Boer History1726 at the Cape of Good Hope: Drought, Guillaumet Silk, Zonder End Outpost, and De Koning at Delagoa
Jan de la Fontaine Still Acting Head of the Government — 1726
Calendar 1726 opened with Jan de la Fontaine still acting as head of the government at the Cape of Good Hope. The council of policy had placed him in charge on the morning after Governor Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes died on the 8th of September 1724, and the acting headship would run until Pieter Gysbert Noodt was formally installed on the 25th of February 1727. Through the whole of 1726, therefore, the Cape file remained an acting governor’s year rather than a sealed new commission already in force on the ground. [3]
Beside him, fiscal independent Adriaan van Kervel held the independent fiscal’s chair under directors’ confirmation after Cornelis van Beaumont’s death in June 1724. At Delagoa Bay the provisional command that had rested with Jan van de Capelle (also written Jan de la Capelle in the Delagoa narrative) would give way, at the end of May, to Commander Jan de Koning and a reinforced station force. The year’s Cape business was drought in the grain magazines, a silk superintendent from Europe, a small military outpost beyond the Hottentots Holland mountains, news that Noodt had been chosen governor, and a costly push to make Fort Lagoa a river-and-earthen-fort station rather than a thin fever post. [3]
Foreign flags remained scarce in Table Bay. The longer stretch 1725–1737 would average only seventy-seven ships a year against the denser 1715–1724 decade, and burghers still felt the loss of ready money that foreign visitors had once brought. Inside 1726 that roadstead pattern framed an acting administration whose clearest local shocks were a failed wheat surplus and the opening of experimental silk works under Company direction. [3]
Drought — No Wheat Spared for Export — 1726
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, had ordered 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 had been exported. In 1726 none could be spared, owing to drought. [3]
The drought year therefore broke the two-year run of large India shipments under the new reserve discipline. In 1727 there would not even be sufficient for home consumption, owing to rust, which had attacked rye before but not wheat; from 1728 to 1737 constant export would resume, sometimes of as much as seven thousand muids. Inside calendar 1726 the working fact was simpler and harder: after securing the reserve, the magazines had nothing left that De la Fontaine’s council could honestly ship east. [3]
For free farmers and Company granaries alike, 1726 sat between the surplus years of 1724–1725 and the rust failure of 1727. Grain, which had been the clearest Cape surplus of the previous calendar year, became the clearest local shortage of this one—while cattle plague was already easing enough that beef and mutton were again obtainable at a penny halfpenny to two pence a pound, though the settlement’s old reputation for cheap fresh provisions had not returned with the price. [3]
Cape Flats Sand-Planting Continues — 1726
The isthmus connecting the Cape peninsula with the continent remained 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 still feared 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]
Work begun in the winter of 1724—seventy slaves and a gang of convicts planting knot-grass and wild-olive seed, then belts of sods when those failed—continued through the rainy seasons that followed. The valuable properties of the mesembryanthemum for binding surface sand were still unknown. For eleven years, with one short interval, the effort would run on every winter until 1735, when it was abandoned in despair after a nautical commission reported that the bay had grown deeper rather than shallower. [3]
Calendar 1726 therefore carried another winter season of that 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 or a finished mole. [3]
François Guillaumet Arrives — Silk Culture under Company Direction — October 1726
To superintend the experiments in silk culture which the directors resolved should be made, the services of a competent man named François Guillaumet were secured. In October 1726 he and his family arrived at the Cape. Attempts had previously been made to bring silkworm eggs from India, but in no instance had they been successful. Some had been received in good condition from Europe, however, and the worms when hatched had been carefully attended to in the houses of Messrs. Jan de la Fontaine and Nicholas Heyning. They were now handed over to Guillaumet. [3]
There were plenty of healthy mulberry trees, and the expert was furnished with whatever slave labour he asked for. Everything was thus in favour of the experiment. In the first year eight pounds weight of good silk was obtained, which was sent to the Netherlands, and was an object of considerable interest at Amsterdam and Middelburg. Anticipations arose of another manufacturing industry in the mother country, with an article produced in a Dutch colony. [3]
The members of the council of policy at the Cape were equally enthusiastic. A large building was immediately erected close to the Company’s garden, and was placed at Guillaumet’s disposal for keeping the worms in. The children in the slave lodge close by were all to be employed out of school hours in winding silk. Some thousands of young mulberry trees were planted in selected places. Any burghers who had a fancy to join in the industry, which was now believed to have passed the experimental stage, were supplied with a few eggs and the necessary instructions. [3]
