Thus it was, after an almost bloodless war, that Cape Colony, founded by the Dutch and governed continuously by the Netherlands for one hundred and forty-three years, passed into the possession of Great Britain and became a crown colony thereof. The charges made by some that Commissioner Sluysken and Colonel Gordon were either imbeciles or traitors may not be quite in accordance with the facts. Certainly there is a wide disparity between the always strong and defiant words in which they announced, to the last moment, their determination to defend the colony, and the puerile efforts they made to do so. The only rational explanation of their conduct is that they preferred yielding to the British, after making a show of resistance, to accepting in the colony the new regime of republicanism that prevailed in the mother country. In all probability their secret thought was that by prolonging a nominal resistance they might gain time enough for something to occur in Europe—where events were moving with bewildering rapidity—something that would reinstate the Prince of Orange as Stadtholder of the Netherlands, and so leave the British no pretext for seizing the colony in his interest. This chapter may fittingly close with a few brief records of events that lead up to the first trek northwards of the Africanders. The Cape colony was restored to the Dutch on the conclusion of the peace of Amiens, in 1802. When war broke out afresh in Europe, in 1806, the English again seized the Cape to prevent Napoleon from occupying so important a naval station and half-way house to the British possessions in India. The second seizure was accomplished after a single engagement with the Dutch. In 1814 the colony was formally ceded to the British crown together with certain Dutch possessions in South America, by the reinstated Stadtholder of the Netherlands, who received in return therefor a money consideration of thirty million dollars. CHAPTER IV. THE AFRICANDERS’ FIRST TREK TO THE NORTH. 1806–1838. When the British took forcible possession of the Cape colony a second time, in 1806, they found a total population of 74,000. Of these 17,000 were native Hottentots, 30,000 were slaves of African, Asiatic and mixed blood, and 27,000 were of European descent—mostly Dutch, with a sprinkling of German and French. Nearly all spoke the dialect of Holland Dutch, into which the speech of a people so mixed and so isolated had degenerated.