Boer History1683 at the Cape of Good Hope: Bergh’s Second Copper March and Klapmuts Stock-Farm
Opening 1683 after the First Copper Failure
The calendar year 1683 opened with Simon van der Stel still commander, Stellenbosch already under a local heemraad from the previous August, and the peninsula petty court of commissioners sitting weekly for small civil claims. The wheat of 1682 had been nearly ruined by insects; the inland freehold valley and the older peninsula farms therefore entered the new ploughing cycle under pressure to restore grain while ordinary refreshment-station work—fleets in Table Bay, the Company garden, castle administration—continued without pause. [3]
To the north the directors’ copper question remained open. At the end of October 1682 Ensign Olof Bergh had marched with thirty soldiers, a journalist, and a chart-maker toward the country from which Namaqua visitors had brought ore specimens in 1681; after a month the column returned with the report that drought made further progress impossible. The year ahead would test whether a larger, better-equipped expedition could force the same route when the calendar again favoured late-winter departure. [3]
Pastoral logistics also demanded attention closer to home. Company cattle already used Hottentots Holland and other fixed posts; growth of herds and the need for change of pasturage pushed the government toward a new inland stock-farm on ground at Klapmuts, while the long-standing difficulty of turning discharged soldiers and sailors into lasting freehold farmers framed every discussion of how the settlement might still grow. [3] [4]
Discharged Servants and the Search for Colonists
The commander had been informed by the directors that they would gladly send out families of agricultural labourers if such people could be found willing to emigrate, but that it was rarely any were to be had, because there was no lack of employment at home for all who could work. There was, therefore, no way of obtaining colonists except by discharging servants of the Company. [3]
In the past that system had entailed heavy expense without compensating result. Fully nine out of every ten discharged soldiers and sailors who had been assisted by the Company to commence farming failed in that occupation, and either returned into the service in debt or found their way to some other country. The arithmetic was administrative as much as moral: each failure cost seed, stock, tools, and lost labour that the refreshment station could ill spare. [3]
Van der Stel tried to improve upon the older plan. Instead of waiting until men’s terms of service had expired and then giving ground indiscriminately to all who offered to take it, he was willing at any time to release individuals of good character and industrious habits, especially if they had families. Even so, the proportion of those who became permanent colonists remained very small compared with the whole number discharged. The 1683 settlement therefore grew less by sudden immigration than by selective free papers and by the slow thickening of households already committed to the soil at Stellenbosch and on the peninsula. [3]
Klapmuts Company Stock-Farm — 1683
In 1683 a tract of ground at Klapmuts was turned into a stock-farm for the Company’s use, so that the cattle kept at Hottentots Holland might have a change of pasturage. The post belonged to the same system of Company out-stations that already dotted the nearer country—places where a few soldiers and slaves watched herds on government account rather than freehold title deeds for burgher families. [3] [4]
The choice of Klapmuts was practical geography. Hottentots Holland already carried Company stock on the eastern side of the peninsula approaches; rotating beasts to Klapmuts lengthened the grass cycle without pushing the official cattle line as far inland as Stellenbosch freehold. In the same broad movement of pastoral occupation, the Company was annexing and staffing ground for its own herds while burgher settlement thickened in the Eerste River valley under the heemraad established the year before. [3] [4]
Klapmuts in 1683 was not yet one of a long list of later outposts named in the mid-1680s after cattle-buying through Captain Klaas multiplied herds beyond older capacity. For this year the fact is simpler and sharper: the Company converted a defined tract into a stock-farm so that official cattle at Hottentots Holland could be moved and rested. That single administrative act fixed another permanent point on the map between the castle and the inland freehold district. [3]
Bergh’s Second Expedition Fitted Out — August 1683
The attempt toward the copper country was renewed on a larger scale than the drought march of late 1682. On the 27th of August 1683 an expedition better equipped than any that had previously left the Cape set out for the Namaqua country under command of Ensign Olof Bergh. [3]
The column consisted of forty-two Europeans—among whom were draughtsmen, miners, and journalists—and ten Hottentots, all under Bergh’s command. It was provisioned for four months. A train of waggons and carts was to convey supplies as far as possible; two boats were taken so that swollen rivers need not delay the march; and a herd of pack-oxen and five horses were ready for use when the waggons could get no farther. [3]
