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CHAPTER III
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THE PIONEER ADVANCE
HEN
Lord Charles Somerset came to the Cape as the first Governor of the
Colony after the cession, how slight and infirm was the hold of any
civilization on the indurated barbarism of the vast expanse of Africa
south of the equator! In the three hundred years that had passed since
Vasco Da Gama made known the bounds of the continent, the outer rim of
the traditional Ophir land had barely been pierced. From the Atlantic
side the Portuguese had not pushed beyond a fringe of trading posts on
the Lower Guinea coast, and were clinging feebly to insignificant
stations along the shores of the Mozambique channel. The Dutch grip was
more obstinate, in spite of all disappointments, but the range of their
advance was only a few hundred miles from the Cape, and outÂside of
Cape Town the population was a mere sprinkling on the face of the land.
When the British first wrested the Cape from the Dutch, Earl Macartney,
who held the government in 1797, defined by proclamation the bounds of
the Colony. It only ran east to the Great Fish River and on the north
to the Zuurberg Mountains and the southern edge of Bushman's land,
trending up to the Kamiesberg, and thence along the coast to Buffels
River in Little Namaqualand. The total extent was roughly 120,000
square miles, merely the extreme tip of South Africa, and the entire
population, both white and black, was reported to be less than 62,000,
or about one person to every two square miles. This was a petty fringe
on the skirt of the dark continent. Not only was the Colony weak in
numbers, but it was seemÂingly without any uplifting leaven of enterprise and ambition.
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