Boer History1730 at the Cape of Good Hope: De la Fontaine Governor, Delagoa Abandonment, and Slicher’s Death
Directors Confirm De la Fontaine — Despatches of 20 February 1730
Calendar 1730 opened with the Cape still under an acting head. After Governor Pieter Gysbert Noodt died suddenly between three and four o’clock on the afternoon of the 23rd of April 1729, sitting in the pleasure house in the Company’s garden, the council of policy had met at eight the next morning and restored secunde Jan de la Fontaine as acting head until the pleasure of the supreme authorities could be known. With the next homeward-bound fleet the council asked the directors to appoint him governor in permanence. On the 20th of February 1730 despatches were received at the Cape to the effect that that request had been complied with. [3]
The same packet of orders filled the two offices that the promotion would leave open. The fiscal independent, Adriaan van Kervel, was appointed to succeed De la Fontaine as secunde. Daniel van den Henghel, then in service at Colombo, was appointed fiscal. The February despatches thus settled the headship, the second place, and the independent fiscalate in a single directors’ reply to the Cape’s petition of the previous year. No local ballot and no contested succession intervened: the Netherlands wrote the civil list, and the Castle had only to swear it. [3] [9]
The confirmation closed a longer argument than one winter’s acting interval. After Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes died in September 1724, the council had already nominated De la Fontaine provisional secunde and acting head; the Seventeen had confirmed him and promoted him to senior merchant so that the second chair would match tradition. When they later chose Noodt instead of promoting the Cape secunde, they had still refused Noodt’s later charges against him and had raised Jan’s salary from seventy-five guilders a month to one hundred and twenty—from £6 13s. 4d. to £10—rather than accept his resignation. The February packet of 1730 was therefore not a sudden favour to a new man, but the directors’ written admission that the officer they had already protected against Noodt should now hold the full title. [3] [9]
For the burghers the news had already been anticipated. Great joy had prevailed in the settlement when it was known that Jan de la Fontaine had become Noodt’s successor; the February despatches turned that local gladness into a commission that could be read aloud. Everyone called him Jan. He was the first governor who had made his previous career at the Cape, and for once the ivory tower in Amsterdam and the subjects in Table Valley were in complete agreement that he was the proper choice. Calendar 1730 therefore opened not on a contested local succession but on written confirmation from the Netherlands of a man already known in every street of the little town. [3] [9]
Jan de la Fontaine Installed as Governor — 8 March 1730
On the 8th of March 1730 Mr. De la Fontaine took the oath of office and was formally installed as governor. The ceremony closed the long acting interval that had begun the morning after Noodt’s death and placed the Cape again under a fully commissioned head rather than a secunde holding the government pending directors’ pleasure. Sixteen years after Commissioner Johan van Hoorn had taken him off the homeward Horstendal and made him storekeeper, the same man now swore as governor in the Castle he had served without interruption. [3] [9]
He was born in Amsterdam on the 23rd of April 1684 as Jan de la Fontaine dit Wicart. His father, merchant Jacques de la Fontaine, came of a family that had left Valenciennes in French Flanders in the first half of the seventeenth century; some of them were Walloon ministers, others, like Jacques, silk merchants. His mother, Barbara van den Burgh, daughter of Jan Gideonsen van den Burgh, was of solid Dutch Calvinist stock, which is why the boy was baptised not in the Walloon church but in the Oude Kerk and why the household name was Jan rather than Jean. In his early twenties he joined the Company and served in junior ranks in the Indies until Van Hoorn, who already knew his honesty and intelligence, ordered him to pack his belongings off the Horstendal and stay in Table Valley. [9]
Two years after that forced landing he sat, still a junior merchant, on the council of policy. In 1717 he was made a fully-fledged merchant. In May 1711 he had married pretty Maria Elizabeth, the nineteen-year-old daughter of secunde Andries de Man—a Cape household alliance that rooted the silk-merchant’s son in the settlement more firmly than any Netherlands instruction. When Chavonnes died he was nominated provisional secunde; the Seventeen confirmed him and had to promote him simultaneously to senior merchant in order to comply with tradition. Sharper contrasts than Jan de la Fontaine and his predecessor Noodt were hardly imaginable. Jan was also large in a physical sense: he was a tall man, and the smile on his face was the first thing noticed. [9]
