1660 at the Cape of Good Hope: Kaapman Peace, the Marichal Wreck, and Danckert’s Trek

Peace Overtures and the Cause of the War

In the early months of 1660 the settlement looked peaceful, but only because the Cape clans had moved inland for a time. With their return to the peninsula, hostilities were expected again unless some arrangement could be made beforehand. Van Riebeeck and his council wanted a settlement that would let Europeans work unmolested. [1] [3]

There was no doubt in their minds about the cause of the late war. The wounded Khoikhoi prisoner whom the fiscal had brought to the fort spoke Dutch well enough to be understood. Asked why his countrymen stole farmers’ cattle, he answered that the farmers occupied, without leave, land that had belonged to his people from time immemorial. They could no longer drive cattle to the river to drink without crossing cultivated ground, and they had determined to force the intruders out. Soon after that statement the prisoner died. From then on van Riebeeck gave this as the true origin of the war. [3]

The free Saldanha traders who returned late in January confirmed the same story from the Kaapman side. The clans had begun the war because the best ground had been put under the plough; by stealing draught oxen they hoped to stop the ploughing. They named freemen — especially Jan Reynierssen and Hendrik Boom — who had once strung up one of their men until Jacob Rosendael cut him down. They also said that if Simon in ’t Veld had not fired when they came for his cattle, they would not have killed him; they had been after stock, not lives. Now, finding the Dutch positions strengthened and themselves unable to drive the settlement off the Cape, they wanted peace. Saldanha Bay, they added, was barren and brackish; the Cape was their birthplace, full of sweet water, and Oedasoa would not let them sit on his best rivers. [1] [2]

Interpreter Eva (Krotoa) confirmed the report, but with a hard political edge. Oedasoa, she said, would not mind a peace with the Kaapmans so long as it was not “from the soul”: the commander’s true friendship must remain with Oedasoa alone; any Kaapman treaty would be feigned, and the fort must keep a sharp lookout. Van Riebeeck answered that Oedasoa’s name was engraved on his heart — and on 21 January sent notes signed by himself, Roelof de Man, and Abraham Gabbema, with tobacco, brandy, and copper wire, inviting Gogosoa and Doman to the fort under safe conduct, and offering Harry leave to live again at the fort if he brought cattle traffic. [1] [2]

Batavia candidly admitted that the natives had natural cause for enmity, yet no redress of the kind they sought could be granted. The question before the council was whether nomad clans held a right to the soil so complete that Europeans ought not to take any of it, or whether a European outpost at the Cape was justified. The answer at the fort was that the cultivated ground would be held; resistance was treated as natural, not as a reason to withdraw. Meanwhile the defensive works of 1659 still thickened: horses, the line of watch-houses, and the bitter-almond and thorn hedge planned from the sea past De Ruyterwacht to the Bosheuvel — some 1,320 roods from the sea to De Ruyterwacht and 2,353 from there round the freemen’s farms. [2] [3]

Kaapman Treaty — 6 April 1660

The Kaapmans made the first peace overtures. Early in the year they sent a message from Saldanha Bay by the coast traders, proposing a treaty of friendship. They asked for a written safe-conduct signed by the commander, the secunde, and the fiscal so that delegates might visit the fort. The proposal came from Harry and Doman, who had learned that a bond was preferable to a verbal promise. The safe-conduct was sent; under its protection the two former interpreters settled the preliminary arrangements with the commander. [1] [3]

In March, while Commissioner-Admiral Pieter Sterthemius lay in Table Bay with the return fleet, Herman Remajenne and two companions made an overland trip toward Saldanha, pretended private barter, and came back with three Kaapman envoys. On 3 March those envoys were sent home with food, tobacco, and brandy, carrying a letter — signed in their presence by Sterthemius and van Riebeeck — that the Kaapmans might come to treat. On the 10th Remajenne returned with Harry, Doman, and a large following, bringing ten head of cattle and five sheep as peace gifts. Sterthemius granted Remajenne a bonus of twenty-five reals of eight for the trouble. Next day the gifts were accepted and repaid in copper, tobacco, and beads; it was provisionally agreed that the tribe might pitch camp again behind or beyond the Bosheuvel while fuller talks continued. Sterthemius, before sailing, urged that the commander not avenge himself on the Khoikhoi but win them by well-doing — and left van Riebeeck to finish the settlement alone. [1] [2]

