The settlement at Cape Three Points had by no means an easy existence. Fever made fearful ravages among the garrison, which, when the first reliefs arrived, after an interval of nearly a year and threequarters, had been reduced by sickness from ninety to sixteen men. Everything that was needed for the construction of the fort, even building-stone, had to be brought thousands of miles across the sea from Germany. The Dutch traders in the neighbourhood had at once raised objections to the new colony, and, as their protests were unheeded, stirred up the natives against its members. It was only after prolonged negotiations at The Hague that the Elector secured a full recognition of his right to the settlement. And none the less the Dutch West India Company continued to harass the German colonists, appropriating their ships, and turning them out of a couple of subsidiary fortifications which they had erected at other points along the coast. Gross-Friedrichsburg and Taccroma, another of the four Brandenburg stations on the Guinea littoral, for several years maintained themselves only by the menace of their guns. These untoward events are believed to have preyed upon the mind of the Great Elector, and to have hastened his end. At the time of his death, in April, 1688, Brandenburg and Holland were on the brink of war over the Gold Coast affair. His successor on the Electoral throne in one very important respect reaped what Frederick William had sown, for he obtained the title of King of Prussia, by virtue of which, far more than from any specifically imperial prerogatives, William II. holds his present power in Germany. Frederick I. was a vain man, who was more interested in appearances than in realities, and cared more for the pomp and ceremonies of Court life than for the solid business of colonisation and slave-trading. As a source of revenue, with which to defray the cost of his empty extravagances, the African undertaking was feebly encouraged to continue its work; but, deprived of the directing brain and the stimulating enthusiasm of its founder, it soon sickened and languished. Accada and Taccarary, the two settlements which had been seized by the Dutch, were delivered up after a lengthy squabble, but the fortifications of the latter had been destroyed, and they were not rebuilt.