dsmiths find difficulty in getting material. The inevitable smuggling
has resulted. In order to put a check on illicit removal, all passengers
now leaving the Union are searched before they board their ships. Nor is
it a half-hearted procedure. It is as drastic as the war-time scrutiny
on frontiers.

To sum up the whole business situation in the Union of South Africa is
to find that the spirit of production,--the most sorely needed thing in
the world today--is that of persistent advance. I dwell on this because
it is in such sharp contrast with what is going on throughout the rest
of a universe that staggers under sloth, and where the will-to-work has
almost become a lost art. That older and more complacent order which is
represented for example by France, Italy and England may well seek
inspiration from this South African beehive.

III

With this economic setting for the whole South African picture and a
visualization of the Cape-to-Cairo Route let us start on the long
journey that eventually took me to the heart of equatorial Africa. The
immediate objectives, so far as this chapter is concerned, are
Kimberley, Johannesburg and Pretoria, names and towns that are
synonymous with thrilling chapters in the development of Africa and more
especially the Union.

You depart from Capetown in the morning and for hours you remain in the
friendly company of the mountains. Table Mountain has hovered over you
during the whole stay at the capital and you regretfully watch this
"Gray Father" fade away in the distance. In the evening you pass through
the Hex River country where the canyon is reminiscent of Colorado. Soon
there bursts upon you the famous Karoo country, so familiar to all
readers of South African novels and more especially those of Olive
Schreiner, Richard Dehan and Sir Percy Fitz Patrick. It is an almost
treeless plain dotted here and there with Boer homesteads. Their
isolation suggests battle with element and soil. The country immediately
around Capetown is a paradise of fruit and flowers, but as you travel
northward the whole character changes. There is less green and more
brown. After the Karoo comes the equally famous veldt, studded with
the _kopjes_ that became a part of the world vocabulary with the Boer
War. Behind these low, long hills,--they suggest flat, rocky
hummocks--the South African burghers made many a desperate stand against
the English.

[Illustration: _Photograph Copyright by W. & D. Downey_