Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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Perhaps one sees the Western Province to best advantage in the Hex River Valley, with its mountains of solid rock rising up thousands of feet on either hand, the vast strata contorted into fantastic shapes, and below them the smiling valley with its sprinkling of wine-farms. 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.

Here it was that the wandering Hottentots on the shore saw the first sails creep across the waters of their blue bay. Here it was that in 1652 Jan Anthony van Riebeek, the servant of the Dutch East Indian Company, landed with his dependents and built the first houses and made the first gardens. The fort which they built in those early days may still be seen near the sea shore; the small block-houses which you may still see on the spurs of the mountain, a disputed tradition says, were used in those days as outlook towers against the incursions of possible foes.