Boer History1725 at the Cape of Good Hope: De la Fontaine Acting, Five-Thousand-Muid Wheat Export, Kirman Goats, and Mona’s Delagoa March
Jan de la Fontaine Acting Head of the Government — 1725
Calendar 1725 opened with Jan de la Fontaine already acting as head of the government at the Cape of Good Hope. Governor Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes had fallen ill on the 7th of September 1724 and died early on the 8th; a few hours later the council of policy had voted that De la Fontaine should act until the Assembly of Seventeen made an appointment. His nomination as secunde had been confirmed by the Seventeen in 1724, and within a few months of Chavonnes’s death despatches had promoted him to senior merchant and approved him as secunde in fuller form. [3]
The acting headship that ran from 8 September 1724 to 25 February 1727 therefore framed the whole of 1725. Beside him, fiscal independent Adriaan van Kervel—chosen by the council after Cornelis van Beaumont died on the 14th of June 1724—held the independent fiscal’s chair under later directors’ confirmation. At Delagoa Bay Jan van de Capelle remained provisional commandant of Fort Lagoa after the May 1724 relief of Jan Michel. The year’s Cape file was thus an acting governor’s year, not a new sealed commission from the Netherlands. [3]
De la Fontaine’s first full calendar year in charge brought no grand new fortress programme and no sudden change of free-burgher land law. What it did bring was a harvest strong enough for another large wheat export, the first landing of Persian kirman goats intended for a hair industry, continued labour on the Cape flats against feared silting of Table Bay, a thin but hopeful trade return from Delagoa Bay, and a failed thirty-one-man gold march inland from Fort Lagoa under Sergeant Jan Mona. [3]
Foreign Shipping Decline and the 1725–1737 Roadstead Average — 1725
Because foreign ships had been prevented from obtaining supplies at the Cape during the earlier period of scarcity, very few vessels not under the Dutch flag now put into Table Bay. The burghers felt the loss severely, for foreigners had brought ready money into the country; it was hoped that with better times they would return. That hope was not realised in the years that opened with 1725. [3]
The cattle plague later decreased in virulence, and beef and mutton became obtainable at a penny halfpenny to two pence a pound; but the Cape had lost its reputation for cheap fresh provisions, and it was a long time in regaining it. During the thirteen years 1725–1737 embraced in the same administrative chapter, one thousand and seven ships put into Table Bay, or on an average seventy-seven yearly. Of these, 868 belonged to the Company, 91 were English, 27 Danish, 19 French, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Flemish. [3]
Against the denser 1715–1724 decade—eight hundred and seventy-one calls at eighty-seven a year—the new stretch therefore opened thinner in foreign ready money even while Company traffic remained the backbone of the roadstead. For calendar 1725 itself the concrete political fact was the continuance of exclusion-era habit: foreign visitors were few, burgher cash from strangers was scarce, and De la Fontaine’s council still governed a refreshment station whose cheap-provision name had been damaged by drought, cattle disease, and restrictive supply rules. [3]
Wheat Export over Five Thousand Muids and the Directors’ Reserve Order — 1725
Harvests during the broader De la Fontaine–Noodt period fluctuated considerably. The directors, having gained experience of the uncertainty of the seasons in South Africa, issued instructions that a year’s supply of wheat should always be put by as a reserve before any was sent to India. In 1724 and again in 1725 over five thousand muids were exported. [3]
The 1725 figure therefore matched the previous year’s large surplus under the new reserve discipline rather than under careless emptying of the magazines. In 1726 none could be spared, owing to drought; in 1727 there was not sufficient for home consumption, owing to rust, which had attacked rye before but not wheat. From 1728 to 1737 constant export resumed, sometimes of as much as seven thousand muids, though the crops were not uniformly good. Inside calendar 1725 the working fact was a second consecutive year above five thousand muids after the reserve had been secured. [3]
For free farmers and Company granaries alike, that export year sat between the dear-meat tender pressures that had followed the failed Namaqua cattle party of late 1724 and the drought failure of 1726. Grain, not cattle or foreign silver, was the clearest Cape surplus De la Fontaine could report in 1725. [3]
Cape Flats Sand-Planting against Feared Silting of Table Bay — 1725