Compared with the thirty soldiers plus journalist and chart-maker of October 1682, the 1683 outfit was a deliberate answer to last year’s failure: more men, mining and recording specialists, river boats, and pack animals for the stage beyond wheels. Directors’ curiosity about Namaqua copper had become a four-month field establishment rather than a single short probe. [3]
Riebeek’s Kasteel, Berg River, and the Elephant River
The expedition proceeded by way of Riebeek’s Kasteel to the Berg river, which was found too deep to be forded. The boats were then brought into service, and after everything was ferried over the march was resumed. At the Elephant river the same difficulty recurred. There a camp was formed, as the boats would not be needed again. [3]
River crossings fixed the rhythm of the early march. Waggons and carts could roll on the known northern track as far as deep water allowed; beyond each unfordable stream the boats turned a military-mining column into a ferry operation, with stores, men, and animals passed in stages. Leaving the boats at the Elephant river marked the edge of wheeled and floated supply: from that camp forward, pack-oxen and the five horses would have to carry what the waggons could no longer take. [3]
The route itself was not a new fantasy of blank country. Riebeek’s Kasteel and the Berg river valley had long been on the northern itinerary of explorers and cattle parties; what distinguished Bergh’s 1683 column was scale and purpose—miners and draughtsmen in the same train as soldiers, pointed at the copper mountains rather than at ordinary barter kraals alone. [3]
Grigriquas, Namaqua Guides, and the Desert
Across the Elephant river a party of Grigriquas was encountered, and with them were four or five Namaquas who offered to act as guides. Soon after this a sterile district was entered, but the column pushed on until it reached the nearest of the Namaqua kraals. [3]
Close to that kraal stood a high mountain, from the top of which the Atlantic could be seen at no great distance. Beyond it to the northward the whole country was a desert without grass or water, for rain had only fallen once within the preceding twelve months. Local guidance and European equipment could open the road to the first Namaqua settlement; they could not invent pasture or springs where a year’s drought had left none. [3]
The geography of failure was therefore visible from the mountain above the kraal: ocean to one side, empty north ahead, and a column provisioned for four months staring at ground that could not feed oxen. The same climate that had turned Bergh back in 1682 still ruled the approaches to the copper country in the late southern winter and spring of 1683. [3]
Return and Report — 24 October 1683
It was impossible to get any farther. The ensign was obliged to retrace his steps, and on the 24th of October he reported at the castle that the expedition had failed. [3]
Roughly two months separated the 27 August departure from the 24 October report—time enough to prove the improved outfit as far as the nearest Namaqua kraals and the desert beyond, not time enough to reach the copper mountains themselves. Failure was again climatic and pastoral rather than a collapse of discipline: boats had worked on the Berg and Elephant rivers; Grigriqua contact and Namaqua guides had been obtained; the sterile belt simply closed the road. [3]
For Cape administration the October report closed the year’s northern programme. Directors still wanted knowledge of the ore country; the commander still held their instructions to explore it carefully; but 1683’s large column had demonstrated that even draughtsmen, miners, journalists, boats, pack-oxen, and hired guides could not cross a twelve-month drought belt. Any further probe would need another season and another plan. [3]
Settlement by the Close of 1683
By the close of 1683 the Cape under Simon van der Stel had added a Company stock-farm at Klapmuts for change of pasturage from Hottentots Holland, continued the slow and selective release of industrious servants into freehold life, and spent late winter and spring on the largest copper-bound expedition yet sent from the castle—forty-two Europeans and ten Khoikhoi under Ensign Olof Bergh, gone from 27 August and back with a failure report on 24 October. [3] [4]
Stellenbosch’s heemraad and the peninsula petty court, both created in August 1682, framed local civil life while the northern march absorbed waggons, boats, and specialists. Grain recovery after the insect year and ordinary fleet refreshment still set the daily tempo at the castle and on the farms; Klapmuts tied official herds into a two-station pasture cycle on the road toward the inland district. [3]
When the year ended, the copper mountains remained unvisited by a European mining party, yet the map of 1683 was not empty: a new Company stock-farm at Klapmuts, a documented ferry route over the Berg and Elephant rivers under Bergh, contact with Grigriquas and near Namaqua kraals, and a formal castle report that drought—not want of men or boats—had stopped the second copper march. Those were the year’s own facts, complete without the later seasons’ renewed northern attempts or mid-decade reforms. [3] [4]