Travel SOUTH AFRICA RETURNING to Britain (as I have) after

an absence of twelve

years, it is impossihle not to be struck by an interest in South Africa of an entirely new kind. This fresh interest has perhaps much to do with the tremendous development in

communications of recent years. Caigo vessels travel; faster than- the mail Skips of less than a decade' ago, and regular air services hive brought Capetown within a week of London, While wireless has brought South Africa and:the other Doniinions to the Englishman's hearth. People of moderate means have suddenly realised that a holiday in' South Africa need not be ruled out on account of expense or time ; 'and the rapid indus- dialiiation of the country has completely altered the scope and range orethigration.

1 In attempting to draw a picture of a country many times the size of the British Isles, it is impossible to make comparisons with any one country, for if S. Africa offers nothing else she offers diversity—diversity in time, climate, scenery and peoples. In Europe man dominates nature ; in Africa nature, in its immensity, more often than not dominates man. The late Lord Curzon once described the Victoria Falls as the " World's river wonder." He might have said the same of the Augh- rabies Falls on the Orange River, had he seen them. No one has ever adequately described these falls—their savage beauty by day, their awful beauty in the light of the moon ; the vast Zambesi, one and a quarter miles wide, plunging four hundred feet, swirling and rushing—there you have in a sense the north- em gateway to a country where old and new are for ever meeting.

From there to Table Bay, 1,500 miles to the south, this diversity which is Southern Africa presents only one common factor—immensity ; great distances, mountains, deep gorges and rolling boundless veld. The tumbled kopjes of the Matopo Hills are -as. different from the cloud-caressed Valley of a Thousand Hills as the rushing Zambesi is from the trout- filled mountain streams of Natal ; the mpani-covered stretches of Rhodesia from the forest-clad slopes of the Cape. Even the sunset which stirs rainbow colours into the tumultuous clouds over the Limpopo is different from the sunset which spreads its liquid fire across the Karoo.

Perhaps it is a little unorthodox to start a journey from the wrong end, but the country to the northperhaps the cradle of man—has claims which make it seem natural to switch from • the Victoria Falls to the Matopos, where the " immense and brooding spirit " of Rhodes affects the subconscious so actively, or to the Zimbabwe, ruins of a civilisation that left neither skeleton nor skull to guide the archaeologists who differ by thousands of years in their attempts to date it. The spirit of the past seems to linger here, catching the midnight fancy in the Temple or making strange fantasies with the shadows of the Acropolis.

Fifty years ago and you would have left the land of the war- like Matabele by rattling stage-coach ; today you leave it with all the comforts of modern travel and speed south, letting your mind dwell for a moment on Wilson who fought the " Rorke's Drift " of the north, and on those Jameson Raiders who altered S. African history. You will skirt the Kalahari, where the primitive bushman still hunts with poisoned arrow, stop at Mafeking with its Boer War memories, and pass into Johan-. nesburg, 6,000 feet up, where thousands burrow below sea level in the storehouse of the world's gold.

In Johannesburg, with its theatres, its towering buildings, its golf courses, lawn-tennis courts and sports fields, its gay night life, it is difficult to realise that half a century ago it was a mining camp. Today it has an individuality of its own—it is new, it is proud and it is vigorous. It is electrically alive and living electrically, with its 50-mile-long chain of mine dumps ever a reminder of the source of its wealth. Daily services of fast 'planes link it with Durban and Capetown. In two hours you cross mountain and plain to the country's biggest seaport ; in two hours the waving grasses of the high-veld give way to the peaks of the Drakensberg, snow-capped in winter, ruggedly stark in summer ; and in those two hours you will fly over country rich in history and scenic attraction. As you come in to land you will catch a fleeting glimpse of the. Durban Bay, a pool of blue, dotted with the white sails of innumerable yachts and fringed with coconut palms. Durban is a city of contrasts, a city of colour. The mauve of the jacaranda mixes with the

