CHAPTER XII.

WEST AFRICA.

THE WEST AFRICAN SETTLEMENTS-SIERRA LEONE-GAMBIA

CAPE COAST CASTLE-LAGOS. [1600-1869.]

JLMOST the earliest voyages of discovery undertaken by the English were along the African coast, and with the savage tribes of the western shore they very

soon began a rude trade, in which cheap trinkets and gewgaws were bartered for ivory and the few other commodities possessed by the natives. But until a century ago there was no attempt at regular colonization, and the inhospitable districts were chiefly frequented in order that their natives and the captives brought by them from the interior might be bought or stolen, and taken as slaves to the West Indian settlements. Sir John Hawkins was the first slave-trader; and Queen Elizabeth, while sanctioning the commerce, is said to have declared that "it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers." Cape Coast Castle was erected as a well-protected haunt for these traders early in the seventeenth century; and soon afterwards James Fort, near the Gambia, became another factory for the English, who long maintained a fierce rivalry with the Spaniards, French, and Dutch. In 1787 it was guessed that up to that time ten million negroes

had been thus taken from Africa, the rate of exportation being then a hundred thousand a year. More than a third of the trade was then in the hands of the English. Then it was that Clarkson, Wilberforce, and others began the popular opposition which ended in the suppression of the slave-trade, as far as law and an armed force could suppress it, in 1808. After that the English had more time to attend to their West African possessions, although as colonies there is still little to be said about them.

These possessions are in four groups. Sierra Leone, the district first visited by Hawkins, is, by reason of its unhealthy climate, abandoned by all Europeans who are not actually forced to reside in it. Among its population of some 50,000, half of them being in Free Town, the capital, there are scarcely more than a hundred whites. The hardly less unhealthy district of the Gambia, also, is only visited by the few Englishmen who are required to superintend and make capital out of the growing trade carried on by the black settlers, numbering about 12,000, with the native tribes, in which European commodities are exchanged for ground-nuts and palm-oil. The Gold Coast, with Cape Coast Castle for its centre, alone invites white residents, and these are chiefly missionaries, augmented by a floating population of merchants. An extensive territory is kept under subjection to the British; and, as the name implies, the chief attraction to Europeans is the gold here collected in small quantities. Besides gold dust, there is commerce in palm-oil, gum, and ivory, bartered chiefly for clothing, rum, and gunpowder. A fourth and more hopeful settlement is at

OUR NEGRO COLONIES.

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Lagos, in the Bight of Benin, which became a British possession in 1861. Its healthier climate renders it a fitter dwelling-place for Europeans, and it offers advantages for trade in the lead ore, indigo, and camwood that abound in the interior, and for cultivation of cotton along the coast.

The population of all these settlements, including tributary tribes of Africans, was in 1866 about 200,000; and their exports and imports were each valued at about £600,000.

No other colonial possessions of England have so unwelcome a history or offer such few attractions to visitors, save those of travel among barbarous races and effort to improve their state by means of Christianity and civilization. Here, however, there is some encouragement. "After many years' intercourse with the race," said the governor of Gambia in 1866, I cannot see in the African any incapacity for civilization. On the contrary, I am convinced that the liberated Africans contain in themselves all the elements of a commercial people."

"1

1 Colonial Governors' Reports, 1867, part ii. p. 17.

CHAPTER XIII

CAPE COLONY.

THE DUTCH SETTLEMENT ON THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE-EARLY QUARRELS WITH THE HOTTENTOTS AND CRUEL TREATMENT OF THEM-TRANSFER OF THE COLONY TO ENGLAND-ITS PROGRESS UNDER BRITISH RULE-THE KAFFIR WARS AND OTHER TROUBLES -THE PRESENT CONSTITUTION OF THE COLONY-ITS NATURAL

ADVANTAGES. [1648-1869.]

HE Cape of Good Hope, called by him the Cape of Storms, was discovered by Bartholomew Diaz, a Portuguese, in 1494; and it was from this time often visited by later voyagers, who followed in the track of Vasco de Gama, and sailed round the coast of Africa in their search for the treasures of the East Indies. But its colonization was not thought of till a century and a half later.

In 1648 a Dutch vessel, the Haarlem, on its way to India, was wrecked upon the coast. Its crew, forced to reside there for some months, sent home so favourable an account of the district, and so strongly urged the advantage of a settlement at which vessels, passing to and from the east, might halt and gain refreshment, that their suggestion was adopted by the Dutch East India Company. Seventy or eighty soldiers, peasants and convicts, under Jan van Riebeeck, arrived in Table Bay in April 1652, and by them a

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wooden shed was erected on the site of Cape Town. The natives welcomed them; and, amid many difficulties caused by their appearance in the winter season, when food was scarce and wild beasts roamed over the district, a little colony was formed, which, augmented by fresh arrivals from Holland, numbered in 1858 three hundred and sixty persons.

The first difficulties, however, were soon followed by others of the colonists' own making. With the Hottentot natives they were at first well pleased; but very soon they claimed more from them than they cared to give, and the first "insolence," as it was termed, was fiercely resented. The insolence was in the same sort of cattle-lifting which has been a source of trouble ever since. Van Riebeeck, having caught a man in this act, questioned him as to his motive, and was told by him, as he reported, "that it was for no other reason than because they saw we were breaking up the best land and grass where their cattle were accustomed to graze, trying to establish ourselves everywhere, with houses and farms, as if we were never more to move, but designed to take up our permanent occupation more and more of this Cape Colony, which had belonged to them from time immemorial,-ay, so that their cattle could not get at the water without passing over the corn land, which we would not allow them to do." Van Riebeeck considered that cattle-stealing was "a matter most displeasing to the Almighty when committed by such men as they were;" but saw no harm in the landstealing resorted to by such men as he. Therefore in 1659 he made war upon the Hottentots with a hundred and thirty of his colonists; and with the help