Private Robert Hart, just 18, in the green-and-black kilt of the Argyllshire Highlanders, gazed in awe at the wild skyline of fantastic mountains in the Cape spring of 1795. This was at the end of a four-month voyage of con64257nement, scurvy, and general misery in a troopship. Hart did not guess that this would become his home and he himself the 64257rst of all English-speaking South Africans. Had he kept a diary, it could have been taken as a text book to the history of the Colony - from the arrival of the British troops at the 64257rst taking of the Cape, through the uprising in Graaif-Reinet, the arrival of the 1820 Settlers and the ensuing turbulent frontier wars - until his death in 1865. He served as adjutant of the Cape Regiment, he chose the site where Grahamstown now stands, he took Thomas Pringle on a memorable journey through the lichen-hung forests of the frontier, he managed the Somerset farm on the slopes of the Boschberg to supply produce to the British troops engaged i