The Portuguese indeed came before the Dutch, but they only came, and did not stay. The Cape, as far as we know, was first doubled by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486. He, and some of the mariners with him, called it the Cape of Torments, or Capo Tormentoso, from the miseries they endured. The more comfortable name which it now bears was given to it by King John of Portugal, as being the new way discovered by his subjects to the glorious Indies. Diaz, it seems, never in truth saw the Cape but was carried past it to Algoa Bay where he merely landed on an island and put up a cross. But he certainly was one of the great naval heroes of the world and deserves to be ranked with Columbus. Vasco da Gama, another sailor hero, said to have been of royal Portuguese descent, followed him in 1497. He landed to the west of the Cape. There the meeting between Savage and Christian was as it has almost always been. At first there was love and friendship, a bartering of goods in which the Christian of course had the advantage, and a general interchange of amenities. Then arose mistakes, so natural among strangers who could not speak to each other, suspicion, violence, and very quickly an internecine quarrel in which the poor Savage was sure to go to the wall. Vasco da Gama did not stay long at the Cape, but proceeding on went up the East Coast as far as our second South African colony, which bears the name which he then gave to it. He called the land Tierra de Natal, because he reached it on the day of our Lord’s Nativity. The name has stuck to it ever since and no doubt will now be preserved. From thence Da Gama went on to India, and we who are interested in the Cape will lose sight of him. But he also was one of the world’s mighty mariners,--a man born to endure much, having to deal not only with Savages who mistook him and his purposes, but with frequent mutinies among his own men,--a hero who had ever to do his work with his life in his hand, and to undergo hardships of which our sailors in these happier days know nothing. The Portuguese seem to have made no settlement at the Cape intended even to be permanent; but they did use the place during the sixteenth and first half of the next century as a port at which they could call for supplies and assistance on their way out to the East Indies.