Court, and John Noble, C.M.G., were all men who left their mark upon the history of the Colony. After William Porter, the most prominent of the earlier Colonists, was the Hon. John Paterson. A Scotchman by birth, he went out to South Africa in 1840, and became a teacher, a journalist, a capitalist, a banker, and, finally, during many years was a keen politician. A member of both Houses in turn, a strong advocate of Confederation and railway development, a progressive leader in every sense of the word, his death by drowning in 1880 left a serious void in the life of the Colony. Of Sir John Charles Molteno, the first Premier at the Cape, much might be said. An Englishman by birth, he was a Colonist from the age of sixteen (1830) until his death in 1886. Participating in different Kaffir wars, fighting for responsible government, struggling for railway extension, sharing in all the ups and downs of local political life, he became Prime Minister in 1872, and retired from public life in 1883, after receiving the honor of knighthood from the Queen. In later years and in the development of Dutch individuality the Afrikander Bund did some measure of good. [Sidenote: Some Prominent Leaders] Apart from its influence in arousing a racial passion which was innate, but as yet sluggish, amongst the Cape Boers, it had detached them somewhat from their previous position of absolute isolation, and, under the local leadership of Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr and others, had brought them into political and constitutional action. That this growing knowledge and experience was ultimately twisted by the influence of President Kruger of the Transvaal and President Reitz of the Free State into an increased and active aversion to Great Britain and the English was the misfortune of the situation. Meantime, however, the movement taught the Dutch something of the freer life of British politics and brought some able men to the front. Mr. Hofmeyr could have been Premier at almost any time during these years, but seems to have been without personal ambition of the official kind. Sir John Henry de Villiers was the first Attorney-General under responsible government, President of the Legislative Council for many years, and has been Chief Justice of the Colony since 1873. He was a Delegate in 1894, with Mr. Hofmeyr, to the Colonial Conference at Ottawa, and three years later was appointed a member of the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council--the highest Court of Appeal in the Empire--as part of a new policy which included Canadian, Australian and South African members in that important body. He has long represented the best type of loyal, cultured and able Dutchmen at the Cape. His name indicates the strain of Huguenot blood which so curiously mingles with many of the Dutch families of the Cape.