Boer History1769 at the Cape of Good Hope: Smallpox Ends, Faber at Stellenbosch, the Zwartberg Boundary, and First Horses to Madras
Nineteenth Year: Castle Continuity — 1769
Calendar 1769 opened in the nineteenth year of Ryk Tulbagh in the first chair. He had not been quite fifty-two when, on the 27th of February 1751, he became governor; the public presentation to the burghers and the promise of fidelity from the official boards had followed on the 15th of April. Saturday, the 8th of April 1752, had been a day of thanksgiving for a hundred years of Company possession, looking back to the gardens of 1652. In 1753 his wife Elizabeth Swellengrebel had died after seventeen years of marriage and had left him a childless widower. March 1755 had raised him councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India; March 1767 had raised him ordinary councillor, with only the governor-general and the director-general above him out of Europe. The eighteenth year had closed with a March peace that ended the wartime provision boom, a flood that for some hours on the 30th of May had threatened Stellenbosch, a winter raid in the Bokkeveld that killed Hermanus Vos, a stone pier at Simon’s Town, and a Danish infection that had not yet quite disappeared. The nineteenth opened with the same inner chairs: Jan Willem Cloppenburg sat the second chair as secunde, no longer acting; Joachim van Plettenberg sat the fiscal’s pen, twenty-eight years old when he landed, a Friesland baron with Cornelia Charlotte Feith; Jacobus Johannes le Sueur still sat Stellenbosch when the year opened; Joachim Frederik Mentz sat the hamlet that Horak had left; Jan Frederik Kirsten sat the winter port with the title of resident, now with a stone pier. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trading by officers—was a nineteenth year’s habit. The sumptuary laws adapted on the 25th of March 1755 still stood: no gilded coach but the governor’s, no livery but a councillor’s coachman, no large umbrella but a senior merchant’s or a board lady’s. [3] [7] [9]
As governor he was accessible without the least difficulty to all who wished to see him. The humblest individual could pour grievances into the ears of the father of the country and be sure of a patient hearing. If the complaints were well grounded, he obtained speedy redress; in any case he was sure of good counsel. That quality more than any other endeared him to the people. His probity was beyond suspicion in an age when probity was hardly looked for in men holding such posts. Company salaries were small, and it was taken almost as a matter of course that officers would supplement their incomes in any way not punishable by law. Tulbagh set his face firmly against that habit. He neither traded on his own account nor would he allow any other officer of the government to do so. The fees they were permitted to receive in certain transactions were fixed, and they were restricted from taking more. He regulated his own expenses so that he lived well within his income and allowances, and used what he had to spare in relieving the wants of others. Under his administration every man was certain of getting his dues. No man was put to unnecessary delay; no bribes were received; no false accounts were rendered. His house was distinguished from the others only by the sentinel at the door and by sounding the trumpet when he sat down for dinner. It stood by the side of a canal shaded with chestnut trees. Equanimity and a lack of swashbuckling dash did not mean an uneventful chair. He had never sought popularity for popularity’s sake. Gentle and tolerant he remained; strong when the governor’s authority was defied. The nineteenth year tested that strength on a January commando that surrounded a San party in the Bokkeveld, on a Danish remainder that quite disappeared only in April, on a June promotion that put a new landdrost at Stellenbosch, on a December commission that took the Zwartberg as a dividing line, and on a Christmas shipment of horses to Madras—while a governor already sixty-eight, often tied to his bed after the sixteenth year’s despair, sat ordinary councillor without his former strength. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the point of the nineteenth year’s opening as much as novelty of landdrost, boundary, and horses. The same castle, the same boards, and many of the same officers remained—Cloppenburg confirmed, Plettenberg in his second Cape calendar, Hemmy’s acting fiscal long closed. Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in the old districts, but occasionally the peace was disturbed by San marauders. Land continued to be allotted to colonists without consulting Khoikhoi clans. Plenty of land still seemed left. Cattle runs in the outward districts were probably never less than five or six thousand acres, for which, when it could be recovered, a yearly rental was paid—£2 10s. until 1732 and £5 thereafter. The eastern hamlet of Swellendam remained a hamlet; the pontoon placed on the Breede in 1757, close to the junction of the Zonder End, was still the public boat on that road. The Rev. Hendrik Kroonenburg, the Rev. Johannes Frederik Bode, and the Rev. Johannes Petrus Serrurier of Hanau still sat the Cape pulpit three deep, as Amsterdam had ordered in 1761. The Rev. Gerhardus Croeser still sat Zwartland. The Rev. Johannes Appeldoorn, stationed at Stellenbosch since October 1753, still sat that village. The Rev. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein. Roodezand’s church at Waveren was still under Remmerus Harders. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759; their travelling charges would not sit on the congregations in the nineteenth year. [3] [4] [8]