The isthmus connecting the Cape peninsula with the continent was at this time a barren waste of sand. With difficulty laden waggons traversed it, for there was no road, and nothing but a line of poles indicated the best course across. From reports of skippers, the directors were led to believe that Table Bay would at no very distant date be filled with the sand which violent south-east gales swept into it during the summer months. [3]
To prevent this, they issued instructions that attempts should be made to fix the sand by planting it with grass and trees, and in the winter of 1724 the work was commenced. Seventy slaves and a gang of convicts were employed in planting knot-grass and seeds of the wild olive, and, when these failed, in ensuing rainy seasons the experiment was repeated with belts of sods. The valuable properties of the mesembryanthemum for binding surface sand were then unknown. [3]
For eleven years, with one short interval, the effort to plant the flats was continued, every winter much labour being expended upon it; only in 1735 was it abandoned in despair, after a nautical commission had reported that within the preceding half century the water of Table Bay had become deeper rather than shallower. Calendar 1725 therefore carried the second winter season of that long, labour-heavy sand war under De la Fontaine’s acting government—still without mesembryanthemum knowledge, still under directors’ fear of a silted roadstead, and still measured in slave and convict planting gangs rather than in finished pasture. [3]
Persian Kirman Goats Land at the Cape — February 1725
Another industry which the Company at this time attempted to establish in South Africa was the production of kirman hair. Shawls made of this hair were then considered second only in value to those of Cashmere. The goat which produces it is reared in Persia, and in that country twenty-four young animals were obtained, which were sent to Ceylon to be forwarded to the Cape. [3]
In February 1725 eight of these reached South Africa, the others having died on the way. Of the eight, only one was a she-goat, and that died shortly after being landed. From ordinary she-goats cross-breeds were obtained, and from these and the pure animals, now reduced by death to two, goats with tolerably long and fine hair were bred. Some burghers were then induced to make experiments with the animals. [3]
After a few years’ trial they informed the council that unless the Company would pay forty pence a pound for the hair, it would not be worth their while to keep separate flocks. That price could not be given even for a superior article. Instead of improving the quality, the owners of the goats allowed the hair to deteriorate by mixture with native animals until a quantity sent to Europe in 1735 was quite unsaleable, and the experiment was then abandoned. Inside 1725 the concrete event was the February landing of eight survivors, the early death of the single she-goat, and the opening of a cross-breed programme that never became a Cape staple. [3]
Delagoa Bay Trade Returns — Ambergris, Copper, Ivory, Slaves, and Gold Dust — 1725
The early disasters at Delagoa Bay had not discouraged the Company, and for a long time hopes were entertained of a profitable trade being carried on there. In 1725 a little ambergris, some aloes, three hundred pounds weight of copper, more than two tons of ivory, thirty-four slaves, and a few ounces of gold dust were received from that station. [3]
It was impossible to obtain any reliable information concerning the interior of the country from the natives at the bay; but it was observed on one occasion that two of the chief Maphumbo’s men went inland and returned with some gold dust within fourteen days. That observation raised a hope that the gold fields might be easily reached. Provisional commandant Jan van de Capelle’s Fort Lagoa, still deadly in summer fever and still expensive to reinforce from Table Bay, thus sent home in 1725 a mixed cargo that looked, on paper, like the first thin proof of the bay’s commercial promise. [3]
Copper at three hundred pounds, ivory above two tons, thirty-four enslaved people, scant gold dust, ambergris, and aloes did not yet repay the fever dead of 1721, the buccaneer capture of 19 April 1722, or Stefler’s iron-mountain losses of 1723. They did, however, keep Amsterdam’s gold-field and Monomotapa hopes alive long enough for a formal inland march to be ordered from the fort before mid-year. [3]
Sergeant Jan Mona’s Gold Expedition from Fort Lagoa — 27 June 1725
On the 27th of June 1725 an expedition left Fort Lagoa in search of the gold fields. It consisted of thirty-one men under Sergeant Jan Mona, with a clerk named Frans de Kuyper as journalist. After a toilsome march of twenty days, a party of hostile blacks was encountered, who opposed further advance. [3]
