its cliff worn away everywhere but on one mighty head which it rears into the blue, the town lies, with its flat-roofed houses and long straight streets, on a bay as blue and delicately curved as that of Naples.

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For ten miles along the foot of the mountains stretch the suburbs of Cape Town, villa and garden, and pine and oak avenue mingling themselves in endless succession. Here it seems a man might dream away his life, buried in roses and plumbago, and forget that pain and care existed.

Perhaps one of the finest views in the world is that from the top of the Kloof behind Cape Town. To your right is Table Mountain, one of the sublimest masses of solid matter in the world; below are the pine woods and the town, with its white, flat houses, and, beyond the blue curved bay and Blue-Berg Strand, the mountains… with a canopy of clouds appearing and receding again into the blue sky. As you turn, behind you is the blue South Atlantic as far as the eye can reach, and the terrible serrated peaks of the Twelve Apostles stand facing it, peak beyond peak, as they have stood for endless ages, with the sea breaking in the little bays at their feet.

…If leaving Cape Town we go a few hundred miles eastward, along the coast, we shall find the lowland belt assume new characteristics. The hills, though high, are softer and more rounded, covered completely with soil and grass; or their sides, and even summits, are clothed in bush, stretching for ten or twenty or forty miles… 

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To see this land typically one should outspan one’s wagon on the top of a height on a hot summer’s day, when not a creature is stirring, and the sun pours down its rays on the flaccid, dust-covered leaves of the bushes. When the leader has gone to take the oxen to water and the driver has gone to lie down behind the bushes, if you stand up on the front chest of the wagon, and look out, as far as your eye can reach, you will see over hills and dales, the bush stretching, silent, motionless, and hot. Not a sound is to be heard; your hand blisters on the tent of the wagon; suddenly a cicada from a clump of bush at your right sets up its keen, shrill cry; it is glorying in the heat and the solitude of the bush. You listen to it in the unbroken silence, till you and it seem to be alone in the world.