On the 6th of April the fat captain Gogosoa, accompanied by Harry, Doman, and about forty of the leading men of the Kaapman clan, arrived at the fort and concluded a treaty. Mutual promises were given that neither would molest the other. There were no stolen cattle left for the Kaapmans to restore; instead they promised to try to bring inland clans to sell stock to make up the war losses. Europeans would retain the land they occupied; roads would be pointed out along which Kaapmans could come to the fort; and Europeans who wronged natives would be severely punished. [1] [2] [3]

Those terms came only after long and bitter discussion. The Kaapmans insisted that the Dutch had taken more and more of land that had been theirs for centuries and on which they had always grazed cattle. They asked whether the Dutch would allow the reverse in Holland, and added that it would be of little consequence if the strangers stayed at the fort — “but you come right into the interior and select the best land for yourselves, without even asking whether we mind.” When the Dutch answered that there was not grass enough for both herds, the Kaapmans shot back: if the Dutch kept large herds they would fill the grazing; and if the land was too small for both, who should give way — the rightful owner or the foreign intruder? [1]

They then asked at least to gather bitter almonds and dig edible roots inside the settlement line as winter food. That too was refused — the almonds were needed for the thorn hedge, and free access would give too many chances of harm — though those reasons were not all spoken aloud. When they persisted, they were told they had lost the land by the war and must admit it was no longer theirs; their stock had been taken without just cause, and the ground had “justly fallen to us in a defensive war, won by the sword.” Against this they complained of burgher ill-treatment — sheep and calves stolen, beads and armlets snatched for slaves, beatings without the commander’s knowledge — and said they had taken cattle in revenge. Van Riebeeck answered with the punishments already inflicted on offenders, and warned that further private revenge by theft would only justify taking still more land. At last they accepted that they would bring future grievances to the fort for judgment, and that the commander would later mark the roads and limits they must keep. Gifts of copper, beads, and tobacco followed; food and drink left the company “merrily tipsy.” The Dutch noted they could have held the whole party prisoner, but chose not to. [1] [2] [3]

The war’s bill, as van Riebeeck summarised it to the Seventeen late in March, was heavy enough: about 148 of the best draught and milch cattle and 113 sheep lost to the Company; five farms devastated; Company and private grain and vines partly destroyed; two colonists killed and several wounded; three Khoikhoi dead and Doman wounded. What the April treaty settled was not friendship of the soul, but a working peace on Dutch terms — and the first open war on the Liesbeek line was over. [2]

Gorachouqua Peace and the Fort Dance — 5 May 1660

Soon after the Kaapman peace, the Gorachouquas sent three delegates to ask whether terms would be made with them also. The answer was yes, with the condition that in future they must enter only through the barriers at the watch-houses Kijckuijt and Keert de Koe. On 27 April the emissaries took that condition; on the 5th of May Choro, with Harry and Doman as interpreters and about a hundred followers — most of the elders and principal men — appeared at the fort. Ankaisoa, a petty chief of Gogosoa’s clan who had not been included in the April treaty, was there as well and asked to be brought into the peace. [1] [2] [3]

Forerunners had come that afternoon saying twelve cattle already lay at the Kaapman camp six or seven hours away and would be brought next day as the customary peace present. Toward evening Choro himself arrived with thirteen head — young and old, all in fair condition — and asked that they be accepted as a token of friendship and of a promise to live in peace and to draw inland tribes to trade. The cattle were driven into the kraal for the Company. They again pressed for room on their old pasturage; Harry and Doman were told the matter was closed since the ground had been lost in the war. Choro seemed less troubled by that point than the Kaapmans had been, and said his people would use only the barrier road or such other routes as the Dutch marked. [1] [3]

Terms similar to Gogosoa’s were then agreed. In ratification Choro’s thirteen cattle were answered next morning — Ascension Day, 6 May — with copper, beads, tobacco, and pipes worth at least twice the beasts. After the sermon the guests were treated to food and drink. A tub in the fort courtyard was filled with a mixture of arrack and brandy, a small sailor’s cup floating in it. The men then prepared a grand dance after their manner: they ranged in order while the women sat and set up a monotonous chant, clapping so loudly that the noise carried a full hundred and fifty roods beyond the walls. The dancing — springing and quivering rather than stepping — lasted about two hours, while one after another men fell overcome by exertion and the drink. Each was carried outside and laid in the grass to sleep. Choro kept himself only half-seas-over; three or four elders likewise stayed on their feet. When the dance ended, peace with the three former enemies of 1659 — Goringhaiqua (Kaapmans), Ankaisoa, and Gorachouqua — stood formally renewed. Those tribes had fielded about a thousand able-bodied warriors at the height of the war. [1] [2] [3]

