A great deal might be said about Cape Colony, and I will not leave it without giving a very short description of it. The country in the neighbourhood of Cape Town is fertile and picturesque, and the south-western districts produce wine and corn in abundance; but the larger portion is sterile and uninviting, with a sad absence of shade, verdure, and water. At the same time there are numerous, but unnavigable rivers. It improves, however, in the direction of Natal; but in the north, towards the Orange River, it is said to be again barren. To the north and north-east are the districts inhabited by the Amakosa Caffres, the Tambookies, and the Amaponda; while along the coast round and beyond Port Natal is the country of the fierce Zooloos. Bartholomew Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1493; and it was doubled four years afterwards by Vasco de Gama. The inhabitants found there were called Hottentots. They attacked the Portuguese who first attempted to settle at the Cape, and it was not till 1650 that the Dutch East India Company formed a thriving establishment there. A large addition was made to the colonists by many French Protestants, who had escaped into Holland from the tyranny of Louis XIV after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Dutch remained in possession of the country until the year 1795, when Holland having become subject to France, the English sent out an expedition which conquered it. It was restored to the Dutch at the Treaty of Amiens; but in 1806, they and the English having again become enemies, it was taken from them by an army under Sir David Baird. In 1814 it was confirmed to the British. The Hottentots were a mild, inoffensive race, but were cruelly treated by the Dutch, who, however, as they advanced inland found a very different race to contend with in the Caffres, with whom a constant feud was maintained. The English also found them a fierce, warlike, and treacherous people, and have constantly been at war with them, or engaged in forming treaties which were as often broken. Happily, by the judicious management of Sir George Grey, the enlightened governor of Cape Colony, the disputes with the Caffres were terminated; the Boers--as the Dutch farmers are called--were satisfied--while the contented Hottentots, long kept in slavery, were freed at the passing of the Slave Emancipation Bill, when the glorious announcement was made throughout the world that no human being could be longer held in slavery on British soil.