Travelling through South Africa in 1877 amid debates over the annexation of the Transvaal and the proposed federation of the region’s colonies and states, Trollope traces the history of the Cape from early Dutch settlement to British rule and examines its population, colonial administration, legislature, and the political life of Cape Town while interpreting the relations among European settlers and Indigenous peoples through the assumptions of his own Victorian imperial perspective, then journeys through Knysna, George, the Cango Caves, Paarl, Ceres, Worcester, Robertson, Swellendam, Port Elizabeth, and Grahamstown, observing agriculture, commerce, transportation, urban development, and landscape in order to present both the economic possibilities of the Cape Colony and the immense distances, limited infrastructure, and political complications that constrain its development.