Pretoria

“ Looking at Pretoria from the hills one sees a forest of trees, with white towers and walls rising above the green. The walls may be lath and plaster, but the general effect is as pretty as the eye could wish. For Johannesburg there is no such salvation. Looked at from one of her many hills, the meanness and irregularity are painfully clear. She has far more trees than Pretoria, but she is so long and sprawling that the bare ribs have pushed aside their covering. An extended brickfield is the first impression: a prosperous powder-factory is the last. ”

“ Pretoria lies in a shallow basin in the heart of the hills—a fitting home for the Sleeping Princess. It is hushed and drowsy and overrun by a tangle of roses. Weeping willows edge the streets, which are wide and as neglected as a country road. Open gutters carry off, or rather contain, the sewage of the town. Its altitude is lower than that of Johannesburg, and the climate very relaxing. Every month or couple of months the town is full of stir and life. The Boers trek in from neighbouring farms with their long span of oxen, as many as eighteen and twenty being yoked to a wagon. ”

“ No wonder, then, that Steve, who possessed a keenly appreciative eye for the beautiful, was enchanted with the view which met his eye when he entered Pretoria through the poort, from which emerges the road leading into it from Johannesburg, and he felt—like so many others have felt before and since—that once having seen Pretoria, a man may travel the world over, but he would ever feel a longing to be back in Pretoria. ”

“ One feels more comfortable in Pretoria after having spent some time in the Gold City, for he has left the red dust behind, the unattractive cyanide banks, the clouds of black smoke and the sooty buildings. The air is free from smoke, from the dirt banks, and a healthier atmosphere prevails. Pretoria is Dutch; Johannesburg cosmopolitan. ”

“ These are the lads who in their packed thousands tramped yesterday through Pretoria. Past old Kruger's house, a cottage you might almost call it, with its lions in front and several old burghers in black crying in the verandah, we went at a foot's pace, choking in the cloud of red dust, with the strains of "God Save the Queen" in our ears. We emerge into the square. ”

“ Pretoria, as the seat of government, has quite a dignity of its own, and with the forty-five hundred or more people within its limits has quite an imposing air of grandeur. It has broad streets, spacious squares, and many fine architectural features. ”

“ Southward lies Pretoria, a collection of large Government buildings and of small villas amid masses of trees, nestling beneath a high range of hills, along the crest of which rise the famous forts. The view on the west is merely a vast plain which reaches to the horizon, and a large hill obliterates any view to the east. ”

“ It is a real pleasure to the European traveller to meet so many able and well-read men as the bench and bar of Pretoria contain; and he finds it odd that many of them should be excluded from the franchise and most of them regarded with suspicion by the ruling powers. Johannesburg (with its mining environs) has nearly all the industry and wealth, and half the whole white population of the Transvaal—a country, be it remembered, as large as Great Britain. Pretoria and the lonely country to the north, east, and west [63] have the rest of the population and all the power. ”

“ Even Nature herself has been improved upon, if I may be allowed to say so. Plantations of trees have been planted, where formerly bare plots of ground existed, beautifully laid out ornamental and flower gardens enchant the vision. A block of tares, which grew only a crop of grass formerly, is now laid out in a beautiful park, worthy the name, with a large fish pond in the centre, and even a substantially 39 built bandstand has been added lately. All in all, Pretoria more than deserves the name so often applied to it, ‘Pretty Pretoria’; it really deserves to be called beautiful Pretoria. ”

“ Early in July I left Pretoria for Cape Town, and arrived in England at the end of the month.
Africa had been an interesting experience, especially the long marches from the Modder to Pretoria, and my time there was, as long as we were on the move, really delightful. There is something extraordinarily attractive about the high veldt; the air is as exhilarating as champagne, and the endless rolling plain without a boundary to be seen has a charm which it is not easy to describe ”

“ The hope for the future of South Africa is that they or their descendants may learn that that banner which has come to wave above Pretoria means no racial intolerance, no greed for gold, no paltering with injustice or corruption, but that it means one law for all and one freedom for all, as it does in every other continent in the whole broad earth. ”

“ We were certain that the mounted men would not reach the capital that night, as of course they had to keep in touch with the ox-waggons, and as we had to tramp, we determined to tramp to some purpose. Our goal was no cold bivouac on the hard earth outside Pretoria, with the usual weary waiting for the ox-waggons stuck in a spruit about four miles astern, but Pretoria itself, where bread and stores were to be obtained, a square meal at a table, and, oh! ye gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, a bed. Imbued with this idea, with sloped rifle we gaily commenced our return march. ”

“ Most people do not realize that the Union of South Africa has two capitals. Capetown with the House of Parliament is the center of legislation, while Pretoria, the ancient Kruger stronghold, with its magnificent new Union buildings atop a commanding eminence, is the fountain-head of administration. With Irene only ten miles away it is easy for Smuts to live with his family after the adjournment of Parliament, and go in to his office at Pretoria every day. ”

“ They had set out in quest of the Golden Rock, had passed from under the granite walls of Table Mountain, through the vine-clad valleys of the Paarl, up on to the melancholy plateau of the Karroo, crossed the Orange River in the night, sped for a day through the treeless flats of the Free State, and had arrived at Pretoria—a town of strange contrasts, where the low-walled house of the old days stood in the shadow of the lofty modern building, where the slow-moving Boer looked askance at the restless uitlanders—unwelcome visitors from the crowded haunts of Europe. ”

“ Throughout the Transvaal in every town and hamlet, the House of God is invariably the central building, as also it is the centre of the most potent influence. In both Republics the minister was emphatically "a Master in Israel"; and in the welcome shadows of this great church I waited to witness one of the most interesting events of the century—the proclaiming of Pretoria a British city by the official hoisting in it, as earlier in Bloemfontein, of the British flag; and by the stately "march past" of the British troops. ”

