that of debarring the commerce of all other nations from the aid which they sought for themselves. It is on record that when a French merchant-vessel was once treated with hospitality by the authorities at the Cape, the authorities at home brought their colonial dependents very severely to task for such forgetfulness of their duty. The Governor at the time was dismissed for not allowing the Frenchman to "float on his own fins." It was then decided that water should be given to Europeans in want of it, but as little other refreshment as possible.
The home Authority at this time was not the Dutch Government, but the Council of Seventeen at Amsterdam, who were the Directors of the Dutch East India Company. For, as with us, the commercial enterprise with the East was a monopoly given over to a great Company, and this Company for the furtherance of its own business established a depôt at the Cape of Good Hope. When therefore we read of the Dutch Governors we are reading of the servants not of the nation but of a commercial firm. And yet these Governors, with the aid of their burgher council, had full power over life and limb.
Jan van Riebeek was the first Governor, a man who seems to have had a profound sense of the difficulties and responsibilities of his melancholy position, and to have done his duty well amidst great suffering, till at last, after many petitions for his own recall, he was released. He was there for ten sad years, and seems to have ruled,—no doubt necessarily,—with a stern hand. The records of the little community at this time are both touching and amusing, the
