Thus it came about that I found myself in Capetown. Everybody goes out to South Africa from England on those Union Castle boats so familiar to all readers of English novels. Like the P. & O. vessels that Kipling wrote about in his Indian stories, they are among the favorite first aids to the makers of fiction. Hosts of heroes in books--and some in real life--sail each year to their romantic fate aboard them. It was the first day of the South African winter when I arrived, but 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.