In the census returns of 1754 the number of colonists of both sexes and all ages had been given as 5,510, and the number of slaves owned by them as 6,279. In those of 1756 the number of colonists is given as 5,128, and of their slaves as 5,787. No later count sat on the Castle table in 1769. In ordinary years the number of deaths stood to baptisms roughly as 100 to 261, and there was a constant accession to the colonial population by servants of the Company taking their discharge. The figures, though they cannot be depended upon as absolutely accurate, still give the idea of the heavy loss of life by the smallpox. Table Valley had buried 963 Europeans and 1,109 blacks between the 1st of May and the 31st of October 1755. With the Khoikhoi the disease had created great havoc, spreading farther inland than in 1713—felt in Great Namaqualand at least to the twenty-sixth parallel, and in the east to the Great Fish. Before midsummer it had entirely died out. The nineteenth year therefore still lived inside two shadows: the 1755 graves, and the Danish infection of 1767 that had attacked between eighteen and nineteen hundred persons and had killed 179 Europeans, 145 free blacks, and 251 slaves. Occasional cases had run through the summer of 1767–8. It was not until April 1769 that the disease quite disappeared. Public as well as private enterprise had slackened. Company books had already closed the quarterly 600 guilders sent since 1747 to Tulbagh’s widowed mother Catharina Cattepoel; she had died in 1757. A childless widower sat the first chair without that Dutch household claim, often tied to his bed. A confirmed secunde sat the second. A fiscal independent sat the high court in his second Cape calendar. A landdrost of five Cape winters still sat Stellenbosch when January opened. A landdrost of three Cape summers sat Swellendam. [3] [7] [9]
Outward, the land regime did not change. Cattle runs of five or six thousand acres still seemed to leave land enough. Yearly rental, when it could be recovered, remained £5 after the fifteen-year quit-rent settlement of 1732. Khoikhoi who still held together in compact bodies retained their own government, with chiefs practically appointed by the Dutch authorities. The greater number had lost old tribal distinctions and lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. The courts were open for their protection. Dirk Marx’s report, received after the Doddington wreck, that he had met Xhosa as far west as the Great Fish, remained the frontier note. Calendar 1769 added no second Beutler-scale trek and no second Hop caravan. What it added was a January commando after two Bokkeveld farms were cleaned, an April end to the Danish pox, a June landdrost at Stellenbosch, a December line along the Zwartberg, and a Christmas ship of horses for Madras. In the Republic, Prince William V had already come of age in 1766 and sat as Stadholder. The Cape still sat under the Seventeen and a governor already ordinary councillor. Average exports across Tulbagh’s twenty-one years would later be counted at 11,791 muids of wheat, 202 of rye, 68 of barley, 202 of peas, 174 of beans, and 346 leggers of common wine, with butter to India since 1754 averaging 22,322 pounds a year. The nineteenth year sat after a fifteenth that had hardly any harvest and had bought rice to compensate, and after a sixteenth and seventeenth that had not been named among the drought years of the twenty-one. Those named years were 1755, 1756, 1763, 1764, and 1771; 1765 had continued that dryness. 1769 was not among the years then described as drought. The Castle still sat inside the average, with a paying roadstead that did not pause for pox, commando, or a new landdrost. Huguenot valleys of Drakenstein, Franschhoek, and Val du Charron still sent fruit and grain toward Table Valley; graziers who had crossed the Witsenberg into the Warm Bokkeveld still sat the stock that January commandos rode after. [3] [4] [7]
January Commando after the Bokkeveld Raids