Yet in no subsequent year did the production of silk exceed ten pounds in weight. The great majority of the worms always died before making cocoons, and in one particular season they would have become extinct altogether if it had not been that a few were preserved by some burghers. It was soon ascertained that the returns were so trifling as to forbid the industry being attractive to people who could make a living in any other way. For eight years, however, the experiment was continued by the government; only in 1735 would directors’ orders end it. Inside 1726 the concrete events were Guillaumet’s October landing, the transfer of the house-reared European stock, the first eight-pound export sample, and the garden-side silk house with slave-lodge winders. [3]
Outpost at the Ziekenhuis on the River Zonder End — November 1726
In November 1726 a corporal and six men were sent over the Hottentots Holland mountains to form an outpost at a place called the Ziekenhuis, on the river Zonder End. The few Khoikhoi left in that part of the country had complained to the government that they were not able to hold their own against the San, and that they were also exposed to depredations from vagrant Europeans, who professed to visit them for purposes of trade, but in reality robbed them of cattle. [3]
Owing to those complaints the outpost was formed, in order that acts of violence might be prevented. The directors were so dissatisfied that the Europeans of Van der Heiden’s party, of whom the Drakenstein consistory had complained, had not been brought to justice for their conduct towards the Khoikhoi, that they issued instructions to prohibit all dealing by private persons with natives under heavier penalties than before. In consequence, on the 9th of April 1727 a very strict placaat to that effect would be issued—business of the following year, but the November post already marked the inland answer of 1726. [3]
Seven Company men beyond the mountains did not yet make a new district. They did plant a permanent Company presence on the Zonder End where Khoikhoi complaints had named both San pressure and European robbery under colour of trade. For De la Fontaine’s council the November post was a policing and protection measure, not a freehold settlement scheme, and it sat beside the directors’ anger over unpunished private misconduct inland of Drakenstein. [3]
Noodt Named Governor — News in January; Sails from Batavia 6 December 1726
The officer whom the Assembly of Seventeen selected as governor was the director of fortifications, Pieter Gysbert Noodt, who seven years earlier had inspected the shore of Table Bay and prepared plans of defensive works. Intelligence of his appointment reached South Africa in January 1726, and on the 6th of December of that year he left Batavia as admiral of a homeward bound fleet of nine ships. [3]
He would reach the Cape only on the 18th of February 1727 and be formally installed on the 25th; his family was small, consisting only of his wife and one son. Inside calendar 1726 the political facts were the January despatch news that ended pure uncertainty about Chavonnes’s successor, and the December sailing that put Noodt on the water toward Table Bay while De la Fontaine still signed as acting head. [3]
Noodt’s later reputation as a coarse, harsh, ill-tempered man who took special pleasure in irritating De la Fontaine belongs to the installation year and after. For 1726 the Cape lived with the knowledge that a fortification director already known from the 1720 Table Bay survey had been chosen, and that by year’s end he was at sea with nine ships—not yet in the castle. [3]
Commander Jan de Koning at Fort Lagoa — End of May 1726
After the failed land searches of 1725—Sergeant Jan Mona’s gold march and mineralogist Jan Hendrik Hoorn’s copper probe—the directors issued instructions that attempts to reach the gold fields and the empire of Monomotapa, which was still believed to be a reality, should be made by means of boats pushing their way up the rivers. An old skipper, named Jan de Koning, was appointed commander, and the post was strengthened with a hundred soldiers and sailors. [3]
At the end of May 1726 Commander De Koning arrived at Fort Lagoa. He found the secunde, Jan de la Capelle, who had been acting head of the station, engaged in making experiments in the cultivation of sugar cane and indigo. There were constant feuds between the various clans around the bay, but the Europeans were on good terms with all. The most powerful of the chiefs was named Maphumbo, but another, named Manisa, was almost as strong. The latter had his kraals on the banks of the river Dos Reys of the Portuguese, where Vasco da Gama had landed; and the Dutch called the stream after him, the Manisa. [3]
The natives were credited with a belief that the Europeans purchased slaves to fatten and eat them, and it was supposed that this belief was the cause of their bringing so few for sale. To counteract it, Commander De Koning sent three men of rank with their attendants on a visit to the Cape, that they might see for what purpose slaves were needed. One of those who visited the Cape was a nephew of Maphumbo. He had been to England, and had there received in baptism the name of John; but had been sent back to Delagoa Bay in 1723. He spoke English fluently. The visitors professed to be pleased with the manner in which they saw the slaves were treated; but the traffic did not increase after their return. [3]
Fort Lydzaamheid and River Boats — 1726
