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 CHAPTER II.

EARLY DUTCH HISTORY.

Our possessions in South Africa, like many of our other Colonial territories, were taken by us from others who did the first rough work of discovering and occupying the land. As we got Canada from the French, Jamaica from the Spaniards, and Ceylon from the Dutch, so did we take the Cape of Good Hope from the latter people. In Australia and New Zealand we were the pioneers, and very hard work we found it. So also was it in Massachusetts and Virginia, which have now, happily, passed away from us. But in South Africa the Dutch were the first to deal with the Hottentots and Bushmen; and their task was nearly as hard as that which fell to the lot of Englishmen when they first landed on the coast of Australia with a cargo of convicts.

The Portuguese indeed came before the Dutch, but they only came, and did not stay. The Cape, as far as we know, was first doubled by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486. He, and some of the mariners with him, called it the Cape of Torments, or Capo Tormentoso, from the miseries they endured. The more comfortable name which it now bears was given to it by King John of Portugal, as being the new way