The installation of 8 March did not yet carry the higher Indian rank that would later be added to his name. Inside calendar 1730 the dated constitutional fact is the March oath and formal installation as governor of the Cape. Routine administration that had run under his acting hand since late April 1729 now continued under the same man with directors’ full title. The Castle that had whispered “Noodt is dood; nu is er geen nood” the previous April now had, in writing and in ceremony, the tall secunde whose career had been made on this beach rather than imported from Batavia. [3] [9]
Van Kervel Secunde and Van den Henghel Fiscal — 1730
Adriaan van Kervel moved from the independent fiscalate into the secunde’s chair as De la Fontaine’s immediate subordinate. He was already a Cape career officer of long standing: secretary of the council of policy from 1719, fiscal from 1725, and for four years in that difficult and—with the burghers—unpopular chair a man who had given satisfaction even to those he had to prosecute. The February promotion kept a senior Cape officer already known in council work at the governor’s right hand and freed the fiscal’s post for a new man ordered out from the eastern stations. [3] [9]
Daniel van den Henghel, then serving at Colombo, received the fiscalate. His nomination from Ceylon rather than from the Cape burgher or junior servant lists underlined that the independent fiscal remained a directors’ appointment on the wider Company circuit, not a local promotion alone. He would later prove a more difficult colleague than Van Kervel; inside 1730 he was still only a name in a despatch, a Colombo servant ordered to the refreshment station to take the independent chair that Van Kervel was vacating. [3]
Together the two names completed the February package: permanent governor, promoted secunde, and a fiscal drawn from Colombo. For the rest of the year the Cape’s highest civil triangle was therefore De la Fontaine–Van Kervel–Van den Henghel under the directors’ 1730 commissions. The arrangement also answered the older struggle for place among Company servants—senior merchant, merchant, junior merchant—by writing the three top chairs in one packet rather than leaving them to local dispute. Van Kervel’s step from fiscal to secunde was the natural Cape promotion; Van den Henghel’s arrival from Colombo was the Seventeen’s reminder that the independent fiscalate was still theirs to fill. [3] [9]
With Van Kervel named secunde and Van den Henghel named fiscal from Colombo, the senior civil list of early 1730 was thus reset around De la Fontaine’s permanent commission. Ryk Tulbagh, secretary of the council since 16 September 1728, remained the clerk of that board. The high court that had signed the deserters’ sentence the previous April—Noodt, De la Fontaine, Johannes Theophilus Rhenius, Nicholas Heyning, Hendrik Swellengrebel, Christoffel Brand, J. P. van Coller, and Tulbagh—now sat under a governor whose title matched the first signature he would thereafter write. [3]
Noodt’s Widow and Son Return to Europe — 1730
With the first homeward-bound fleet of the year after Noodt’s death—that is, in 1730—the late governor’s widow and son returned to Europe. Their departure closed the private household chapter of the Noodt administration that had ended so abruptly in the Company’s garden on the 23rd of April 1729. The family had been small from the start: a wife, Johanna Drabbe, whose Netherlands connections had weighed in the appointment, and one son. The first returning ships of 1730 took that household off the Cape establishment under the new governor. [3] [9]
The records had already noted that Noodt was buried with state under the church pavement on the last day of April 1729, and that there was no trace of regret shown by anyone for his death. Very few burghers had attended the funeral. He had been at the head of the colony for two years and two months, generally disliked, though as he did not interfere with the burghers they had not complained of him as they had of the younger Van der Stel. A few hours before he died, when apparently in perfect health, he had signed documents still in existence. The widow’s and son’s passage home with the first returning fleet of 1730 removed the last of that household from a Castle that had already refused to mourn. [3] [9]
Administrative continuity thus ran one way—De la Fontaine confirmed and installed—while the Noodt family connection ran the other, homeward on the year’s first Europe-bound ships. Both movements belonged to the same post-Noodt settlement of 1730. The Castle that had raised Jan’s pay rather than accept his resignation now saw Noodt’s widow and only son take the road the late governor had never lived to take himself. Johanna Drabbe’s influential family had helped send him out; it could not keep his household at the Cape once the title had passed. [3] [9]
For the town the contrast was visible in more than a passenger list. Noodt had been below average height, portly, with pale bulging eyes and a perpetual sneer; Jan was tall, and the smile came first. The one had falsely accused the other of malversations and had made his life so unbearable that the secunde submitted his resignation; the Seventeen had ignored the charges and kept the accused. When the first homeward fleet of 1730 lifted Noodt’s widow and son off the roadstead, the settlement that had improvised “nu is er geen nood” the previous April watched the last private remnant of that administration leave under the man the directors had chosen instead. [9]
