nd the West Indies the one event of importance in this
period is the abolition of slavery. It was found impossible to obtain
from free negroes as much work as had been obtained from slaves, and
their place had to be supplied by Indian coolies in the Mauritius, and
by Chinese in Jamaica. At the same time the West Indies had begun to
suffer from the competition of the United States.

The colony of the Cape of Good Hope was still peopled almost entirely by
blacks or by the descendants of Dutch settlers, known as _boers_, or
peasants. Four thousand British colonists went out in 1820 to Algoa Bay,
but these were a mere handful compared with the Dutch. Unfortunately the
government adopted a line of policy which produced great irritation in
the Dutch population. They were granted no self-government, and in 1826
English judicial forms were introduced, and English was declared the
sole official language. The reform administration made matters worse by
defending the blacks against the boers. In 1834 it set free the slaves,
offering L1,200,000, payable in London, very little of which ever
reached the boers, as compensation for slaves valued at L3,000,000. A
Kaffir war in 1834 had led to the conquest of Kaffraria, but in 1835 the
home government restored the independence of the Kaffirs, and appointed
a lieutenant-governor to defend their rights. After this the boers
considered their position intolerable, and in 1835 began their first
"trek" into the country now known as Natal.

[Pageheading: _AUSTRALIA._]

Meanwhile, the great discoveries of Captain Cook, and the first
settlement of New South Wales, brought within view a possible extension
of our colonial dominion, which might go far to compensate for its
losses on the North American continent. Governor Phillip had been sent
out by Pitt to Botany Bay in 1787-88, but it was many years before the
earliest of Australian colonies outgrew the character of a penal refuge
for English convicts. The first convict establishments were at Sydney
and Norfolk Island, but another settlement was founded on Van Diemen's
Land in 1805, and in 1807, after this island had been circumnavigated by
Flinders and Bass, it became the headquarters of that convict system,
whose horrors are not yet forgotten. Between 1810 and 1822 the resources
of New South Wales were vastly developed by the energetic policy of
Governor Macquarie. While his efforts to utilise convict labour, and to
educate convicts into free