The history of South Africa is the story of the disintegration and eventual reconstruction of a country essentially one in all the main features that make for political unity. It is, as Carlyle said of the United Kingdom, and with even more truth, ' one on the ground plan of the Universe,' a compact block of temperate territory jutting out from tropical Africa into the Southern Ocean. There is a coast fringe, nowhere of any size except in the East, where it belongs to Portugal and falls outside the scope of our story, and immediately round the Cape where it forms a little Italy, a region of orchards and vineyards, the seclusion of which from the life of the veld beyond may have accounted for many mistakes in the days when South Africa was governed from Cape Town. For the rest South Africa is a vast terraced plateau, greener and better watered towards its eastern edge, shading off towards sandy desert on the West, but singularly uniform in all its characteristics, and broken up by no serious natural barriers.