The Company Past the Zenith of Its Prosperity — Context of 1730
The East India Company, upon whose fortunes the Cape greatly depended, had by this period passed the zenith of its prosperity. Its dividends, which for the ten years ending 31 December 1722 had been at the rate of thirty-seven per cent per annum upon the paid-up capital, averaged only twenty-one per cent for the ten years 1723–1732, and never afterwards rose higher than twenty-five per cent. From the year 1723 the annual dividends had begun to drop, decreasing in one decade from thirty-seven to twenty-one per cent. In terms of the Cape’s affairs that meant that everything possible had to be done to boost the economy. [3] [9]
Many of its trading establishments were not returning the expense of maintenance. The commerce of the English and French in the East was making enormous strides, and some branches were completely lost to the Dutch. The coasting trade of southern Asia, once almost exclusively in Company hands, had fallen into other hands. In Holland the directorate was secured by members of powerful families content to draw a revenue without correcting abuses, and their influence was sufficient to prevent the States General from exercising inspection into the Company’s affairs. Under those circumstances corruption in the public service extended more deeply than before, and the appointment of independent fiscals had done nothing to check it. In the Asiatic dependencies wealth was accumulated by Company servants in shameless ways, and officers of government lived in a style of ostentation resembling that of Asiatic rulers. [3]
At the Cape there was less opportunity for such malpractices, as the colonists were not the people to submit tamely to wrong of any kind; and for many years after Noodt’s death the chief officials in South Africa were men held in general esteem, whose probity was not questioned. That healthier atmosphere did not, however, spare the new governor the duty of forcing local industry. As acting head between Chavonnes’s death and Noodt’s appearance he had already tried to foster manufactures. The son of a silk merchant was particularly interested in silk, and a well-planned attempt was made at the Cape. A French expert, François Guillaumet (Guillaume), had been imported together with boxes of silkworms; a factory was erected near the Slave Lodge, to which the town later owed its Spin Street; and the children in the lodge close by were all to be employed out of school hours in winding silk. [3] [9]
Attempts to bring silkworm eggs from India had failed; some received in good condition from Europe had been carefully attended in the houses of De la Fontaine himself and Nicholas Heyning before being handed to Guillaumet. There were plenty of healthy mulberry trees, and the expert was furnished with whatever slave labour he asked for. In the first year eight pounds weight of good silk was obtained and sent to the Netherlands, an object of considerable interest at Amsterdam and Middelburg. A large building went up close to the Company’s garden; some thousands of young mulberry trees were planted; burghers who fancied the industry were supplied with eggs and instructions. Yet in no subsequent year did production exceed ten pounds. The great majority of the worms always died before making cocoons. [3]
Another industry attempted at the same time was the production of kirman hair, from which shawls second only to those of Cashmere were made. Twenty-four young Persian goats had been sent to Ceylon to be forwarded to the Cape; in February 1725 eight 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. Cross-breeds were obtained from ordinary she-goats; burghers were induced to experiment; after a few years they informed the council that unless the Company would pay forty pence a pound for the hair it would not be worth keeping separate flocks. That price could not be given even for a superior article. The imported goats did not survive long, and when some hair was produced the Company could not afford the high price. These and other undertakings were in their most critical stage in the years 1730–1735. Their only advantage, for a newly installed governor who would lose his wife in June, must have been that they made the toiling head of government forget his sorrow. [3] [9]
Grain, at least, had recovered enough to be sent away again. After the rust year of 1727, when there had not been sufficient wheat for home consumption, export had resumed from 1728 and continued through the seasons that framed De la Fontaine’s permanent governorship, sometimes of as much as seven thousand muids, though the crops were not uniformly good. The directors, having learned the uncertainty of South African seasons, had already ordered that a year’s supply of wheat should always be put by as a reserve before any was sent to India. Calendar 1730 therefore sat between a Company past its dividend zenith and a colony that could again spare grain, while silk hung at eight to ten pounds a year and kirman hair waited on a price the Company would not pay. [3]
Death of Rev. Lambertus Slicher; Le Sueur Sent Inland — June 1730