first blooms of the flamboyant which will later lace Durban

with carpets of scarlet and outshine even the magenta of the bourgainvillea and the poinsettia in all its eleven shades. The

centre of South Africa's greatest annual racing event, with a

prize of £6,00o, Durban attracts visitors from all over the Union, who come to bask on her beaches and to gain health and

strength in her rolling breakers. If Johannesburg is elec- trically minded, Durban is even more so. As the commencing point of the longest stretch of electrified railway in the British Empire, it is perhaps not unnatural that she boasts electricity as cheap as, if not cheaper than, anywhere else in the world. It is in Durban that the race contrast is so vivid. Here you have turbaned Indians with their basked of tropical fruits, Zulu women with their brightly beaded kilts and clay-dressed hair, church and mosque, ricksha and the modern motor-car- all forming one picturesque whole.

In the Kruger National Park a far-seeing government has provided 8,000 square miles of natural zoo where the lion and the leopard gaze in resignation at the camera, and hunt the zebra as they have done for centuries past. But it is not in the Transvaal alone that the innumerable species of South Africa's wild life are for ever preserved. In the rugged beauty of Natal and Zululand which once shook beneath the feet of Chaka's warriors, there are six public game reserves, apart from the national park and private reserves. From Durban it is but a day's journey to Umfolosi, where the white rhino, one of the few remaining links with prehistoric mammals and the only survivor of the southern species, has been saved from exter- mination ; to Hluhluwe with its evergreen sub-tropical vegetation, awe-inspiring forests and quiet pools, where the timid Nyala runs in hundreds ; to Mkuzi the lion sanctuary ; or, if you leave very early, to Ndumu where crocodiles bask and hippos blow. Close by is the St. Lucia Lake and the bird sanctuary of False Bay, breeding ground of innumerable species of waterfowl, where flight upon flight of geese, duck, pelican and flamingo pass overhead. St. Lucia has well been called " the fisherman's paradise," with its wealth of sporting fish, and its individual catches of over hundreds of pounds:-

Neither is it a far cry from Durban to Giant's Castle, higheSi point in the Drakenberge, and the home of the eland, largest ante+ lope in existence. From the summit of the mountain stretched a panorama extending over an area of more than 1E2,000 miles, and from the depths of the gorges one gains g,lirnp-Ses of tl mighty Cliffs where the eagle rears its young and, the babooVi makes the krantzes ring with its deep-throated " watia-ah ! "

From Durban the Cape-bound mail 'plane passes over the surfing beaches of the south coast, glittering like a necklace Of jewels for zoo miles ; over Pondoland with its almoSt biblical conception of flocks and herds and its romantic horsenien, ii

rolling' green slopeS and .kraals that nestle against the slOpes; . _ to Port St. John's', whose gateway of towering stone is one of the sights of the south.

From Port Elizabeth it is the garden route to Capetovnr, through the Knysna Forest where trees thousands of year's old mingle to shut out the sun, on through orchards Where peach, apricot, plum and pear may be in full bloom or lciided to the ground with their fruit—down into the depths of forest=.. clad gorges with their unsurpassed .views, past the Wilderness; Mecca of honeymoon couples, to Table Bay.

The Cape Peninsula is a world in itself. Here the heathei and wild flowers bloom along the slopes of the mountains in many shades and the blue of the Indian Ocean matchei the blue of the sky. The coast is a coast of white sands, of line upotri line of breakers, with precipitous slopes rising sheer from the sea. Capetown presents an unforgettable spectacle from the top of Table Mountain. From here you may gaze across two oceans, you may see the shadow-blue peaks of the Hottentots Holland, and you may trace the avenues of .oak and pine and let your eye linger over the smiling vineyards far below.

You have sped across Southern Africa and: you have seen but a fraction of it. Every year the number of people who visit the Union increases. They have discovered that it is a country of opportunity as well as a country of travel, a country of peace and prosperity, and, what is more important, they have found that it is by no means an expensive country in which to live