On the 7th the visitors left well satisfied. The commander and six horsemen escorted them to the barrier between Keert de Koe and Kijckuijt; patrol riders then took them as far as the Bracke River and showed the future route and the ground to avoid. Van Riebeeck galloped along the near bank past Company and free farms so that the speed of the horses might sink in. Inspection of the fields that day showed much rye and wheat already sown — about 152 morgen in all if the season held: fifty Company, thirty-five the commander’s, and the rest among Cloete, Rosendael, Steven Janssen, Remajenne, Martenssen, Brinckman, and Visagie. Draught oxen were still desperately short. Trade restarted almost at once: on the 13th six cattle, a calf, and four sheep came from the Gorachouquas — the first barter since the peace — paid in large red beads preferred to copper, and large-bowl pipes that made the old small pipes unsaleable except to burghers. [1] [2]

Lacus Secretary and Burgher Officers

About this time secretary Gysbert van Campen left the Cape for Batavia, and clerk Hendrik Lacus was promoted to the vacant post. On 20 April the council formally employed him and swore him in. The secretary kept the record of the council of policy but had neither vote nor voice in debate; in the absence of a clergyman he performed marriages; he drew up contracts and agreements; declarations concerning crime were made before him, though prosecutions remained with the fiscal; and a great mass of copying — letters, journals, and other documents — passed through his hands. Clear black-letter penmanship was a necessary qualification; the tough paper and quill work of those secretaries still read almost like print centuries later. Lacus’s French would matter within weeks, when a French wreck put diplomacy on the beach. [1] [3]

Two new burgher councillors were needed. Jan Reyniers, ruined by the war, had returned into the Company’s service; Hendrik Boom had served his full term. The freemen nominated Jacob Cloete, Leendert Cornelissen, Wouter Mostert, and Jurien Janssen; the council of policy selected the second and third — Leendert Cornelissen (van Sevenhuysen) and Wouter Mostert — on 1 May 1660. The council of militia presented six names; from them Hendrik van Surwerden (van Suerwaerden), a free tailor, was appointed sergeant, and Herman Remajenne and Elbert Dirksen corporals for the ensuing year. The burgher force that had been enrolled in 1659 thus received its annual officers under the new peace. [1] [2] [3]

The Marichal Wreck — May 1660

On the morning of 9 May 1660 a strange ship was sighted riding dangerously close to the far shore of Table Bay under a white flag. Van Riebeeck, the skipper of the flute Loenen, Roelof de Man, and other horsemen rode out under cover of the dunes. She looked Flemish or French, topmasts lowered, lying barely a musket-shot from the breakers. Next day she warped clear and came into the roadstead. Free-burgher boats that had gone out with vegetables and eggs — ostensibly to sell, in truth to learn her flag — brought ashore Lieutenant Pierre Gelton, a Prussian who had been at the Cape three years earlier with Admiral Laros. He named the ship La Marichal (the same hull that had carried Laros), Captain Simon Vesron (Veron) of La Rochelle, chartered by Monsieur La Milleray, governor of Nantes. She had left the Nantes River on 20 January with about 180 souls, touched at Teneriffe and Cape Verde, and lost no one on the passage; seven or eight were ill. Bound for Madagascar, Gelton was to relieve Governor Durivé and build a fort at St Augustine’s Bay; a bishop and three minor ecclesiastics of the church of Rome were among the passengers. [1] [3]

The French also brought news that made the fort wary: off Cape Verde a French ship from Dieppe, flying Swedish colours, had seized the Dutch West India Company’s fort by treachery at a farewell banquet and taken two laden Dutch flutes — booty said to run to three hundred thousand guilders — without killing anyone. Van Riebeeck therefore entertained Vesron and Gelton only after doubling watches, ordering French water-parties back aboard by night, and refusing easy confidence in commissions from king, queen mother, and La Milleray. [1]

