Current Literature
- THE CAPE PENINSULA. By Rene Juta. Illustrated. (Lane. 7s. 6d.)—As one wanders over and around the Ir.apetown flats there will be met much beauty of nature, and also, as is seldom found in South Africa, many a note of bygone history. It is on the history that the author chiefly concentrates in her pleasant rambling book, and, if her English is at times a trifle loose, well, what of it ? We go unbuttoned on a ramble, and we love to walk again in imagination round the Twelve Apostles behind the Table Mountain, which is, as the author rightly emphasizes, one of the world's finest views. Miss Juta has browsed at large over the old Dutch archives, over travel books like Barrow's and Lady Ann Lind- say's letters, and brings out again into the light of day bits of old Capetown's past and well-known names like Cloete and Van Reenen, reminiscences of Constantia, Groote Schuur and Rhodes, sober matter-of-fact details from Van Riebeek's Journal when the Hottentots were an abiding curse at the Cape, and slaves lived in the old Slave House, and even the celebrated inscription in polyglot doggerel on Farmer Peck's inn, the words of which seem (as she quotes them) to have altered a little with the effiuxion of time. For a lady who bears a name so distinguished at Kaapstad as Juts, the author displays an easy indifference to Dutch phonography. But again what of it ? To many the book will bring back happy memories, to more it will open a peep on a long- forgotten or unknown world.
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