{"id":9415,"date":"2009-05-09T05:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-09T05:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/struth-tree-mail-2\/"},"modified":"2009-05-09T05:35:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-09T05:35:00","slug":"struth-tree-mail-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2009\/05\/struth-tree-mail-2\/","title":{"rendered":"STRUTH ! Tree Mail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_OY-0d2rKv_Q\/SgUWChevTfI\/AAAAAAAAGaQ\/Hfqq36mj2eo\/s1600-h\/Mossel+Bay+Post+Office+on+site+of+Post+Office+Tree-706033.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_OY-0d2rKv_Q\/SgUWChevTfI\/AAAAAAAAGaQ\/Hfqq36mj2eo\/s320\/Mossel+Bay+Post+Office+on+site+of+Post+Office+Tree-706033.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>IN his continuing search for the more weird, whacky and wonderous in the world of travel, DAVID ELLIS finds South Africa&#8217;s postal service began 150 years before European settlement of the country \u2013 and that the first letter &#8220;posted&#8221; there was literally given the boot.<\/p>\n<p>It was back in 1500 when ships of many nations were stopping off in what is now South Africa to take-on water and whatever food they could barter, that a Portuguese bloke came up with the idea of putting mail for delivery back home, or from whence they&#8217;d recently come, in an old seaman&#8217;s boot under a tree in what is now Mossel Bay; ships heading in the opposite direction would clear the boot and deliver its contents to the countries to which it was addressed<\/p>\n<p>The first letter left this way by Pedro de Aitade, a naval commander, was addressed to the King of Portugal. It was found a year later in the boot by the Third East India Fleet, and doing the right thing, they had it delivered to Portugal and the King.<\/p>\n<p>Today a large stone replica of the original boot stands on de Aitade&#8217;s original boot site \u2013 509 years after he left the first letter there in 1500 \u2013 and mail posted in this boot-shaped Post Box is franked &#8220;Post Office Tree Mossel Bay.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IN his continuing search for the more weird, whacky and wonderous in the world of travel, DAVID ELLIS finds South Africa&#8217;s postal service began 150 years before European settlement of the country \u2013 and that the first letter &#8220;posted&#8221; there was literally given the boot. It was back in 1500 when ships of many nations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[376,377],"class_list":["post-9415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-ellis","tag-struth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}