On the morning of the 16th the wind set in from the north-west with rain and rose until the 18th it blew a gale, with a heavy sea rolling into the bay. The Marichal rode to three anchors, but her ground tackle was weaker than that of a Dutch Indiaman of her size. After midnight toward the 19th the cables parted. There was no saving the ship; with foresail set she drove head-on into the sand between the redoubt Duynhoop and the mouth of Salt River. Spars were cut away and a boat got out, but it swamped and broke on the beach like a Biscayan sloop. Men on the wreck made rafts without success and kept the pumps going; they held a spritsail up so the rising tide would beach her bows-on rather than broadside. [1] [3]

Two letters came ashore in a cask, pleading for help before the hull heeled and all was lost. A whale-boat (an old Biscayan sloop) was mounted on a waggon and taken along the beach. Held by ropes, it could ply only twice between beach and wreck that day; three men came off in it, two swam, and with one already sick ashore the total saved was six — including Gelton. He asked sites for tents; the fort assigned ground opposite the wreck under Duynhoop’s guns. On the 20th, with calmer weather, sixty-one more came ashore, including the captain, Gelton, the bishop, and three priests. Vesron asked leave to hire free-burgher craft to fish for anchors and cables in hope of hauling the hull off once lightened; the request was granted as a matter of politeness that did not interfere with Company work. [1] [3]

Restrictions followed. Secretary Lacus, who spoke French well, was sent to convey them politely: all munitions of war except the arms of the six officers highest in rank were to be given into the commander’s custody against receipt; a true list of the company and lodgings was required; the French were not to go beyond assigned limits; and no meetings were to be held for worship according to the ritual of the church of Rome. Van Riebeeck issued a proclamation prohibiting all religious ceremonies in the settlement except those of the Reformed church of Holland. That clause seemed so ordinary to those present that no demur was made to it, but Lieutenant Gelton objected forcibly to surrendering the arms. The commander held firm, and the lieutenant submitted. [1] [3]

Captain Vesron and forty-four of the crew were Huguenots; sympathy between them and the Netherlanders seems to have run stronger than between them and their own countrymen of the other faith. Thirty-five of the Frenchmen entered the Company’s service at the Cape; the remainder did the same as soon as they reached Batavia in the first ships after the disaster. The ecclesiastics stayed nearly a year and then took passage for Europe after failing to engage a conveyance to Madagascar. The bishop, Estienne by name, was a man of wealth and good family who had turned from a profligate career to fervent piety and the founding of missions in Madagascar. This was the third time he had been thwarted in reaching that island; he told van Riebeeck he meant, once home, to charter a vessel at his own cost if the factory owners sent none. Theal later counted the ship’s total souls at one hundred and forty-eight; the journal’s first report from Gelton had put the sailing complement near one hundred and eighty — a discrepancy that reflects different moments of counting after illness, shore parties, and wreck. [1] [3]

Remajenne’s Illicit Cattle Trade

In 1660 it was discovered that Herman Remajenne of Cologne — the man whose name heads the list of South African free settlers — had long carried on illicit trade with the Khoikhoi. During the late hostilities, when the government was straining to find the Kaapmans, he had twice visited their camp in secret. When the Marichal was lost, he managed by night to supply the crew with abundance of fresh beef in exchange for articles saved from the wreck. He was running a large cattle trade under the eye of the fort, with few accomplices other than natives. [2] [3]

On 4 July the journal recorded what repeated signs had long suggested. Remajenne was bringing animals home by night, slaughtering ten, twelve, or fifteen sheep and two or three cattle at a time, and selling the meat to other burghers, to ships, and to the French still ashore — in direct breach of the Lords Seventeen’s orders and the placcaats of 1658. Warned that he would return that night from the Gorachouqua camp, the sergeant and soldiers watched his house. Between twelve and one o’clock they took him and his partner Hans Ras with one beast, six sheep, and a lamb, driven by three Khoikhoi named Heijde, Nantisa, and Oedimackha. [1]

Examined before the council in Remajenne’s presence, the three drivers declared that their chiefs had never allowed them to sell to freemen or to pass the forbidden places; Remajenne had come to them and said they should not set such store by the fort monopoly — the commander wanted all the cattle for himself. Over time he had obtained and slaughtered as many as four or five hundred sheep, using the three men to carry meat in sacks. He had lately supplied the ships Nagelboom and Phenicx; he had brought meat into the fort under firewood on his waggons; he made small copper chains and gave for one animal what the Company gave for five or six. Remajenne even drew such a chain from his pocket and handed it to the commander. Punishment, by the standards of the day and the circumstances, was light: the bartered cattle were forfeited to the Company, and a small fine was inflicted on him. Once he and other freemen had been checked, the Company’s own inland trade could expand. [1] [2] [3]

