South Africa, from Arab Domination to British Rule

Abstract

ONE of the objects of this book is to bring out the contrast between Portuguese rule in South Africa and the influence exerted by England. The contrast is certainly striking enough; and it is shown most clearly, as in the present work, by a simple statement of historic facts. In the first chapter, Prof. Keane sketches the career of the Portuguese in thevarious South African regions they have dominated. This is followed by translations from the “Africa” of Dapper, a Dutch writer of the seventeenth century, showing that at that time the Portuguese stationed on the African coasts made no effort to acquire extensive knowledge of the interior. The editor then records the main facts relating to the Dutch and English settlements in the south, and the recent movements northward to Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, and Mashonaland. Mr. J. W. Ellerton Fry, late of the Royal Observatory, Cape Town, Lieutenant of the British South African Company's expeditionary force, gives an account of what he himself observed during the march into Mashonaland in 1890; and much information with regard to the east coast of Africa at Beira, Pungwe, and the Zambesi is presented in notes from the diary and correspondence of Mr. Neville H. Davis, late surveyor and hydrographer to the Queensland Government, who, in 1890, accompanied an expedition sent to East Africa to discover whether there was any mineral or other wealth in concessions granted by the Mozambique Company. The book has not been very systematically planned; but it brings together so many facts which are not readily accessible elsewhere, that it cannot fail to interest readers whose attention is for any reason especially directed to South Africa. It includes several excellent maps, and two engravings of Cape Town, showing Cape Town as it was in 1668, and as it is in 1891.