In a skirmish several of the natives were shot, but as the pack oxen were killed by the enemy and all the baggage and goods were seized, the expedition was obliged to return. The fourteen-day gold-dust trip of Maphumbo’s two men had suggested a short path to the fields; Mona’s twenty-day armed column found hostility, lost its transport animals, and came back without a working route, a mine location, or a trade agreement that could replace pack-ox carriage. [3]
The failure did not immediately end Delagoa dreaming at the Cape or in the Netherlands. It did mark 1725 as the year when the bay’s most concrete inland gold probe under Van de Capelle’s provisional command collapsed on logistics and resistance rather than on fever alone. Later directors’ orders would shift exploration toward boats on the rivers and a larger garrison under Commander Jan de Koning in 1726; Mona’s march remained the failed land test of the gold hope born from Maphumbo’s fourteen-day sample. [3]
Mineralogist Jan Hendrik Hoorn’s Copper-Mine Search Fails — 1725
An attempt to search for the copper mines, made by a party under the mineralogist Jan Hendrik Hoorn, was also a failure. The same Delagoa year that returned three hundred pounds of copper through bay trade could not convert that purchase into a located mine under Company mineralogists. [3]
Hoorn’s failure sat beside Mona’s: gold dust and traded copper proved that valuable minerals moved through the bay’s networks, but neither sergeant’s column nor mineralogist’s party could fix the interior sources or hold a road to them. For De la Fontaine’s Cape council, reading Delagoa letters in 1725, the station still promised more than it delivered, and still cost lives and reinforcements out of proportion to ambergris, aloes, ivory tons, and a few ounces of gold. [3]
The directors’ next answer would be river boats, a hundred soldiers and sailors of reinforcement, and Commander De Koning’s arrival at the end of May 1726—business of the following calendar year. Inside 1725 the paired failures of Mona and Hoorn closed the land-search file for gold and copper without abandoning the bay itself. [3]
Rev. Lambertus Slicher Takes Drakenstein — 15 July 1725
In December 1724 the Rev. Petrus van Aken, clergyman of Drakenstein since August 1714, had died. For some months the inland pulpit was vacant. At length the council of policy resolved to send the Rev. Lambertus Slicher to Drakenstein, and leave the Cape to the care of the Rev. Mr. D’Ailly alone until another clergyman should be provided by the directors. [3]
Slicher had held his first Cape service on the 15th of June 1721 while still rector of the school, and had been formally inducted as second or assistant clergyman of the Cape congregation in February 1723. On the 15th of July 1725 he took over the Drakenstein duty. Early in the following year D’Ailly was taken seriously ill, and he died in June 1726, when further reshuffles would move Mr. Bek to the Cape and leave Slicher holding occasional Stellenbosch services as well—again, later years’ business. [3]
For calendar 1725 the church fact was the mid-July transfer of the assistant Cape clergyman to the Drakenstein church completed in 1720, after months of vacancy following Van Aken’s death. Stellenbosch still had Bek; the Cape kept D’Ailly alone for the remainder of the year; the French-descended Drakenstein congregation received a Dutch assistant already known at the castle school and pulpit. [3]
Close of 1725 at the Cape
By the end of 1725 Jan de la Fontaine had completed his first full calendar year as acting head of the Cape government after Chavonnes’s death, with Adriaan van Kervel as fiscal independent and Jan van de Capelle still provisional at Fort Lagoa. Wheat export again exceeded five thousand muids under the directors’ order to keep a year’s reserve before any grain went to India. Winter planting gangs of slaves and convicts continued the Cape flats sand war begun in 1724 against feared silting of Table Bay. In February eight Persian kirman goats reached the settlement—only one a she-goat, and she soon dead—opening a cross-breed hair experiment that burghers would later price above what the Company would pay. Delagoa Bay returned ambergris, aloes, three hundred pounds of copper, more than two tons of ivory, thirty-four slaves, and a few ounces of gold dust; on the 27th of June Sergeant Jan Mona and clerk Frans de Kuyper led thirty-one men inland for gold and came back after twenty days with pack oxen killed and baggage seized; mineralogist Jan Hendrik Hoorn’s copper search likewise failed. On the 15th of July the Rev. Lambertus Slicher took the vacant Drakenstein pulpit. Foreign flags remained scarce in Table Bay even as the longer 1725–1737 average would still show seventy-seven ships a year. Acting rule thus closed the year on surplus grain, experimental goats and sand, a hopeful but costly bay, and two failed interior probes from Fort Lagoa. [3]