ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a period when settler expansion into the interior was largely unimpeded. Grazing land was generally available for those settlers who had the resources and desire for it with little opposition from the original inhabitants. In 1652 the Dutch East India Company founded a refreshment station on the shores of Table Bay for the scurvy-ridden crews of its fleets plying between Europe and Asia. The occupation of Hottentots-Holland by Company soldiers in 1672 would probably have been followed by the permanent settlement of freeburghers beyond the Cape Flats had not the Second Khoikhoi-Dutch war postponed ideas of expansion; the settlement remained confined to the Cape Peninsula for another seven years. In 1679 Simon van der Stel arrived at the Cape with orders from the Heren XVII to begin new expansion. The expansion of the settlement created a demand for more labourers, largely met by importing African and Asian slaves sold to settlers on credit by the Company.
