Dutch domination at the Cape lasted for 143 years after the landing of Van Riebeck, but gradually internal dissensions among the settlers resulted in absolute revolt. Meanwhile the Dutch in Europe had lost their political prestige, and the country was overrun by a Prussian army commissioned to support the House of Orange. In 1793, in a war against allied England and Holland, France gained the day, and a Republic was set up under French protection, thereby rendering Holland and her colonies of necessity antagonistic to Great Britain. After this the fortunes of the Cape were fluctuating. In 1795 Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig brought about the surrender of the colony to Great Britain. Later on it was returned to the Batavian Republic at the Peace of Amiens, only to be afterwards recaptured by Sir David Baird in 1806. Finally, in 1814, our claim to the Cape and other Dutch colonies was recognised on payment of the sum of L6,000,000 sterling. Now for the first time began the real emigration of the British. They settled at Bathurst, near Algoa Bay, but though their numbers gradually swelled, they never equalled the number of the inhabitants of Dutch origin. At this time South Africa was an ideal place for the pioneer. The scenery was magnificent. There were mountain gorges or kloofs, roaring cataracts, vast plains, and verdant tracts of succulent grasses. There was big game enough to delight the heart of a race of Nimrods. Lions, elephants, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, antelopes, and birds of all kinds, offered horns, hides, tusks, and feathers to the adventurous sportsman. All these things the nomadic Boer had hitherto freely enjoyed, plying now his rifle, now his plough, and taking little thought for the morrow or for the moving world outside the narrow circle of his family experiences. With the appearance of British paramountcy at the Cape came a hint of law and order, of progress and its accompaniment--taxation. The bare whisper of discipline of any kind was sufficient to send the truculent Boer trekking away to the far freedom of the veldt. Quantities of them took to their lumbering tented waggons, drawn by long teams of oxen, and put a safe distance between themselves and the new-comers. All they wanted was a free home, conducted in their own gipsy fashion--their kraals by the river, their camp fires, their flocks and herds, and immunity from the vexation of monopolies and taxes. And here at once will be seen how the seeds sprang up of a rooted antagonism between Boer and Briton that nothing can ever remove, and no diplomacy can smooth away. The Boer nature naturally inclines to a sluggish content, while the British one invariably pants for advance. The temperamental tug of war, therefore, has been one that has grown stronger and stronger with the progress of years. The principles of give and take have been tried, but they have failed. Reciprocity is not in the nature of the Boer, and without