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86 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
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was hopeless, and Cape Town, with its castle and garrison, surrendered
to Admiral Sir George Elphinstone and General Sir Alured Clarke, on the
sixteenth of September. So was ended one hundred and forty-three years
of rule of the Dutch East India Company, and from this date British
ascendancy in South Africa began. There was a brief intermission, it is
true, some years later, when the treaty of Amiens
1802) transferred the Colony to the Ba-tavian Republic. But the breaking out of war again
in the following year ruptured the treaty, and exposed the Cape Colony
again to the hazard of capture, which actually followed early in
January, 1806, when Cape Town was retaken by Major General David Baird.
From that time the Cape was held continuously by the strong arm until
the convention at London, August 13, 1814, when all claims of the
Netherlands to South Africa were extinguished by cession, and Great
Britain became the heir of all the Dutch advances from the Cape of Good
Hope.1
1
" South Africa," George McCall Theal. "Precis of the Archives of the
Cape of Good Hope," H. C. V. Leibbrandt. "South Africa," Augustus Henry
Keane. "Heroes of South African Discovery," N. D'Anvers (Henry Bell).
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