The Cape foot was a unit of measurement in South Africa dating from Dutch colonial days. In the Netherlands, several foot-size units (voeten) were in use. The Rijnland foot (Rijnlandse voet) was 31.4 cm = 1.03 ft = 0.343 yd It was the Rijnland foot that was taken by Dutch settlers to the Cape Colony in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1859, by which time the colony had passed into British control, the was calibrated against the English foot and legally defined as 1.033 English feet (0.314858 m).