600, in addition to 439 other Europeans, who were mainly employés of the Company. In 1685, Louis XIV unwittingly dealt a fearful blow to France in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which resulted in thousands of French Protestants emigrating to other countries where they might enjoy freedom of religion. The Protestant Dutch sympathized with the homeless Huguenots; and the Netherlands Company decided to give free passages and grants of land to a number of these refugees. By 1689 nearly 200 French emigrants had been landed at the Cape and settled in the mountain country behind Cape Town. Here, however, they were not allowed to form a separate community. They were scattered amongst the Dutch settlers, their children were taught Dutch, and in a few years they were thoroughly absorbed in the Dutch community; though they have left ineffaceable traces of their presence in the many French surnames to be met with amongst the South African Dutch at the present day (always pronounced however in the Dutch way), and in the dark eyes, dark hair, and handsome features so often seen in the best-looking type of Boer. Handsomer men and women than are some of the Afrikanders it would be impossible to meet with; but this personal beauty is usually traceable to Huguenot ancestry. The French settlers taught the Dutch improved methods of growing corn and wine, and altogether more scientific agriculture. Towards the latter end of the 17th century the Dutch introduced the oak tree into the Cape Peninsula and the suburbs of Cape Town, where it is now such a handsome and prominent feature. All this time the Hottentots gave almost no trouble. They were employed here and there as servants; but they attempted no insurrection against the European settlers, though they quarrelled very much amongst themselves. In 1713 large numbers of them were exterminated by an epidemic of smallpox. The Dutch had not yet come into contact with the so-called Kaffirs[89].