Inland Chiefs and Cattle Barter

Large herds were now frequently brought for sale by chiefs of inland clans. Natives were eager for beads and parted with many hundreds of oxen and cows for them. Beads for an ox cost the Company only eight to ten pence, but the trade carried larger expenses: continual presents of copper plates, iron rods, axes, tobacco, pipes, and other articles to the chiefs, and liberal entertainment of all who came to the fort. After the May peaces the first small lots from Gorachouquas and from Oedasoa’s messengers (nine sheep on one visit) were only the opening of a ceremonial traffic that filled the second half of the year. [1] [3]

The barter was ceremonious. A party approaching from the interior sent messengers ahead to report the number of cattle on the way. At the gate by the watch-house Keert de Koe the party was met by a horseman and escorted to the fort. The leader might be Oedasoa, chief of the Cochoqua — a tribe estimated at seventeen or eighteen thousand souls — mounted on an ox, with his favourite daughter Namies riding at his side, a pack ox behind, and forty or fifty men driving the cattle. Or it might be Sousoa, chief of the Chainouqua, a tribe even more numerous and powerful, accompanied by his son Goeboe with a similar train. Chainouqua authority over lesser clans was felt at the fort: while Sousoa was near, Kaapmans and others kept a quieter distance. [1] [3]

At the fort the chiefs dismounted and were taken to the commander’s apartments, seated on mats on the floor. For Oedasoa, Eva always interpreted; for other chiefs, Doman or Harry attended. After compliments came an entertainment of bread, rice, cheese, sugar, and wine served in tin dishes and cans said to be used only by persons of rank in Holland. Sometimes they heard music from the virginals; if it was Sunday, military and burgher infantry were reviewed after divine service and salutes fired in their honour. While the chiefs ate in the commander’s quarters, their retainers feasted in the courtyard on bread, rice, and brandy. As a rule no trade was done on the day of arrival; barter followed next morning, then further entertainment that might last two or three days. When the visitors left, pack oxen carried presents for the chiefs and biscuits and brandy for the road. [3]

Behaviour on these visits was satisfactory, and traits of character were noticed with care. If a present was made to one man, he immediately divided it among all. Oedasoa’s attachment to Namies stood out: when a lion mangled his arm while his people tried to secure young zebras for the commander, who wished to try taming them as horses, Namies alone dressed the wounds and watched day and night until he could help himself. When she was ill, nothing would tempt her father to leave her despite pressing invitations from the fort. The mother of Namies had been an elder sister of Eva, carried off years earlier by Chainouquas and later taken among Cochoqua spoil — a reminder that capture and remarriage were common, yet family ties could still run deep. Oedasoa later used that old feud in diplomacy: he asked Sousoa’s leave for Cochoqua people to trade at the fort, and Sousoa granted it the more readily, the journal noted, because of the past carrying-off of Eva’s sister. [1] [3]

Van Riebeeck also tried to turn inland skill to Company account. Cochoquas were such adepts at taking zebra with assegais that the fort offered four grown cattle for every young horse brought in alive, and one hundred and fifty guilders to any freeman who trapped one. Live animals remained scarce; the offers show how far the commander’s mind already ran beyond mere cattle barter toward transport and prestige animals for the settlement. [1]

Ships were often blown past the Cape without putting into Table Bay; sometimes vessels at the mouth of the harbour were driven out again by a strong south-east gale. The directors therefore wanted a second place of refreshment somewhere in the Atlantic. England under the Protector Cromwell had taken St Helena, so search was under way for another convenient station. Belief held that a beautiful, fertile island lay somewhere between St Helena and the African coast. [3]

Lodewyk Claessen of Delft, then master ship’s carpenter at Batavia, said that in 1652 he had twice been on St Helena Nova, as the Portuguese named the island. Questioned by the governor-general and council of India, he told a full story: four years a Portuguese prisoner, compelled for a time to serve in a ship cruising the Atlantic; a fertile island abounding with fruit, vegetables, and cattle; sailors saying it lay half a degree south of old St Helena; two small Portuguese fortresses ashore and a third larger one building; a good harbour. Charts had long laid down St Helena Nova as well. [3]