In June 1730 the Rev. Lambertus Slicher died. He died at the Paarl on the 2nd of June, after serving there for nearly five years. He had taken over the Drakenstein duty on the 15th of July 1725, when the council, after Petrus van Aken’s death in December 1724, sent him inland and left the Cape to Mr. D’Ailly alone until another clergyman should be provided. Early the following year D’Ailly fell seriously ill and died in June 1726; Mr. Bek was then removed to the Cape, Slicher being directed to hold services occasionally at Stellenbosch. So matters remained for more than three years. [3] [8]
Slicher of Middelburg had arrived at the Cape in the same year as Van Aken, but in a totally different capacity. Before coming out he had served six years as chaplain of the garrison at Lillo. Owing to differences and animosity among his congregation he had voluntarily resigned and entered the Company’s service as a midshipman on board ’t Vaderland Getrouw. In that capacity he reached the Cape. Well versed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, he was shortly afterwards appointed rector of the newly established High School at Cape Town and took pupils as boarders at his house. He held good testimonials from the ministers of the places where he had officiated. In 1721, while still rector, he obtained permission from the Seventeen, through the Cape governor and council, to preach now and again in the church at Cape Town. In February 1723 he was formally inducted as second clergyman of that place, and in July 1725 he was sent to Drakenstein. He married Sophia van der Byl, born at the Cape in 1690. [8]
On Slicher’s death the council instructed the Rev. François le Sueur—who had held his first Cape service as second or assistant clergyman on the 16th of October 1729—to act provisionally at Drakenstein and Stellenbosch. The inland pulpits thus passed for a time to the newly arrived assistant while Bek remained at the mother congregation. Inside calendar 1730 the clerical facts are Slicher’s death on the 2nd of June and the council’s provisional inland assignment of Le Sueur. The next European appointment for Drakenstein still lay ahead; the year itself closed with the assistant holding the valley pulpits on the council’s own order. [3]
The same season that took the Drakenstein pulpit also licensed a small French school in the town. On the 9th of May 1730 the council permitted Jeremias Roux, son of the old parish clerk Paul Roux, to open a school to teach the youth in the French language. The permission sat against a longer pressure to let French die out. In 1726 the Drakenstein consistory had already informed the same Jeremias Roux, then ex-sexton, that in future he was not to take the services in French as he had previously done; after that there appears to have been no further reference in the church minutes to French services. At no time had the refugees exceeded one-sixth of the burgher population, or one-eighth of the whole European community including the Company’s servants. Many had arrived already acquainted with Dutch after years in Holland. The May licence to teach French to the youth was therefore not a revival of a public church language but a narrow permission, dated 9 May, in the last months of Slicher’s life and the first of Le Sueur’s inland assignment. [8]
The inland churches had been short-handed for years. After Van Aken’s death the Drakenstein pulpit had stood vacant for months before Slicher was sent from the Cape; after D’Ailly’s death Bek had been pulled to the mother church and Stellenbosch left to occasional visits. Le Sueur’s provisional transfer in June 1730 was the council’s only available patch: one assistant, barely eight months in the settlement, covering two country congregations while the Seventeen’s next nomination was still at sea. Slicher’s Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, his High School rectorate, and his five years at the Paarl ended on the 2nd of June; Roux’s French school opened by resolution of the 9th of May; the two dated facts of the French-speaking remnant and the vacant valley pulpit thus sat in the same mid-year. [3] [8]
Death of Governor De la Fontaine’s Wife — June 1730
In the same month of June 1730 the governor’s wife died. During the first year of his administration fate hit him hard by taking away Maria Elizabeth and leaving him a widower with a daughter of fourteen and an infant son of two. He kept working. His grief made him work yet harder, and already his thoughts must have wandered to the Netherlands, where educational facilities for his children were far superior to those at the Cape. [3] [9]
The girl, Barbara Elizabeth de la Fontaine, was already known in the town for her musical gifts. The boy, Jan Gideon, was still an infant of two. Their mother had been nineteen when she married the young storekeeper in May 1711, daughter of the then secunde Andries de Man; she had lived the whole of Jan’s Cape career beside him, from junior merchant on the council through the acting years after Chavonnes and the humiliation under Noodt to the March installation. June 1730 therefore took from the newly commissioned governor both the Drakenstein clergyman who had held the valley since 1725 and the wife who had rooted him in Table Valley since 1711. [3] [9]
