POPULATION. The population of the colony. in cluding that of Pondoland and the Crown colony of Bechuanaland, was, in 1891, about I,600,000, or less than six inhabitants per square mile. The whites constitute less than 25 per cent. of the total population, and the rest is made up of Malays, llottentots, Katlirs, Beehuanas, and mixed races. The European population is mostly of English extraction. The descendants of the Dutch settlers. in whose veins there is an in fusion of Huguenot blood, arc known as Afrikan ders. About 750,000 people belong to different Protestant denominations, over 17,000 are Roman Catholics, over 15,000 Mohammedans, and 3(100 Jews.
lilsToRy. It was toward the end of the Fif teenth Century that Dias, a Portuguese navi gator, doubled the Cape of Good 'flop., prepar ing the way for Vase() da Gama, who opened the sea route to India in 1497-9S. The thriving trade in that quarter attracted both English and Dutch merchants, but, although their ships found fre quent shelter in the bays of the coast of Cape Colony, it was not till the middle of the Seven teenth Century that an attempt was made per manently to occupy the country. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company sent out an expedi tion which landed in Table Bay and took pos session of the region, and set about converting it into a habitable land. Slowly the development went on, Dutch colonists and French Huguenots, fleeing from religious persecution, taking up their abodes there. During the Eighteenth Century the stream of immigration grew larger, the Dutch scattering over a considerable busying themselves now with subduing the wilderness, now the aborigines. At the end of the century
there were at the Cape about 27.000 souls of European descent and a slightly larger number of slaves.
In January, 1806, for the second time during the wars against Napoleon, an English force cap tured Cape Colony, stipulating that the "burgh ers and inhabitants should preserve all the rights and privileges hitherto enjoyed by them." Since that date the Cape has been a colony of Great Britain, though not formally recognized as such until the peaee of 1815. During the ensuing sixty years the history of Cape Colony was made of chapters of war with the Kaffirs and other tribes, and of conflict with the Dutch inhabitants, who, from well-foumted causes, felt the rule of England to be oppressive. There oc curred during these years the famous 'treks' of the Dutch burghers into the wilderness. The fortitude and heroism they displayed in their wanderings bear high testimony to what men will dare in order to realize in a more or less perfect way their religious, social, and political ideals. The story of the Nineteenth Century in Cape Colony was epitomized in the unequal war be tween Boer and Briton, which ended in 1902. See SOUTH AFRICAN WAR; TRANSVAAL COLONY; and ORANGE RIVER COION Y.