back in America spring was in full bloom. I looked out on the same view
that had thrilled the Portuguese adventurers of the fifteenth century
when they swept for the first time into Table Bay. Behind the harbor
rose Table Mountain and stretching from it downward to the sea was a
land with verdure clad and aglare with the African sun that was to
scorch my paths for months to come.

Capetown nestles at the foot of a vast flat-topped mass of granite
unique among the natural elevations of the world. She is another melting
pot. Here mingle Kaffir and Boer, Basuto and Britisher, East Indian and
Zulu. The hardy rancher and fortune-hunter from the North Country rub
shoulders with the globe-trotter. In the bustling streets modern
taxicabs vie for space with antiquated hansoms bearing names like "Never
Say Die," "Home Sweet Home," or "Honeysuckle." All the horse-drawn
public vehicles have names.

You get a familiar feel of America in this South African country and
especially in the Cape Colony, which is a place of fruits, flowers and
sunshine resembling California. There is the sense of newness in the
atmosphere, and something of the abandon that you encounter among the
people of Australia and certain parts of Canada. It comes from life
spent in the open and the spirit of pioneering that within a
comparatively short time has wrested a huge domain from the savage.

What strikes the observer at once is the sharp conflict of race, first,
between black and white, and then, between Briton and Boer. South of the
Zambesi River,--and this includes Rhodesia and the Union of South
Africa,--the native outnumbers the white more than six to one and he is
increasing at a much greater rate than the European. Hence you have an
inevitable conflict. Race lies at the root of the South African trouble
and the racial reconciliation that Rhodes and Botha set their hopes upon
remains an elusive quantity.

I got a hint of what Smuts was up against the moment I arrived. I had
cabled him of my coming and he sent an orderly to the steamer with a
note of welcome and inviting me to lunch with him at the House of
Parliament the next day. In the letter, among other things he said: "You
will find this a really interesting country, full of curious problems."
How curious they were I was soon to find out.

I called for him at his modest book-lined office in a street behind the
Parliament Buildings and we walked together to the House. Heretofore I
had only s