Entries in the journal and other official papers confirm that the governor’s energy did not dwindle after her death. Those years were difficult for the Company, and that was fortunate for the work. Silk, kirman hair, and the other forced industries stood in their most critical stage in 1730–1735; their only advantage must have been that they made the toiling governor forget his sorrow. The smile might have been a little sad, but it carried the same warmth. For the Cape community the governor’s bereavement was a domestic fact of the governing household rather than a change of policy. The administration continued under De la Fontaine and Van Kervel while the widowhood dated from June 1730 stood in the later record of his career. [3] [9]
Public and household grief thus marked mid-year under the newly installed governor. The same June that took Slicher from the Drakenstein pulpit and Maria Elizabeth from the Castle also saw the council resolve on the abandonment of Delagoa Bay. Three losses—one clerical, one domestic, one strategic—fell inside a single month of the first year of the permanent commission. The man who had been detained from the Horstendal twenty years earlier now governed as a widower with a daughter of fourteen and a son of two, while the packets that would empty Fort Lydzaamheid were still two months from sailing. [3] [9]
Council Resolves to Abandon Delagoa Bay — 11 June 1730
Early disasters at Delagoa Bay had not at first discouraged the Company, and for a long time hopes of profitable trade there had been entertained. 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 had been received from the station. It was impossible to obtain reliable information concerning the interior from the natives at the bay; but on one occasion two of the chief Maphumbo’s men went inland and returned with some gold dust within fourteen days. That raised a hope that the gold fields might be easily reached, and on the 27th of June 1725 an expedition of thirty-one men under Sergeant Jan Mona, with a clerk named Frans de Kuyper as journalist, left Fort Lagoa in search of them. After a toilsome march of twenty days a party of hostile blacks opposed further advance; several of the natives were shot, but the pack oxen were killed and all the baggage seized, and the expedition was obliged to return. An attempt to search for the copper mines under the mineralogist Jan Hendrik Hoorn also failed. [3]
The directors then ordered that attempts to reach the gold fields and the empire of Monomotapa, still believed to be a reality, should be made by boats pushing up the rivers. An old skipper, Jan de Koning, was appointed commander, and the garrison was strengthened with a hundred soldiers and sailors. At the end of May 1726 he arrived at Fort Lagoa and found the secunde Jan de la Capelle, acting head, engaged in experiments in sugar cane and indigo. There were constant feuds among the clans around the bay, but the Europeans were on good terms with all. Maphumbo was the most powerful chief; another, Manisa, almost as strong, had his kraals on the banks of the river Dos Reys of the Portuguese, which the Dutch called the Manisa. Because Fort Lagoa was too small for the reinforced garrison, a larger area was enclosed with earthen walls and named Lydzaamheid. The rivers were ascended as far as they were navigable, but the Dutch officers were never able to ascertain the exact position of either the copper mines or the gold fields. The gold dust brought for sale was so mixed with other substances that the assayers in Batavia asserted that every stiver’s worth cost the Company a florin. [3]
In December 1726 fever attacked the garrison, as it had done every previous summer, and in a few months thirty-eight men died, among them Commander De Koning. De la Capelle became acting head again. Reinforcements were sent from the Cape and interior exploration was renewed, with no greater success. At the beginning of the following summer a party of sixteen soldiers deserted and made their way overland to Inhambane, where most of them perished. A little later sixty-two men at the station entered into a conspiracy to rebel and desert, but the plot was discovered in time. The garrison was then one hundred and eighty-six strong. The directors at length resolved to leave the abandonment or retention of Fort Lydzaamheid to the discretion of the council of policy at the Cape. The council thereupon resolved, on the 11th of June 1730, that the sooner it could be abandoned the better. The Cape’s own board, not a fresh Netherlands order of detail, thus fixed the end of the Delagoa experiment. [3]
June 1730 therefore paired a clerical death and a governor’s private bereavement with a strategic decision: Fort Lydzaamheid was to be evacuated as soon as shipping could be spared. The refreshment station on Table Bay would reclaim its men and effects from the south-eastern coast post that had never repaid its cost. Ambergris, aloes, three hundred pounds of copper, two tons of ivory, thirty-four slaves, and a few ounces of adulterated gold had not balanced fever summers, a failed gold march, a failed copper search, sixteen deserters on the Inhambane road, and a conspiracy of sixty-two. The 11 June minute was the Cape’s own arithmetic. [3]
