CHAPTER I
The Early History and Occupation by the Dutch East India Company.
I N one of those reflections which delight us by their simplicity and astonish us by their profundity, Pascal remarks that the first object of a man’s study is his own person, that is to say, that portion of matter which is immediately under his own control. But he adds that a man can never attain to a full knowledge of himself until he has mastered the science of the universe. And the same thought occurs in a somewhat different form in that defiant line in the opening stanza of Mr Rudyard Kipling’s ballad of “ The English Flag ”—
“ And what should they know of England, who only England know ? ”
Somewhat on this principle I am going to commence the study of South Africa by a review of the leading characteristics of the other three great provinces of the Empire —Australasia, Canada, and India; and by a comparison of South Africa with these provinces.
South Africa—which means for us Africa south of the Zambesi, omitting the German territory on the west, and the Portuguese territory on the east, coasts—has an area (in round numbers) of one and a quarter million square miles, and a population of four millions. It resembles Australia to some extent in physical characteristics, for in both countries there are central and western desert lands,
A