Tafelberg (Table Mountain) is a large flat-topped hill in Curaçao, an island state in the Dutch Caribbean.

Fossils of Pleistocene[ii] giant tortoises, Chelonoidis, of an estimated 80 centimetres (31 in) carapace length have been found in fill deposits.

Comparisons of grazed and inaccessibly ungrazed areas show that the natural vegetation was predominantly of the bromeliad Tillandsia flexuosa,[iv] but that this could not tolerate grazing and since the introduction of livestock by humans, primarily goats, has largely been replaced by annual grasses, prickly pear and shrubby acacias.

[3] Phosphate mining began at Santa Barbara in the 1870s, although by 1900 it had been abandoned and the island was in an economically near-derelict state.

[7]: 230–232  The first railway on the island was built for phosphate traffic, a gravity-worked cable funicular from the mountain to the harbour on Fuikbaai near Nieuwpoort.