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CAPE TOWN

330                     CAPILLARITY IN SOILS

1486, when he was aiming to reach India, as Columbus by another route was aiming, six years later, to reach the same country. Because of the dangers he had passed through, he named it the Cape of All the Storms, but John II of Portugal renamed it Cape of Good

Hope. In 1497 Vasco da Gama rounded it on his adventurous voyage from Lisbon to Calicut. The result of the discovery of the route by the cape was not only to open a new channel for the traffic of the east, but also to remove the supremacy of trade from the republics of Italy to the states of western Europe.

Cape Town, the capital of Cape Colony, lies at the head of Table Bay, thirty miles north of the Cape of Good Hope, a southwestern extremity of Africa. It was founded in 1652 by the Dutch, and at first consisted of a few houses under the shelter of a fort. In 1806 it was occupied by the British. The houses of old Cape Town are mostly flat-roofed, oblong and whitewashed. A few church-towers and an occasional factory or mill-chimney break the monotony. Government house, the new and handsome houses of Parliament, the public library and museum, the fine-arts gallery, the railroad station, the old Town House and the old castle are the chief buildings, together with several banks, the buildings of the Supreme Court, an observatory, a cathedral, four or five colleges and an examining university without attached teaching institutions. The see-houses of the Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops are also here. There are many modern city improvements, such as water-works, gas, street-railroads. The breakwater and docks have given increased facilities to the shipping. The population of Cape Town proper is 67,000; including its suburbs, 169,641. See CAPE COLONY and CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

Cape-to-Cairo Railway. This great railway enterprise, in large measure due to the bequest left in the will of the late Alfred Beit, which is to connect Cape Town with Cairo through the whole length of the eastern regions of the continent of Africa, has of late been much advanced. Already the road now runs from Cape Town northward far beyond Broken Hill near the Zambezi River, a distance of over 2,100 miles, while the surveys have been completed as far as Lake Tanganyika and the southern frontiers of the Congo Free State. It is then projected northward past Lake Victoria into British East Africa; thence it will proceed to the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan; and it will connect at Khartum with the Sudan military railway now open to Cairo and the Mediterranean Sea. Other branch-roads are ^ also projected, while the scheme, vast as it is, seems now to be taken out of the category of dreams.

Cape Verd (verd) Islands, a group of islands, forming a Portuguese colony, in the Atlantic Ocean, off the African coast, 320 miles west of Cape Verd. There are 14 islands and several rocky islets, covering about 1,480 square miles. They are all of volcanic origin, and one, Fogo, still smokes. The shores are low, but in the interior there are high mountains. The rainy season lasts from the middle of August to November, but sometimes no rain falls for several seasons. In 1832, after a three years' drought, 30,500 persons perished. The fruits of southern Europe and western Africa nourish on the islands. Goats and asses are reared, and the most remarkable of the animals are monkeys and bisam cats. Poisonous reptiles are unknown. Salt is manufactured and exported to North America. The other products are coffee, millet and drugs. The natives are docile and lazy, though very religious. Roman Catholicism is the only religion. The population is 147,424, about one twentieth being whites and one seventh slaves. The latter are of mixed race, descended from Portuguese settlers and negroes of various tribes introduced from Guinea. Santiago is the largest island in the group; it is about 50 miles long and 23 broad at its widest part. The governor lives on the island, at the seaport of Porto Praia. The volcano of Fogo is 9,157 feet high. The islands were discovered in 1441 by the Portuguese, who have held them ever since.

Caper'naum, a town of Palestine, often mentioned in the New Testament and memorable as the scene of many of the miracles of Christ. Its exact site on the Sea of Gen-nesareth is uncertain. One possible site is a ruined village, known at present as Khan Minieh; another is three miles further off, at a spot called Tell Hum.

Cap'illar'ity in Soils refers 'to 'die ability of water to rise above the water-table toward the surface. The soil-particles act