Expeditions from the Cape searched for it without success. In May 1660 the flute Loenen was dispatched from Table Bay expressly to look for the island after receiving her letters of dispatch on Ascension Day; she had already been used to warn return ships not to run on for old St Helena. Return fleets left in long lines with ships a few miles apart and scoured the ocean for years until the island was erased from the maps. The same season’s north-west gales that wrecked the Marichal had already shown why a second Atlantic station mattered: even Dutch flutes dragging anchors in the bay smashed spars against one another, and any homeward ship that missed the roadstead faced Madagascar or worse. [1] [3]

Danckert’s Trek — Elephant River, November 1660

An attempt to reach the empire of Monomotapa was also made from the Cape in 1660. Large rewards for discoveries of importance drew volunteers. Since the last exploring party, van Riebeeck had studied books on South African geography and believed he could fix Monomotapa and its chief cities. His authorities included Linschoten’s work, Father Martinus Martini’s verbal description, and Portuguese books of travel, geography, and history. Portuguese was then the common medium among Europeans of different nations in the east, and was often used at the fort; Eva could speak it tolerably well. [3]

From those sources he laid down the city of Davagul, where the emperor of Monomotapa kept his treasures, as 828 English miles north-east of the Cape and 322 miles west of the Indian Ocean coast — in the neighbourhood of the later town of Pretoria — on the bank of the river Spirito Santo. Cortado on Rio Infante was thought to lie in the same direction but nearer. Peoples on the route were listed as Cochoqua, Chainouqua, and Hancumqua; next to these last the Chobona, taken to be the civilised people of Monomotapa. Peace with the peninsula clans and friendship with Cochoqua and Chainouqua, the council argued on 10 November, had made the inland roads safer than before — which was one reason those chiefs had been so liberally entertained. [1] [3]

Thirteen volunteers went under Jan Danckert (Danckaert) of Nijhoven, a cadet who had arrived the previous year in the Gecroonde Leeuw, with some knowledge of engineering and geometry. The twelve who joined him were named in full: Johannes Doerhagen of Gronou; Pieter Meerhoff of Copenhagen, arrived in the Princes Royael as a soldier and since employed as junior surgeon; Jan Baptist of Frankfurt; Theunis Kagh of Reichenbach; George Frederick Wreede (Wrede) of Uetze in Lüneburg; Cristiaen de Soete; Pieter Roman; Pieter Hanssen of Nijmegen; Jacob Pritsel of Dresden, a miner; Pieter Harthoven of Cologne; Pelagius Weckerlijn; and Coenraedt Schatman of Dunkirk. Interpreter Doman went too — living at the fort since the peace and working to regain the commander’s confidence. Succession if Danckert fell was fixed: Doerhagen, then Meerhoff, Baptist, Kagh, and Wreede. Double pay was promised if they stayed out half as long again as their provisions warranted; triple pay if they reached mapped settlements and pressed beyond; and cash at Fatherland prices for gold, stones, or pearls, quite apart from discovery rewards — especially if they reached Monomotapa, Butua, or Davagul on or near the Spiritu Sancto and brought people back, even leaving hostages. [1] [3]

They left on the 12th of November with bread and other food on three of the most tractable pack oxen, plus light merchandise in small lots — some of it beads and haberdashery the council hoped to buy from the French wreck stock intended for Madagascar. Muskets were to supply meat. They travelled north along the base of the mountain range that separates the western coast belt from the interior. Small parties of San were encountered — some dropped arms and fled at the sight of strangers; others held friendly talk. They passed a region they called the veritable kingdom of the moles, where the ground gave way at every step. At length they came to a river flowing toward the Atlantic with two or three hundred elephants feeding on its banks, and named it from that sight — the Elephant River, the name it still bears. [1] [3]

At the Elephant River some of the party rested while the leader and a few others pushed a little farther north. At the farthest point they saw smoke rising far ahead and were told by San that it came from fires of a Namaqua encampment. Most of the men were too fatigued to go on; Danckert had to turn homeward. They made no discoveries of importance on the return march and reached the fort safely on the 20th of January 1661. The intelligence of Namaqua fires was enough to call forth another expedition within ten days under Corporal Pieter Cruythof, with Meerhoff as journalist — but that contact belongs to the next year. The year 1660 thus closed with peace treaties on the peninsula, a French wreck and new labour in the bay, inland cattle coming in by ceremony, a phantom Atlantic island still sought, and the first European sight of Namaqua smoke from the far north — without yet opening that trade. [1] [3]