In the winter of 1768 a party of San had driven off the cattle of Pieter Loubser from his farm in the Bokkeveld. A European named Hermanus Vos and a few Khoikhoi pursued the robbers, but upon being overtaken the San turned and killed Vos with poisoned arrows, when the Khoikhoi retreated. Landdrost Van Schoor had called out a commando, which was placed under order of Dirk Koekemoer. The commando searched for the San for three weeks without success, and then broke up. That blank three weeks sat into the new year. In January 1769 the farms of Nicholas Loubser and Willem Engelbrecht were in the same way cleared of cattle. On this occasion a commando assembled more hastily, when the San were surrounded, and the whole of them were shot. [3]
The January work was therefore not a new frontier war. It was the winter raid finished in summer, by a commando that did not wait three weeks. The Bokkeveld had already seen this pattern. In 1754 the cattle of Jacobus Gildenhuis had been driven from his farm there; neighbours—Koekemoer among them—had pursued, shot twenty-six, wounded eight, and recovered nearly all the cattle, after which the San in that part had promised to abstain from robbery. Fourteen years later the promise did not hold. Vos was dead. Koekemoer’s three weeks had found nobody. January found the party on two more farms and did not let it go. The whole of them were shot. That sentence is the January record. It does not name a field corporal of the later Van Jaarsveld stamp, and it does not count a number other than the whole. The Castle received a closed account where the eighteenth year had received an open one. [3]
Under Tulbagh the natives gave very little trouble to the colonists in the old districts. Khoikhoi clans that still held together in compact bodies within the limits of the European settlement retained their own government, though their chiefs were practically appointed by the Dutch authorities. Only when Europeans or slaves were also concerned were they made amenable to colonial law. The greater number had lost their old tribal distinctions and recognised no chief of their own race. Many lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered about the country, taking service occasionally as they felt so disposed. These were of necessity amenable to colonial law even in matters affecting their relationship to each other. There were instances of harsh and unjust treatment of Khoikhoi by colonists, especially on the remote border; but the courts of law were open for their protection, and the heavy sentences recorded against European criminals in such cases prove that the law was not a dead letter. The government, being popular, was strong; oppression on any large scale could only take place in times of anarchy. Land was allotted to colonists without consulting them. As yet there was plenty of land left for them and their cattle, so that this question was not a pressing one. [3] [4]
With San there were occasional contests. The government was anxious to prevent Khoikhoi from becoming possessed of guns and horses, as many who accompanied the elephant hunters had learned to be expert marksmen and might prove dangerous to the peace of the colony if mounted and armed. In 1755 some Khoikhoi in the district of Swellendam had acquired several horses and a couple of muskets as wages from burghers, when the landdrost was instructed to endeavour to procure the forbidden property in a friendly way in exchange for something else, and strictly to prohibit such actions in future. January 1769 was not that Swellendam case. It was a Bokkeveld cattle lift finished by shot. The same mountains that had seen Gildenhuis recovered and Loubser lost now saw two more farms cleaned and a party surrounded. Graziers who had gone through the Klein Berg ravine into the valley of Tulbagh, and from there into the Warm Bokkeveld, still sat those farms. A military station had once been placed among those mountains to guard settlers’ stock. The January commando was that guard in burgher form, assembled more hastily than Koekemoer’s, and this time not blank. [3] [7]
The nineteenth year’s first month therefore closed a 1768 account rather than opening a new war. Pieter Loubser’s loss, Vos’s death, and Koekemoer’s three weeks had sat through the Cape summer while occasional smallpox cases still ran. January answered on two farms with the same surname and a neighbour. The whole party was shot. Cattle that had been cleaned were not listed as recovered in the sentence that closed the raid. What the Castle recorded was that the robbers did not get away. Le Sueur still sat Stellenbosch when that commando rode; Faber had not yet taken the drostdy. The January work was done under the old landdrost’s district, in the same Bokkeveld that had already taught Koekemoer’s name, and it was done before the Danish remainder quite disappeared. [3]
Smallpox Ends — April 1769
