pe prospered and grew
stronger in that robust climate. They did not penetrate far inland, for
they were few in number, and all they wanted was to be found close at
hand. But they built themselves houses, and they supplied the Dutch East
India Company with food and water, gradually budding off little
townlets, Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and pushing their settlements up the
long slopes which lead to that great central plateau which extends for
1,500 miles from the edge of the Karoo to the Valley of the Zambesi.

For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the
gradual spreading of the Africanders over the huge expanse of veldt
which lay to the north of them. Cattle-raising became an industry, but
in a country where six acres can hardly support a sheep, large farms are
necessary for even small herds. Six thousand acres was the usual size,
and 5_l._ a year the rent payable to Government. The diseases which
follow the white man had in Africa, as in America and Australia, been
fatal to the natives, and an epidemic of smallpox cleared the country
for the new-comers. Farther and farther north they pushed, founding
little towns here and there, such as Graaf-Reinet and Swellendam, where
a Dutch Reformed Church and a store for the sale of the bare necessaries
of life formed a nucleus for a few scattered dwellings. Already the
settlers were showing that independence of control and that detachment
from Europe which has been their most prominent characteristic. Even the
mild sway of the Dutch Company had caused them to revolt. The local
rising, however, was hardly noticed in the universal cataclysm which
followed the French Revolution. After twenty years, during which the
world was shaken by the Titanic struggle in the final counting up of the
game and paying of the stakes, the Cape Colony was added in 1814 to the
British Empire.

In all the vast collection of British States there is probably not one
the title-deeds to which are more incontestable than to this. Britain
had it by two rights, the right of conquest and the right of purchase.
In 1806 troops landed, defeated the local forces, and took possession of
Cape Town. In 1814 Britain paid the large sum of six million pounds to
the Stadtholder for the transference of this and some South American
land. It was a bargain which was probably made rapidly and carelessly in
that general redistribution which was going on. As a house of call upon
the way to India the plac