6 
TRAVELS IN 
who were the firft difcoverers of the Southern extremity of the 
conthient of Africa, at leaft in modern times, eftabUfhed no 
fettlement nearer to it than the Banks of Rio Infante', now 
the Great Fifh River and boundary of the Colony to the 
Eaftward, which is nearly fix hundred miles from the Cape of 
Good Hope ; and this they foon abandoned for want of fhelter 
for their fhipping, which they afterwards found, farther to the 
Eaftward, in the bay of De la Goa, ftill in their pofTeflion. 
At length, however, from the very favourable r^prefentations of 
Van Riebeck, then a furgeon of one of the Dutch fhips, the 
Eaft India Company came to a refolution to colonize the Cape ; 
and fmce the firft eftablifhment to the prefent war, a period of 
near i8o years, it continued in their hands. The progrefs 
of the population and the extent of territory have been tole- 
rably rapid. The former, like fome of the provinces of North 
America, has nearly doubled itfelf in every twenty years. It 
was firft fettled in 1650 by a hundred male perfons, to whom 
were ftiortly afterwards fent out, from the houfes of induftry in 
Holland, about an equal number of females ; and the prefent 
population exceeds twenty thoufand whites : many of thefe, 
however, have fince been imported from Europe. 
The difficulties that for a time impeded the extenfion of the 
fettlement were principally occafioned by the number of wild 
beafts of various kinds that fwarmed in every part of the coun- 
try. In the private journal of the founder of the colony it is 
noticed, that lions and leopards, wolves and hysenas, committed 
nightly depredations, for fome time after the firft eftablifhment, 
under the walls of the fort. The oppofition of the native Hot- 
tentots 
4 
