["Cape Town-Devil's Peak", 'Grahams Town-Bathurst Street'] before 1880

Here we see two photographic prints affixed within an album, offering glimpses of Cape Town and Grahams Town. Dominating the Cape Town view is Devil's Peak, a name resonating with the ancient human impulse to project the fearsome and unknown onto the natural world. Mountains, throughout history, have been imbued with symbolic weight, serving as sites of divine revelation or as the dwelling places of gods and demons. Think of Mount Olympus or the biblical Mount Sinai. The symbolism of the mountain here as the 'Devil's Peak' takes on a particularly loaded significance given the colonial context. What anxieties, what psychological projections, led settlers to ascribe such a name to this imposing natural feature? Perhaps the mountain became a repository for subconscious fears, embodying the untamed wilderness. As time marches on, the mountain persists, its name and symbolism evolving and echoing in the collective human consciousness.