“ Pretoria (whites, 10) , capital of the Transvaal, stands on a mountain-enclosed plain 1000 m. NE. of Cape Town, and nearly 300 m. W. of Lorenzo Marquez, Delagoa Bay, with both of which and with Natal it is connected by rail. It is a thriving town, growing rapidly with flourishing trade, the see of a bishop, and containing twenty English schools. Coal is found near, and wheat, tobacco, cotton, and indigo grown. ”

“ Pretoria.—The capital of the Transvaal, lies thirty-two miles north of Johannesburg. Population 12,000. It has many fine public buildings, the chiefest being the splendid Government Buildings, which were erected at a cost of £200,000. The newly completed Courts of Justice are also immensely imposing. There is an English Cathedral, and many churches of all denominations, a public library, a public hospital, a museum, some large hotels, and several clubs, notably the Pretoria Club. ”

“ I left Pretoria on July the 17th in a wagon with eight horses, accompanied by two friends, for an excursion into the Waterburg district of the Transvaal. On this occasion we travelled about one hundred and fifty miles north of Pretoria in the course of a fortnight, returning about the same distance back again. We had a half-breed servant named Sole with us, who made himself generally useful during our journey. All this time we camped out day and night, sleeping always in the open veldt, in true gipsy fashion. ”

“ Forty miles to the east is Pretoria, the capital of the republic and seat of Government. It is pleasantly situated between low ranges of metamorphic hills that run east and west, and is south of the Magalisberg mountains seven miles. The city is built on an open plain, that gradually slopes towards the north, supplied with beautiful fountains that rise a few miles on the south of the town, the water falling into the Apes river. An isolated hill, about three miles on the east of the town, is a conspicuous object in the landscape. The streets run parallel ”

“ Below on the flats there are many miles of pine woods, valleys and streams and homesteads, and the Pretoria road making a bold trail over a hill. In winter the horizon is lit with veld-fires; in summer and spring there are the wild sunsets of the veld and soft mulberry gloamings. The slope behind shuts out the town and the mine chimneys, and yet the whole place is not three miles from Market Square. Whatever happens, nothing can harm the lucky dwellers on the ridge. Though the city creep ten miles into the plain beneath, there is still ample prospect ”

“ An English Governor is to live there, and there will be English troops;—I fear, for many years. Balls will be given at Pretoria. Judges will hold their courts there, and a Bishop will live in a Pretorian Bishopstowe. But the Pretoria of to-day has its unknown squares, and its broad ill defined streets about which houses straggle in an apparently formless way, none of which have as yet achieved the honours of a second storey. The brooks flow pleasantly, but sometimes demand an inconvenient amount of jumping. The streets lie in holes, in which when it rains the mud is very deep. ”

“ After all his boasting, that if the British ever entered Pretoria they would find him sitting in front of his house, his despicable conduct when danger approached was only what was to be expected from a man whose folly and ambition had brought ruin on the people over whom he ruled, and who had trusted him only too blindly. ”

“ Looking out of my window in the heart of civilisation at the evening sun that glorifies the Pretoria green kopjes, the scene dissolves. In its place comes the picture of the first gaunt daylight on the 26th of March last at fifteen kilometres, just going into Swakopmund. The mist from the coast had rolled inland; through it after dawn came miles of horsemen and wagons, guns, limbers, lorries, ambulances. Every human unit in that column was covered in white dust, and every horse was weary. ”

“ Pretoria is about 450 miles from Durban, which at present is the seaport it uses, and the road to Durban is but half made and unbridged. The traffic is by oxen, and oxen cannot travel in dry weather because there is no grass for them to eat. They often cannot travel in wet weather because the rivers are impassable and the mud is overwhelming. If any country ever wanted a Railway it is the Transvaal.
But whence shall the money come? Pretoria is about 300 miles distant from the excellent Portuguese harbour at Delagoa Bay, and it was to this outlet that President Burgers looked. ”

“ It was, as nearly as I can remember, midday when the train-load of prisoners reached Pretoria. We pulled up in a sort of siding with an earth platform on the right side which opened into the streets of the town. The day was fine, and the sun shone brightly. There was a considerable crowd of people to receive us; ugly women with bright parasols, loafers and ragamuffins, fat burghers too heavy to ride at the front, and a long line of untidy, white-helmeted policemen—'zarps' as they were called—who looked like broken-down constabulary. ”

“ Like every other town in the Transvaal, Pretoria shows signs of rapidly-growing prosperity. Public buildings and private dwelling-houses are springing up in every direction. The Post Office, recently finished, is capacious and commodious; and the new Government buildings for the accommodation of the Volksraad and the Courts of Justice, already commenced, but, as yet, only a few feet from the ground, and which cover a very largePg 64 space, promise to be very fine and imposing. ”

“ The simple, valiant burghers at the front, fighting bravely as they had been told 'for their farms,' claimed respect, if not sympathy. But here in Pretoria all was petty and contemptible. Slimy, sleek officials of all nationalities—the red-faced, snub-nosed Hollander, the oily Portuguese half-caste—thrust or wormed their way through the crowd to look. ”

“ I dreaded and detested more than words can express the prospect of being caught and dragged back to Pretoria. I do not mean that I would rather have died than have been retaken, but I have often feared death for much less. I found no comfort in any of the philosophical ideas which some men parade in their hours of ease and strength and safety. ”

“ Great is the change when one passes from the busy Johannesburg to the sleepy Pretoria, the political capital of the country, laid out forty-three years ago, and made the seat of government in 1863. The little town—it has about 12,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of whom are whites—lies in a warm and well watered valley—about thirty miles N.N.E. of Johannesburg. The gum-trees and willows that have grown up swiftly in the gardens and along the avenues embower it ”