The history of the Boers of South Africa has its parallel in that of the early Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock and their descendants. The comparison favours the latter, it is true, but the conditions which confronted the early Boers were so much less favourable that their lack of realization may easily be accounted for. In the early part of the seventeenth century the progenitors of the Boers and the Pilgrims left their continental homes to seek freedom from religious tyranny on foreign shores. The boat load of Pilgrims left England to come to America and found the freedom they sought. About the same time a small number of Dutch and Huguenot refugees from France departed from Holland for similar reasons, and decided to seek their fortunes and religious freedom at the Cape of Good Hope. There they found the liberty they desired, and, like the Pilgrims, assiduously set to work to clear the land and institute the works of a civilized community. The experiences of the two widely separated colonists appear painfully similar, although to them they were undoubtedly preferable to the persecutions inflicted upon them in their native countries. The Pilgrims were constantly harassed by the savage Indians; the Dutch and Huguenots at the Cape had treacherous Hottentots and Bushmen to contend against. Although probably ignorant of each other’s existence, the two parties conducted their affairs on similar lines and reached a common result--a good local government and a reasonable state of material prosperity. The little South African settlement became of recognised importance in the later years of the century, when it was made the halfway station of all ships going to and returning from the East Indies. The necessity for such a station was the foundation of the growth of the settlement at Table Bay, which is only a short distance from the southernmost extremity of the continent, and the increase in population came as a natural sequence. The Dutch East India Settlement, as it was officially called, attracted hundreds of immigrants. The reports of a salubrious climate, good soil, and, more than all, the promised religious toleration, were the allurements that brought more immigrants from Holland, Germany, and France. Cape Town even then was one of the most important ports in the world, owing to its great strategic value and to the fact that it was about the only port where vessels making the long trip to the East Indies could secure even the scantiest supplies. The provisioning of ships was responsible, in no small degree, for the growth of Cape Town and the coincident increase in immigration.