The little Portuguese ship of Bartholomew Diaz was the first to round the “Cape of Storms” in 1486. When King John II. of Portugal, heard of his success he said it should thereafter be called Cape of Good Hope. The passage of this southermost point of Africa meant a route to India, on which all hearts were set at the time.
Nearly two hundred years later, in 1652, the Dutch settled at the Cape. They called the Quaique, or natives, Hottentots—from the repetition of one of the words used in their dances.
The Colony became a favorite place for banished Huguenots—from France and Peidmont. It grew, got to be strong, and at length tyrannical. The more liberal members left it and pushed into the interior, where they drove back the Kaffirs, and redeemed much valuable territory. The parent Colony tried to force its government on these pioneers, who were called “Boers”—the Dutch word for “farmers.” A rebellion ensued. The Prince of Orange asked England to help suppress it (1795). She did so, and with characteristic greed, kept it till 1803. It then passed to the Dutch, but was retaken by England in 1806.
Settlement marched rapidly up the eastern coast of Africa, and a great agricultural section was opened. The Kaffir tribes protested and five fierce wars were fought, with the loss of all Kaffraria to the natives. The Boers were never reconciled to British authority. They murmured, rebelled, and kept migrating northward, till north of the Orange River they founded the Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal Republic.
The high promontory of Cape of Good Hope—Table Mountain—is visible a long distance from the sea, owing to the dry, light atmosphere. On its spurs are many ruins of block-houses, used by the early settlers. Over it, at times, hangs a veil of cloud, called the “Table Cloth,” which, when dispersed by the sun, the inhabitants say is put away for future use.
The town of Cape Colony, or Cape Town, is now perfectly modern, and very pretty. It was here that the great missionary Robert Moffat began his African career in 1816; here that Pringle started to found his ideal town Glen Lynden.
In 1867 all Cape Colony was thrown into excitement by the discovery that diamond fields existed inland near the Kalihari Desert. There was a rush like that in our own country in 1849 when gold was discovered in California. Exaggerated stories of finds of diamonds by natives, valued at $50,000 a piece, were eagerly listened to, and in a few weeks there was a population of 10,000 in a hitherto unknown region, with the road thither, for hundreds of miles, literally alive with wagons, oxen, pack mules and footmen.
The diamond territory is Griqualand, on the headwaters of the Orange and Vaal Rivers and close to the desert—partly in it. The region is 16,000 square miles in extent and 3000 feet above the ocean. In the diamond fields the diamonds are found in the sand by washing. This is the native method of getting them, and also that adopted by thousands of people who have no capital.
But it was soon found that they could be had in larger numbers and of greater size and purity by digging. This brought capital, machinery, and regular mining tracts, called “Claims.”
At first the mining towns were made up of tents, filled with a mixed people, toiling willingly all day, and dancing, gambling, drinking and rioting at night. At one time there were 60,000 persons in these diamond fields, but now not more than 40,000.