Capetown has none of the raw, unfinished aspect so many Colonial towns
wear, but has a solid, grave dignity of its own, and its suburbs are
unquestionably charming. The settled, permanent look of the town is
perhaps due to the fact that there is not a single wooden house or
fence in Capetown, everything is of substantial brick, stone and iron.
The Dutch were admirable town-planners; since the country has been in
British hands our national haphazard carelessness has asserted itself,
and the city has been extended without any apparent design whatever. I
was certainly not prepared for the magnificent groves of oaks which
are such a feature of Capetown and its vicinity. These oaks, far
larger than any to which we are accustomed, bear witness to the
painstaking thoroughness of the Dutch. Before an oak capable of
withstanding the arid climate and burning sun of South Africa could be
produced, it had to be crossed and re-crossed many times. The existing
stately tree is the fruit of this patient labour; it grows at twice
the pace of our oaks, and attains far larger dimensions; it is quite
useless as a timber tree, but produces enormous acorns which, in windy
weather, descend in showers from the trees and batter the corrugated
iron roofs of the houses with a noise like an air-raid.

The Union of South Africa is unfortunate in having the great range of
the Drakensberg running parallel to the coastline for hundreds of
miles, for until the Zambesi is reached there are practically no
navigable rivers at all. This barrier mountain range, and the
recklessness of the early settlers in cutting down the forests, are
together responsible for the aridity of South Africa. She is, indeed,
as Ezekiel said of old, "planted in the wilderness, in a dry and
thirsty ground." The Cape peninsula is comparatively well-watered;
between the giant rocky buttresses of Table Mountain little clear