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I have also constantly referred to Parliamentary papers, and the words of accredited historians and travellers. The first attempt at a regular settlement by the Dutch at the Cape was made by Jan Van Riebeck, in 1652, for the convenience of the trading vessels of the Netherlands East India Company, passing from Europe to Asia.
It is covered with purely Ethiopic graffiti, almost exactly similar to those we saw on the steps of the church and on the hillsides around Aksum in Abyssinia long serpent-like trails of Ethiopic words, with rude drawings interspersed of camels, snakes, and so forth. Riebeck, who went inland from Itur, says these are Greek.
Apologising to his employers in Holland for his show of kindness to one group of natives, Van Riebeck wrote: "This we only did to make them less shy, so as to find hereafter a better opportunity to seize them 1,100 or 1,200 in number, and about 600 cattle, the best in the whole country.
Almost from the first these colonists were involved in quarrels with the natives, which furnished excuse for appropriating their lands and making slaves of them. The intruders stole the natives' cattle, and the natives' efforts to recover their property were denounced by Van Riebeck as "a matter most displeasing to the Almighty, when committed by such as they."
Van der Stel has left his impress deep on the country. Though the vine had been already introduced by Van Riebeck, it is to Van der Stel that the special features of Cape scenery are due, for we owe to him the splendid groves of oak of to-day, and he originated the Dutch Colonial type of building, of which so many fine specimens still remain. These old Dutch houses are a constant puzzle to me.
Early in the century the Boers began to trek away from the sphere of British rule. They were trekkers before that, indeed. Even in the days of Van Riebeck they had trekked away from the crowded parts, and opened up with the rifle and the plough new reaches of country; pioneering in a rough but most effective way, driving back the savage races, and clearing the way for civilization.
They have distinctly and dangerously degenerated even from the general standard of civilisation existing when Jan van Riebeck hoisted the flag of the Dutch East India Company at Cape Point.
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