History of the Colony. 203 



one's self to be in an old English provincial town. Generally 

 speaking, any one arriving here with preconceived notions of 

 finding himself amongst Hottentots and Bushmen, or in a state 

 of society diflPcring materially from that of Europe, will soon 

 discover that he has been entirely mistaken. The aborigines 

 whom Jan van Riebeck found, when, with three Dutch ships, 

 he landed in 1652 at Table Bay, and in the name of the 

 Dutch East India Company established a settlement, have now 

 almost entirely disappeared from the capital. If any one desires 



see a veritable Hottentot or Bushman, he must undertake 

 a troublesome journey, of weeks' duration, into the inhospitable 

 interior. In Cape Town this singular race is only now and 

 then to be met with in prisons or hospitals, and even then of 

 a mixed breed. 



The colony has now a population of 280,000 white and 

 coloured inhabitants, of whom about 30,000 live in Cape 

 Town ; half of these are whites, and probably not more 

 than 1000 form the higher and influential class. There can 

 be no doubt that when, in 1815, the English took possession 

 of the Cape, a firm foundation had been laid already by the 

 Dutch 150 years before; but the real progress of the 

 country, and the development of its natural resources, date 

 only from the commencement of British rule, by which those 

 shackles were thrown off with which the narrow-minded 

 colonial policy of the Dutch had fettered this settlement, like 

 all others that owned their sway. 



The Cape Colony since 1850 has possessed a Legislative 