As Fort Lagoa was too small for the accommodation of the men now stationed there, a larger area was enclosed with earthen walls, to which the name of Lydzaamheid was given. The rivers were ascended as far as they were navigable with boats; but very little information was obtained concerning the country. The Dutch officers were never able to ascertain the exact position and distance of either the copper mines or the gold fields. [3]
The gold dust brought by the natives for sale was so mixed with other substances as to cause the assayers in Batavia to assert that every stiver’s worth cost the Company a florin. Boat travel and a bigger earthen fort thus answered Mona’s and Hoorn’s land failures without yet locating a mine or purifying a profitable dust trade. De Koning’s reinforced station spent 1726 expanding walls and sounding rivers while the interior sources remained as uncertain as in the thin trade year of 1725. [3]
Sugar cane and indigo trials under Van de Capelle, diplomatic visits by Maphumbo’s nephew John and two other men of rank, and the new name Lydzaamheid on earthen walls were the constructive face of the same year that still could not map Monomotapa or the copper hills. For the Cape council reading Delagoa letters under De la Fontaine, the bay looked busier and costlier without becoming clearly richer. [3]
December Fever at Delagoa — Death of Commander De Koning — 1726
In December 1726 fever attacked the men at the station, as it had done every previous summer, and in a few months thirty-eight men died, among them being Commander De Koning. The secunde Jan de la Capelle then became acting head of the station again. Reinforcements would be sent from the Cape, and attempts to explore the interior renewed, but with no greater success than before. [3]
The summer pattern that had killed so many since the first occupation thus claimed the new commander within months of his May arrival and the building of Lydzaamheid. De Koning’s death returned provisional command to the same secunde who had held Fort Lagoa after Jan Michel and through Mona’s march. Later years would see desertion toward Inhambane, a conspiracy among sixty-two men while the station stood one hundred and eighty-six strong, and eventual abandonment in 1730; those belong outside calendar 1726. [3]
Inside this year the Delagoa file closed on fever and succession: a hundred-man reinforcement and a skipper-commander had raised earthen walls and pushed boats up navigable water; December cut the command down again, and thirty-eight dead in a few months—including De Koning—reasserted the bay’s summer cost over its mixed gold dust and river hopes. [3]
Death of the Rev. D’Ailly; Bek Removed to the Cape — June 1726
In the church succession the Cape had been left to the care of the Rev. Mr. D’Ailly alone after the Rev. Lambertus Slicher took Drakenstein on the 15th of July 1725, while Mr. Bek remained at Stellenbosch. Early in 1726 D’Ailly was taken seriously ill, and he died in June, when Bek was removed to the Cape, Slicher being directed to hold services occasionally at Stellenbosch. So matters remained for more than three years. [3]
The directors would only later send the Rev. François le Sueur as second or assistant clergyman at the Cape—his first service falling on the 16th of October 1729. Inside 1726 the concrete church facts were D’Ailly’s early illness and June death, Bek’s transfer from Stellenbosch to the castle congregation, and Slicher’s double load of Drakenstein with occasional Stellenbosch services. [3]
Three pulpits thus ran thin for the remainder of the year: one resident minister at the Cape (Bek), one at Drakenstein who also rode to Stellenbosch (Slicher), and no separate Stellenbosch incumbent. The French-descended Drakenstein church completed in 1720 kept Slicher; the mother congregation at the Cape absorbed the ageing Stellenbosch clergyman after D’Ailly’s death. [3]
Close of 1726 at the Cape
By the end of 1726 Jan de la Fontaine was still acting head of the Cape government, with Adriaan van Kervel as fiscal independent, while news of Pieter Gysbert Noodt’s appointment had stood since January and Noodt himself had left Batavia on the 6th of December as admiral of nine homeward ships. Drought left no wheat that could be spared for India after the reserve. Winter planting gangs continued the Cape flats sand war. In October François Guillaumet and his family arrived to take over silkworms reared in the houses of De la Fontaine and Nicholas Heyning; eight pounds of good silk went to the Netherlands in the first year, a garden-side silk house rose, slave-lodge children were set to wind silk out of school hours, and thousands of young mulberry trees were planted. In November a corporal and six men formed an outpost at the Ziekenhuis on the river Zonder End after Khoikhoi complaints of San pressure and European cattle robbery. At Delagoa Bay Commander Jan de Koning arrived at the end of May with a hundred soldiers and sailors, found Jan de la Capelle trialling sugar cane and indigo, dealt with chiefs Maphumbo and Manisa, sent Maphumbo’s English-speaking nephew John and two other men of rank to view slave labour at the Cape, enclosed Fort Lydzaamheid, and pushed boats up the rivers—only for December fever to kill thirty-eight men including De Koning and return acting command to De la Capelle. In June the Rev. D’Ailly died; Bek came to the Cape and Slicher added occasional Stellenbosch services to Drakenstein. Acting rule thus closed the year on drought grain, experimental silk, a Zonder End post, a governor already at sea, and a reinforced Delagoa station cut down again by summer fever. [3]