For more than a century the English, Dutch, and Portuguese continued to refresh at the Cape without appropriating the soil; but in the year 1620, in the reign of King James I., the commanders of two fleets of English ships, bound for Surat and Bantam, took a formal possession of the soil, for, and in the name of their sovereign; this was, however, not followed by the formation of a colony there by the English. [Sidenote: 1651] Van Riebeck, surgeon of a Dutch ship that made a short stay at the Cape of Good Hope, represented the richness of the soil, the mildness of the climate, the advantages which a colony at this place would give his country over other nations whose ships would be obliged to call there; and, above all, the barrier it would afford to the Indian possessions of the United Provinces; these representations induced the Dutch East India Company to form a regular establishment at the Cape. Van Riebeck was furnished with power to establish a colony, of which he was appointed governor, and three ships, provided with all that was necessary, were placed under his orders. On his arrival at the Cape of Good Hope, the natives surrendered the Cape Peninsula by treaty, with the two bays that are divided by the isthmus, and he erected a square fort, also warehouses, and raised outworks and batteries. Encouragement being given, numbers of settlers arrived from time to time, and, by presents and promises, a larger tract of land was procured; but when the natives saw the colonists building houses and fortifications, cultivating land, and breeding cattle, a feeling of jealousy was awakened, and the Hottentots commenced hostilities for the purpose of expelling their visitors, which ended in the extension of the settlements, the arrival of more troops and colonists from Holland, and the reduction of the natives to a state of dependence little better than slavery.