expenditure from £170,892 in 1901 to £243,241 in 1905. The receipts from municipal rates and taxes rose from £520,587 in 1901 to £700,103 in 1905; the total municipal receipts in the same period from £978,867 to £1,752,105. At the end of 1905 the total indebtedness of the municipalities was £5,775,420, and the value of assessed property within the municipal bounds £53,948,224.
Banks.—The following table gives statistics of the banks under trust laws:—
| 31st December. |
Including Head Offices. | Circulation, Colony only. |
Assets and Liabilities Colony only. | ||
| Capital Subscribed. |
Capital Paid up. |
Reserve | |||
| 1890 | £5,780,610 | £1,558,612 | £850,489 | £740,210 | £9,221,661 |
| 1895 | 7,189,090 | 2,382,003 | 1,008,837 | 612,266 | 11,864,152 |
| 1900 | 12,166,800 | 6,508,308 | 1,810,621 | 1,361,637 | 20,537,343 |
| 1905 | 11,510,900 | 4,456,925 | 2,948,428 | 1,065,251 | 20,749,988 |
Standard Time, Money, Weights and Measures.—Since 1903 a standard time has been adopted throughout South Africa, being that of 30° or two hours east of Greenwich. In other words noon in South Africa corresponds to 10.0 A.M. in London. The actual difference between the meridians of Greenwich and Cape Town is one hour fourteen minutes. The monetary system is that of Great Britain and the coins in circulation are exclusively British. Though all the standard weights and measures are British, the following old Dutch measures are still used:—Liquid Measure: Leaguer = about 128 imperial gallons; half aum = 1512 imperial gallons; anker = 712 imperial gallons. Capacity: Muid = 3 bushels. The general surface measure is the old Amsterdam Morgen, reckoned equal to 2.11654 acres; 1000 Cape lineal feet are equal to 1033 British imperial feet. The Cape ton is 2000 ℔.
The Press.—The first newspaper of the colony, written in Dutch and English, was published in 1824, and its appearance marked an era not only in the literary but in the political history of the colony, since it drew to a crisis the disputes which had arisen between the colonists and the governor, Lord Charles Somerset, who had issued a decree prohibiting all persons from convening or attending public meetings. Its criticisms on public affairs soon led to its suppression by the governor, and a memorial from the colonists to the king petitioning for a free press was the result. This boon was secured to the colony in 1828, and the press soon became a powerful agent, characterized by public spirit and literary ability. In politics the newspapers are divided, principally on racial lines, appealing either to the British or the Dutch section of the community, rarely to both sides. There are about one hundred newspapers in English or Dutch published in the colony.
The chief papers are the Cape Times, Cape Argus, South African News (Bond), both daily and weekly; the Diamond Fields Advertiser (Kimberley) and the Eastern Province Herald (Port Elizabeth). Ons Land and Het Dagblad are Dutch papers published at Cape Town. (F. R. C.)
History
Discovery and Settlement.—Bartholomew Diaz, the Portuguese navigator, discovered the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Vasco da Gama in 1497 sailed along the whole coast of South Africa on his way to India. The Portuguese, attracted by the riches of the East, made no permanent settlement at the Cape. But the Dutch, who, on the decline of the Portuguese power, established themselves in the East, early saw the importance of the place as a station where their vessels might take in water and provisions. They did not, however, establish any post at the Cape until 1652, when a small garrison under Jan van Riebeek were sent there by the Dutch East India Company. Riebeek landed at Table Bay and founded Cape Town. In 1671 the first purchase of land from the Hottentots beyond the limits of the fort built by Riebeek marked the beginning of the Colony proper. The earliest colonists were for the most part people of low station or indifferent character, but as the result of the investigations of a commissioner sent out in 1685 a better class of immigrants was introduced. About 1686 the European population was increased by a number of the French refugees who left their country on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The influence of this small body of immigrants on the character of the Dutch settlers was marked. The Huguenots, however, owing to the policy of the Company, which in 1701 directed that Dutch only should be taught in the schools, ceased by the middle of the 18th century to be a distinct body, and the knowledge of French disappeared. Advancing north and east from their base at Cape Town the colonists gradually acquired—partly by so-called contracts, partly by force—all the land of the Hottentots, large numbers of whom they slew. Besides those who died in warfare, whole tribes of Hottentots were destroyed by epidemics of smallpox in 1713 and in 1755. Straggling remnants still maintained their independence, but the mass of the Hottentots took service with the colonists as herdsmen, while others became hangers-on about the company’s posts and grazing-farms or roamed about the country. In 1787 the Dutch government passed a law subjecting these wanderers to certain restrictions. The effect of this law was to place the Hottentots in more immediate dependence upon the farmers, or to compel them to migrate northward beyond the colonial border. Those who chose the latter alternative had to encounter the hostility of their old foes, the Bushmen, who were widely spread over the plains from the Nieuwveld and Sneeuwberg mountains to the Orange river. The colonists also, pressing forward to those territories, came in contact with these Ishmaelites—the farmers’ cattle and sheep, guarded only by a Hottentot herdsman, offering the strongest temptation to the Bushman. Reprisals followed; and the position became so desperate that the extermination of the Bushmen appeared to the government the only safe alternative. “Commandoes” or war-bands were sent out against them, and they were hunted down like wild beasts. Within a period of six years, it is said, upwards of 3000 were either killed or captured. Out of the organization of these commandoes, with their field-commandants and field-cornets, has grown the common system of local government in the Dutch-settled districts of South Africa.
It was not to the hostility of the natives, nor to the hard struggle with nature necessary to make agriculture profitable on Karroo or veld, that the slow progress made by the colonists was due, so much as to the narrow and tyrannical policy adopted by the East India Company, which closed the colony against free immigration, kept the whole of the trade in its own hands, combined the administrative, legislative and judicial powers in one body, prescribed to the farmers the nature of the crops they were to grow, demanded from them a large part of their produce, and harassed them with other exactions tending to discourage industry and enterprise. (See further South Africa, where the methods and results of Dutch colonial government are considered in their broader aspects.) To this mischievous policy is ascribed that dislike to orderly government, and that desire to escape from its control, which characterized for many generations the “boer” or farmer class of Dutch settlers—qualities utterly at variance with the character of the Dutch in their native country. It was largely to escape oppression that the farmers trekked farther and farther from the seat of government. The company, to control the emigrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745 and another at Graaff Reinet in 1786. The Gamtoos river had been declared, c. 1740, the eastern frontier of the colony, but it was soon passed. In 1780, however, the Dutch, to avoid collision with the warlike Kaffir tribes advancing south and west from east central Africa, agreed with them to make the Great Fish river the common boundary. In 1795 the heavily taxed burghers of the frontier districts, who were afforded no protection against the Kaffirs, expelled the officials of the East India Company, and set up independent governments at Swellendam and Graaff Reinet. In the same
