South Africa

A visitor to the Republic of South Africa might profitably make his first sightseeing objective the Voortrekker's Monument at the administrative capital, Pretoria. Here he will find memorialized in sculptured stone the epic of the migrations of Dutch colonists from the Cape in search of new pastures and to escape British rule. He will see depicted the battles with the Bantus who were coming south also in search of habitable land, the peace treaties with great chiefs and the rise of Afrikaaner leaders. An American will be struck by similarities in events with his own history as well as in clothes and in type of covered wagons of the colonists. Before the latter half of the 19th century, little that transpired in South Africa was of any great international moment. The country had not attracted a great many settlers (about 15,000 Europeans in 1800 compared to about 2 million in the American colonies in 1776). Although some gold was being mined the majority of population was engaged in trade or subsistence farming.