196 PRESERVATION OF NATIONAL MONUMENTS. 



of these witnesses remain, and it is our bounden duty to protect 

 them and hand them down to the future generations. In Cape- 

 town, the mother city, is the Castle which reminds us of two and 

 a half centuries that have passed by. It is our oldest monument 

 of the days since the first Dutch settlement. Within its walls 

 the affairs of state were settled for a century and a half, and round 

 it was woven the military, civil and social life of the Cape. It was 

 the pivot round which the early civilisation centred. 



I will not dwell on the various buildings in Capetown which 

 record the life of the 18th Century, but would like to mention 

 the Old Town House which now holds the collection of Dutch and 

 Flemish Masters, the Koopmans de Wet Museum, which exempli- 

 fies a gentleman's residence of the 18th Century, two of the oldest 

 church buildings with their carved pulpits by Anreith. All these 

 can be looked upon as monuments of a national character. 



Here and there are stones which record the days of the Dutch 

 East India Company, and which should receive our attention. 

 Such are Van Plettenberg's stone erected at the bay bearing his 

 name in 1778, and the boundary stone put up by Governor 

 v. d. Graaff and now in the town of George. There still exists one 

 of the Company's beacons put up to mark its boundary. We all 

 know the fate of the Van Plettenberg's Beacon erected near to 

 what is now the town of Colesberg. For generations this marked 

 the furthermost boundary of the Colony. A small portion is now 

 in the South African Museum, but the original stone had suffered 

 from time to time from the hand of the vandal. And so we could 

 go through a number of landmarks of this kind. 



But we have another kind which is found in various areas. 

 There are many fortifications which tell us of the 18th and 19th 

 Centuries. The old line of defences around Capetown, the mili- 

 tary forts in the Eastern Province, the old Fort at Durban. All 

 these require our attention. There are also some of the Drostdy 

 Buildings in the Cape Province, as at Tulbagh and Uitenhage. 

 These played quite an important role in the early days. 



What must we do to preserve these relics of another age ? 

 It is necessary to awaken the people of the country to their 

 national responsibility. The people of South Africa have now 

 developed a strong national consciousness, and this spirit should 

 be fostered in every branch of their national life. Until they are 

 fully alive to the fact that the preservation of our national monu- 

 ments is a duty which falls upon everyone, we shall fall very short 

 of what should be done. There still remains much for us to do, 

 and by stimulating this desire to preserve the records of the past 

 we shall be furthering this worthy object. We must not forget 

 that in this work we should inculcate a spirit of reverence in the 

 children, who will become the citizens of the future, and would 

 have then learned the value of and necessity for preserving our 

 national monuments. 