In 1767 the smallpox had again been brought into the colony. On that occasion it was introduced by a Danish ship returning to Europe. From May until November it was prevalent in Cape Town, but owing to precautions which were taken, only a few families in the country districts were attacked by it. In 1713 and 1755 it had died out entirely when the hot weather set in; but there were occasional cases throughout the summer of 1767–8, and it was not until April 1769 that it quite disappeared. Altogether between eighteen and nineteen hundred persons were attacked, of whom one hundred and seventy-nine Europeans, one hundred and forty-five free blacks, and two hundred and fifty-one slaves died. The ravages of the disease were thus slight when compared with earlier years. Five hundred and seventy-five dead was not Table Valley’s 963 Europeans and 1,109 blacks of May–October 1755. It was still a Danish ship in a paying bay, and it was still in the nineteenth year when the last cases closed. [3] [9]
Precautions had kept the country districts almost clear. That was the difference from 1755, when the disease had assumed a malignant type in Table Valley and had spread farther inland than in 1713—felt in Great Namaqualand at least to the twenty-sixth parallel, and in the east to the Great Fish. Hop’s caravan, returning in 1762, had already ascertained that the 1755 pox had spread into Great Namaqualand and caused the loss of many lives. The Danish remainder of 1767–69 did not write that inland sentence. A few families in the country were attacked. Cape Town carried the prevalence from May until November 1767. Occasional cases then ran through a whole Cape summer and a second Cape winter, and only in April of the nineteenth year did the infection quite disappear. Between eighteen and nineteen hundred attacked, 575 dead: 179 Europeans, 145 free blacks, 251 slaves. The arithmetic is the same whether it is counted as a slight ravaging beside 1755 or as 575 graves in a town that strangers had begun to call Cape Town. [3] [7]
Public as well as private enterprise had slackened under that remainder. The growth of the colony, which Tulbagh’s energy had pointed at new streets, an oak hedge round the parade, renewed fountains, a town house, a raised church tower, repaired fortifications, a Salt River battery, a Simon’s Town hospital and stone pier, and a handsomer Stellenbosch drostdy, had been interrupted. The traces left behind by the disease were not difficult to erase once April closed it. Five hundred and seventy-five dead was still 575. A governor already sixty-eight, often tied to his bed, sat that closing month as he had sat the opening of the infection. The tavern of the seas did not stop for a Danish remainder. Seventy ships a year on the twenty-one-year average still needed beef, wine, water, and a hospital ward. What slackened was the civic push that had laid out streets and planted the oak hedge. April 1769 gave that push back its ordinary air. [3] [9]
The nineteenth year therefore opened with the last of the Danish cases still possible, and closed its first quarter with none. January’s commando rode while the remainder still sat. April ended it. Between those two months the Castle did not issue a second pox placaat of the 1755 kind. Precautions already taken in town had been enough to keep the country almost clear. The comparison with earlier years was the official comfort: slight ravages. The comparison with a paying bay was the other fact: 575 dead after a Danish ship returning to Europe had refreshed at a tavern that treated English and French alike. Clive had already come and gone twice. The Abbé de la Caille, Bougainville, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Sparrman, Thunberg, Stavorinus, Allemand—the distinguished list sat earlier calendars. April 1769 sat a quieter closing: the infection quite disappeared. [3] [9]
Faber Landdrost of Stellenbosch — June 1769
In June 1769 Jacobus Johannes le Sueur was promoted. Lucas Sigismundus Faber succeeded him as landdrost of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. The chair had a short modern line. Upon the death of Pieter Lourens, Adriaan van Schoor had been appointed in September 1748. In August 1763 Van Schoor was promoted to an office in Cape Town, and Le Sueur succeeded him. Le Sueur held the appointment until June 1769. Faber took a village that had been considerably enlarged and improved in appearance during Tulbagh’s administration. On the 31st of October 1762 the drostdy buildings had been destroyed by fire, but they were shortly rebuilt in a handsomer style. On the 30th of May 1768 much damage had been done to the village by a flood, which for some hours threatened the total destruction of the place. The same thing had occurred once before—on the 13th of October 1716. To prevent similar disasters in future, the course of the river had been altered, according to plans furnished by the heemraad Martin Melk, under whose supervision the work was carried out. Faber therefore sat a handsomer drostdy beside a moved river, not the burned rooms of 1762 and not the flood street of May 1768. [3] [9]
