The Africanders

CAPE TOWN, CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.
BY LE ROY HOOKER, AUTHOR OF “Enoch, the Philistine,” “Baldoon,” ETC.
Chicago and New York: RAND, McNALLY & CO., PUBLISHERS. MDCCCC.
This is the history, briefly told, of the great Dutch-English feud in South Africa, up to the beginning of the Africanders’ second war of independence with Great Britain, which opened on the 11th of October, 1899.
I acknowledge, with much gratitude, indebtedness for data to the following distinguished writers:
Canon W. J. Little, M.A., author of “South Africa”; George McCall Theal, M.A., Official Historiographer and sometime Keeper of the Archives at Cape Town; Professor James Bryce, author of “Impressions of South Africa,” “The American Commonwealth,” etc.; F. Reginald Statham, author of “South Africa as It Is”; Olive Schreiner, author of “The South African Question”; the British Blue Books and other sources of reliable information.
This is the story, briefly told, of the Dutch Boers in South Africa.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the shores of South and Southeastern Africa, but they made no attempt to settle the country south of Delagoa Bay. They were traders. The Hottentots had little to sell that they cared to purchase. The route for Portuguese commerce with the East was west of Madagascar, consequently they found it unnecessary to put into Table Bay; the voyage from St. Helena to Mozambique could be made comfortably without seeking a port of supply.
In 1650 the Dutch East India Company, acting upon the reports and suggestions of influential men who had visited Table Bay and resided in Table Valley several months, determined to establish at Table Bay such a victualing station as had been recommended. In accordance therewith the ships Reiger and Dromedaris and the yacht Goede Hoop—all then lying in the harbor of Amsterdam—were put in commission to carry the party of occupation to Table Bay, under the general command of Jan Van Riebeek.
Van Riebeek and the three skippers, having inspected Table Valley, selected a site for the fort a little in rear of the ground on which the general postoffice of Cape Town now stands. On that spot a great stronghold was built in the form of a square strengthened by bastions at its angles. Each face of the fort measured 252 Rhynland feet—about 260 feet English measure. The walls were built of earth, twelve feet high, twenty feet in thickness at the base, tapering to sixteen feet at the top, and were surmounted by a parapet. Surrounding the whole structure was a moat, into which the water of Fresh River could be turned. Within the walls were dwellings, barracks, storehouses and other conveniences that might be required in a state of siege. Around the fort were clustered a walled kraal for cattle, a separate inclosure for workshops, and the tents in which the settlers began their life in Africa.