home-loving. The compact, well-cared-for, well-ordered homestead,
village, and town communities of the Netherlands are inconsistent with a
roving disposition, and yet the Hollanders of South Africa furnished the
most conspicuous example of Nomadism in modern times.

It may have been that the ordeal of Alva and the subsequent disturbance
of the Thirty Years' War had constitutionally unsettled the Hollanders
to such a degree that their descendants, emancipated from European
ideas, became prone to restlessness, for in a generation or two they
began to trek; or perhaps the magic of the spacious veld, with its clear
sky and the mountains and flat-topped kopjes sharply defined on the
horizon, irresistibly lured them on. In the land they had quitted the
air was dense with moisture; scarcely a hill was to be seen; they were
hemmed in by sluggish rivers and by the sea, which leaned heavily
against the dykes and threw its spray angrily down on to the reclaimed
pastures which had been stolen from it.

The original Dutch settlement at the Cape was made by a Company of
Amsterdam merchants for the refreshment and refitting of their ships
engaged in trade with the East. The Company was a harsh and extortionate
master, who paid little attention to the needs and the welfare of the
settlement, which was regarded merely as a place of call. The
discontented colonists began to leave the seacoast and trekked inwards,
where the heavy hands of the cordially detested representatives of the
Company could not reach them. Its rule came to an end in 1795, when, at
the request of Holland, Great Britain took over the Colony in order to
prevent it falling into the hands of France. It was restored at the
Peace of Amiens, but in a few years again came into the possession of
Great Britain.