4 



Gogga Brown 



My story cannot even deal adequately with all 

 the achievements of this remarkable man, who 

 was stranded in South Africa in the year 1858. 

 Then, as everyone knows, this new country was 

 still almost a desert with regard to science, and 

 still something of an island cut off from the outer 

 world of thought. It will tell something, however, 

 of what this scientific Crusoe did in his lonely sur- 

 roundings, how he was not long in setting up such 

 equipment as he needed for the life he proposed 

 to lead, and how he adapted his outlook to the 

 place in which his really fortunate lot was cast. 



For Brown had been born with an Aladdin's 

 key in his hand, and he had the 1 open sesame * 

 with which to unlock the gates of Nature's secret 

 hiding-places. Where you and I see only scrubby 

 parched-up veld and sunburnt koppie, he could 

 see that he stood on the age-long sands of old 

 lagoons. He already knew that he could gather 

 ferns by old Triassic shores, albeit mountains 

 now, hurled heavenwards by earth's convulsions. 

 In the architecture of these olympic sandstone 

 tables, in which, at the best, you and I discern 

 artistic shapes now gilded by the rosy morn, now 

 curtained by the purple mists of sunset, he could 

 read the rich inlay of the earth's encrustment and 

 follow the sequence of Life's changing forms. 

 What to you and me are but the deep cool 