Packets Sail to Withdraw Delagoa — 12 August 1730
On the 12th of August 1730 the little vessels Snuffelaar, Zeepost, and Feyenoord, which were employed as packets at the Cape, left to bring away the men and effects from Delagoa Bay. The three small craft were the practical instrument of the June resolution. Two months had passed since the council wrote that the sooner Lydzaamheid could be abandoned the better; mid-August was the first moment the Cape could spare its packets for the south-eastern evacuation. [3]
Their departure in mid-August gave the Cape packets a south-eastern evacuation task rather than ordinary Table Bay or coastal packet work. The station that had been reinforced with a hundred soldiers and sailors under De Koning, enlarged with earthen walls, and renamed Lydzaamheid in the mid-1720s was now to be stripped by the same class of small vessels that linked the Cape to its outposts. No Indiaman was assigned to the work. Three packets were enough, in the council’s judgment, to lift a garrison already reduced by fever, desertion, and the knowledge that the post was condemned. [3]
Until the packets arrived, acting commander Jan de la Capelle and the reduced establishment remained at Fort Lydzaamheid. He had been acting head before De Koning’s arrival, had run the sugar-cane and indigo trials, and had taken the command again when fever killed the skipper. The August sailing set the clock for a final season on the bay before embarkation at year’s end. Between the packets’ departure from Table Bay and their appearance off the fort there was still time for one more disaster. [3]
The June minute had left the timing to shipping. The August sailing was that timing. For the Castle the three names— Snuffelaar, Zeepost, Feyenoord— converted a discretionary abandonment into a voyage: bring away the men, bring away the effects, and close a bay that had promised Monomotapa and delivered fever. De la Capelle would still have to hold Lydzaamheid until those hulls stood in the river mouths. Calendar 1730 thus split the Delagoa end into a written resolution in June and a packet departure in August, with the killing and the embarkation still ahead in the last weeks of the year. [3]
Ensign Mona Killed; Delagoa Station Embarks — 27 December 1730
Before the packets’ arrival another disaster occurred at the station. Ensign Mona and twenty-nine Europeans were surprised and killed by a party of natives. The blow fell on a post already marked for abandonment and further reduced the strength that De la Capelle would finally embark. The same Mona who, as sergeant, had led the thirty-one-man gold march of 27 June 1725 with Frans de Kuyper as journalist—twenty days inland, pack oxen killed, baggage seized—now died as ensign with twenty-nine men on a station the Cape had already voted to leave. [3]
On the 27th of December 1730 the acting commander Jan de la Capelle and one hundred and thirty-three men, to which number the station force had been reduced, embarked in the vessels sent for them. Delagoa Bay was thereby abandoned as a Company station. From one hundred and eighty-six after the conspiracy to one hundred and thirty-three at the boats, the arithmetic of fever, desertion, and the Mona massacre was written into a single embarkation list. The earthen walls named Patience—Lydzaamheid—were left behind. [3]
The December embarkation closed a costly experiment that had run from the early Delagoa occupation through fever summers, failed gold and copper searches, Lydzaamheid’s earthen walls, sugar-cane and indigo trials, sixteen deserters toward Inhambane, a conspiracy of sixty-two, and the killing of Mona and twenty-nine. Inside calendar 1730 the Cape’s decision of 11 June, the packets’ sailing of 12 August, the surprise of Mona’s party, and the embarkation of De la Capelle with one hundred and thirty-three survivors formed the full local arc of abandonment. The ships themselves would only make the Cape in the middle of the following January; that landfall belongs to the next calendar. What 1730 itself held was the resolution, the sailing, the massacre, and the boats. [3]
Calendar 1730 therefore closed as the year the directors’ despatches of the 20th of February made Jan de la Fontaine permanent governor and named Van Kervel secunde and Van den Henghel fiscal; the year he took the oath on the 8th of March; the year Noodt’s widow and son went home with the first returning fleet; the year silk and kirman hair stood in their most critical season under a Company past its dividend zenith; the year Jeremias Roux was permitted on the 9th of May to teach French and Lambertus Slicher died at the Paarl on the 2nd of June, with Le Sueur sent inland in his place; the year Maria Elizabeth died in the same June, leaving a daughter of fourteen and a son of two; the year the council on the 11th of June voted to abandon Fort Lydzaamheid, the packets sailed on the 12th of August, Ensign Mona and twenty-nine Europeans were killed, and on the 27th of December De la Capelle and one hundred and thirty-three men left the bay. The next year would bring those hulls into Table Bay and a new clergyman for Drakenstein; 1730 itself ended on the embarkation. [3] [8] [9]