Jan van Riebeeck, the first governor, arrived at Table Bay twenty-six years after the Dutch East India Company had sent Peter Minuit to the New World with the first shipload of settlers for New Amsterdam.

It is of more than passing interest to recall that there is much that is identical in the early development of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope and that at Fort Amsterdam, Manhattan. The forts at these two points were built to the same plan, and it is stated that Wall Street, New York, and Wale Street, Cape Town, are of common origin, having taken their names from the Walloons - religious refugees from Europe - who first lived at these addresses.

The nine-mile-long town of Paarl presided over by the massive outcrop of Paarl (pearl) Rock, is said to have the largest wine cellars in the Southern Hemisphere. A strong association exists between the vineyards of this fruitful valley and the gracefully-gabled old-Dutch Colonial homesteads, both essential ingredients of the Western Province scene.

After 500 miles of this we came to the bush, a wilderness of thickets with occasional cleared spots where the kraals or groups of native huts are built. Small herds of strange cattle and sheep can be seen now and then. Natives live in clean poverty. All except infants are fully clad and seem well nourished.

Worcester is another important centre for the processing of grapes, fruit and other agricultural produce. Two-thirds of the South African raisin crop is grown in the nearby Goudini Valley. Worcester is also renowned for its educational institutions.

Touws River (2,532 ft.), an important railway depot, is reached by way of the steep and winding Hex River Mountains Pass. Matroosberg (7,381 ft.), highest peak in the Western Province and rendezvous of winter sportsmen, is passed en route. Touws River is the terminal point of the electrified railway line from Cape Town. Here the fruitful Western Province ends and the “Karoo” country begins.

Karoo is a Hottentot word and means - dry place. In appearance the countryside is not unlike Arizona in parts. This vast tableland about 100,000 square miles in extent, which seems to the uninitiated a wearying expanse of waste land, is actually one of the greatest of the World's sheep-walks. Many millions of wool-growing and other breeds of sheep thrive upon the Karoo bush which, curiously enough, relies for its nutriment not upon the sparse rainfall but upon underground water supplies.