The little South African settlement became of recognised importance in the later years of the century, when it was made the halfway station of all ships going to and returning from the East Indies. The necessity for such a station was the foundation of the growth of the settlement at Table Bay, which is only a short distance from the southernmost extremity of the continent, and the increase in population came as a natural sequence.
The Dutch East India Settlement, as it was officially called, attracted hundreds of immigrants. The reports of a salubrious climate, good soil, and, more than all, the promised religious toleration, were the allurements that brought more immigrants from Holland, Germany, and France. Cape Town even then was one of the most important ports in the world, owing to its great strategic value and to the fact that it was about the only port where vessels making the long trip to the East Indies could secure even the scantiest supplies. The provisioning of ships was responsible, in no small degree, for the growth of Cape Town and the coincident increase in immigration.
When all the available land between Table Mountain and Table Bay was settled, the new arrivals naturally took up the land to the northward, and drove the bellicose natives before them. Like their Pilgrim prototypes, they instituted military organizations to cope with the natives, and they were not infrequently called upon for active duty against them. It was owing to this savage disposition of the natives that the settlers confined their endeavours to the vicinity of Table Bay.
When immigrants became more numerous and land increased in value, the pilgrims of more daring disposition proceeded inland, and soon carried the northeastern boundary of the settlement close to the Orange River. The soil around Table Bay was extremely rich, but farther inland it became barren and, by reason of the many lofty table-lands, almost uninhabitable. The Bushmen, too, were constantly attacking the encroaching settlers, whose lives were filled with anything but thoughts of safety, and high in the northern side of Table Mountain is to be seen to-day an old-time fort that was erected by the settlers to ward off natives' attacks upon Cape Town.