THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



CHAPTER I 



IN THE BEGINNING— A PREAMBLE 



Out of the dim haze of the morning a faint 

 blue ridge stood feebly up and relieved the mono- 

 tony of that nebulous blending of sea and sky 

 which is the daily vision of those who go down 

 into the deep in ships. The white wings of the 

 ocean broke before the steamer's bow and tumbled 

 idly back again into the vast acreage of the waters 

 as the ship sped towards the blur on the far-away 

 line where ocean and clouds mingled — the blur 

 that meant land. An hour went by and the ridge 

 assumed the shape of a giant table with soft, 

 fleecy clouds as a table-cloth. It looked as though 

 its great flat top was pressed against the very 

 floor of Heaven. A little while and white shapes 

 clustering at the foot of the towering rock mass 

 could be distinguished; they might have been 

 crumbs fallen from the snow-white covering of 

 the table. An hour later the anchor was dropping 

 in the Cape Town roadstead; Table Mountain 

 and Lion's Castle seemed to frown down a cold 

 welcome, and the streets and houses and sur-* 

 roundings of the most southern port in Africa 

 afforded the watchers on the decks cause for much 

 interest and speculation. How did the railway 

 scale that forbidding escarpment ? What were the 



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