HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHIES : SOUTH AFRICA. (British Empire Educational Press. 6d.)—A
quite admirable little.history of. South Africa—No. in the Empire Series—is published in pamphlet form. To have made so short a book on such a large subject so interesting is indeed a tour de force. The first paragraph contains what will, we think, be to many readers a surprising piece of information. A hundred years before Bartholomew Diaz was supposed to have discovered South Africa there existed in the Medicean Atlas—to be seen in the Laurentian Library in Florence—a map of South Africa showing the general shape of Africa from North to South, including the Gulf of Guinea and the Cape of Good Hope. What European nation discovered South Africa will probably never be known. The first biographies in this little volume concern Johan van Riebeek and Simon van der Stel and his son Willem van der Stel. Riebeek's Governorship lasted twelve years fr.mi 1652 to 1664. He kept a journal which tells of the native problem as it already existed and of his efforts " to draw them to us." The reign of the Van der Stels covered twenty-eight years from 1679 to 1707. The writer wisely makes room here for detail and leaves the reader wondering if the art of colonization has advanced as much as we habitually think. The lives of Sir George Grey, Sir Bartle Frere, Kruger, Botha, Rhodes, Dr. Jameson and Livingstone are also shortly described. From cover to cover there is not a dull line in this excellent sixpennyworth of reading.
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