complete. For this purpose they established themselves on the island
of Mozambique, and gradually took possession of the country to this
day known as Portuguese East Africa.

From that far back settlement, Delagoa Bay, near the southern border,
is now a thorn in the side of the British invasion; a port with which
they are not at war, and therefore cannot seize or blockade, but
which, through the supplies that thence reach the otherwise isolated
Transvaal, contributes powerfully to support the defence.

Upon the heels of the Portuguese followed the Dutch, aiming like them
at the Far East, more {p.004} especially at what were then
comprehensively called the Spice Islands--the Moluccas. They also felt
the need of a half-way station. For this the Cape of Good Hope, with
the adjacent bays--Table Bay and False Bay--presented advantages; for
though not perfectly safe anchorages at all seasons, the voyage to the
islands is more expeditiously and healthfully made by starting from,
and keeping in, a far southern latitude, than by proceeding along the
East African coast.

In 1652 the Dutch settled at the Cape, and gradually extended their
holding to the eastward as far as the Great Fish River. A generation
later, in 1686, the population received an accession of French
Protestant refugees, leaving their country upon the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. From these descended the late General Joubert,
Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal forces at the opening of
hostilities. The administration of the colony by the Dutch East India
Company being both arbitrary and meddlesome, some of the more
independent spirits withdrew from the coast and moved inland, behind
the difficult {p.005} mountain ranges that separate the narrow strip
of sea-coast from the high table-lands of the interior.

In 1795 local dissatisfaction and the spread of French revolutionary
principles led to a revolt of the colonists, and Holland passing at
that time into alliance with France, the Cape was seized by a British
naval and military expedition. At the Peace of Amiens in 1802 it was
restored to Holland; but in the next war it was again taken by the
British, in 1806, and at the Peace of 1814 was confirmed in their
possession.

The population remained Dutch in blood and in tradition; but
subsequent accessions of English immigrants have established in Cape
Colony itself an approach to equilibrium between the two races, to
which has also contributed a series