THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 808 



also includes a number of islands, among- which are many good harbours. Its history 

 has one interesting- point. When, in 1787, it became a British colony, a company was 

 formed, which included a scheme for making it a home for free negroes, and to prove 

 that colonial produce could be raised profitably without resorting to slave labour. Its 

 prosperity was seriously affected during the French Revolution by the depredations of 

 French cruisers, and in 1808 the company ceded all its rights to the Crown. Its population 

 includes negroes from 200 different African tribes, many of them liberated from slavery 

 and slave-ships, a subject which will be treated hereafter in this work. 



One of the great industries of Sierra Leone is the manufacture of cocoa-nut oil. The 

 factories are extensive affairs. It is a very beautiful country, on the whole, and when 

 acclimatised, Europeans find that they can live splendidly on the products of the country. 

 The fisheries, both sea and river, are wonderfully productive, and employ about 1,500 

 natives. Boat-building is carried on to some extent, the splendid forests yielding timber 

 so large that canoes capable of holding a hundred men have been made from a single 

 log, like those already mentioned in connection with the north-west coast of America. 

 Many of the West Indian products have been introduced; sugar, coffee, indigo, ginger, 

 cotton, and rice thrive well, as do Indian corn, the yam, plantain, pumpkins, banana, 

 cocoa, baobab, pine-apple, orange, lime, guava, papaw, pomegranate, orange, and lime. 

 Poultry is particularly abundant. It therefore might claim attention as a fruitful and 

 productive country but for the malaria of its swampy rivers and low lands. 



And now, leaving Sierra Leone, our good ship makes for the Cape of Good Hope, 

 passing, mostly far out at sea, down that coast along which the Portuguese mariners crept 

 so cautiously yet so surely till Diaz and Da Gama reached South Africa, while the latter 

 showed them the way to the fabled Cathaia, the Orient India, China, and the Spice 

 Islands. 



In the year 1486 " The Cape " of capes par excellence, which rarely nowadays bears 

 its full title, was discovered by Bartholomew de Diaz, a commander in the service of 

 John II. of Portugal. He did not proceed to the eastward of it, and it was reserved for 

 the great Vasco da Gama afterwards the first Viceroy of India an incident in whose 

 career forms, by-the-by, the plot of L'Africaine, Meyerbeer's grand opera, to double it. 

 It was called at first Cabo Tormentoso " the Cape of Storms " but by royal desire 

 was changed to that of " Buon Esperanza " " Good Hope " the title it still bears. 

 Cape Colony was acquired by Great Britain in 1620, although for a long time it was 

 practically in the hands of the Dutch, a colony having been planted by their East India 

 Company. The Dutch held it in this way till 1795, when the territory was once more 

 taken by our country. It was returned to the Dutch at the Peace of Amiens, only to be 

 snatched from them again in 1806, and finally confirmed to Britain at the general peace 

 of 1815. 



The population, including the Boers, or farmers of Dutch descent, Hottentots, Kaffirs, 

 and Malays, is not probably over 600,000, while the original territory is about 700 miles 

 long by 400 wide, having an area of not far from 200,000 square miles. The capital 

 of the colony is Cape Town, lying at the foot, as every schoolboy knows, of the celebrated 

 Table Mountain, 