Swellendam remained a mere hamlet. To facilitate access to it from the Cape, in 1757 a pontoon had been placed on the Breede river, close to the junction of the Zonder End. In 1766 Horak had retired from the Company’s service and become a burgher, when Joachim Frederik Mentz, who had previously been secretary of the district, was appointed landdrost. Mentz still sat that chair in June when Stellenbosch changed. The two outer districts therefore no longer shared a continuous pair. Le Sueur’s six Cape winters closed. Faber’s first Cape winter as landdrost opened. Mentz, already three summers in the hamlet, would sit with Faber on the December commission that took the Zwartberg as a dividing line. The June promotion was not a frontier reform. It was a Castle promotion that put a new name on the Stellenbosch bench in time for that commission. [3]
Not only in town, but also in the country districts, the impact of Tulbagh’s energy was felt. Simonstown had been enlarged: warehouses built, a stone pier made, a large hospital erected. Stellenbosch had been expanded, and when in 1762 the drostdy burned down, a new and more spacious building arose. Faber inherited that energy’s brick, not its first impulse. The nineteenth year’s midsummer chair at Stellenbosch was a handsomer building, a diverted river, a village improved in appearance, and a landdrost new to the bench. Appeldoorn still sat the Stellenbosch pulpit, as he had since October 1753. Combined consistories still did not meet. The heemraden who had worked with Le Sueur now worked with Faber. Two of them would ride in December with two from Swellendam and the two secretaries. June put the name on the commission before December named the mountain. [3] [9]
Le Sueur’s promotion was the Castle’s ordinary movement of a successful landdrost toward Cape Town, as Van Schoor’s had been in August 1763. The district did not sit vacant. Faber was appointed in the same month. The January commando had already ridden under Le Sueur’s remaining months. The April end of smallpox had already given the village back its ordinary air. June changed the signature on the drostdy letters. From June the distant farms that a December commission would inspect were Faber’s to the north of whatever line that commission would choose, and Mentz’s to the south. The Zwartberg had not yet been named as that line. The June fact was only that Stellenbosch had a new landdrost, and that Swellendam did not. [3]
Zwartberg Boundary Commission — December 1769
In December 1769 a commission consisting of Lucas Sigismundus Faber, landdrost of Stellenbosch, Joachim Frederik Mentz, landdrost of Swellendam, two heemraden from each court, and the two secretaries, was directed to lay down a permanent boundary between the two districts. The Zwartberg range was settled upon as a good dividing line, the country to the north being allotted to Stellenbosch, and that to the south to Swellendam. The commission was also required to inspect the most distant farms and ascertain the state of affairs on the frontier. [3]
They reported that they found between the Gamtoos and Fish rivers many persons with large herds of cattle who were not paying rent to the Company, and others who were paying for a farm within the colonial limits, but who were moving about with their cattle wherever they pleased. They had reason also to believe that, notwithstanding a placaat which prohibited the purchase of cattle from natives, a large trade with the Xhosa was being carried on, for they found a well-beaten waggon-road from Swellendam into that country. The December report was therefore not only a mountain named. It was a frontier counted: unpaid herds, nomad leaseholders, and a beaten road that the placaat had not stopped. [3]
That finding sat on ground the cattle-run arithmetic had already made. The extent of the country seemed illimitable, and the farmers helped themselves liberally to the land. Their cattle runs were probably never less than five or six thousand acres, and afterwards certainly more, for which, when it could be recovered, a yearly rental of £2 10s. was paid until 1732 and £5 thereafter. In consequence of the increasing extent of country over which the white population were becoming scattered, and the increasing difficulty of control by the authorities at the Cape, endeavours were made from time to time to prevent further dispersion by the issue of placaats forbidding any further eastern move and prescribing boundaries over which the wanderers were prohibited from passing. But once beyond Swellendam and in the vast regions farther east, the burghers felt they could treat all such orders with contempt, knowing well that there was no longer any possibility of the penalties being enforced. These farmers thus came to lead a semi-nomadic existence, wandering about from place to place with their flocks and herds as better pastures and more water tempted them. The December commission walked into that habit and wrote it down. [3] [4]
Graziers had already gone through the Klein Berg ravine into the valley of Tulbagh, crossed the Witsenberg into the Warm Bokkeveld, made their way down the Breede to Swellendam, and followed the Zonder End. Other pioneers had gone north-westwards into the Piketberg and along the Great Olifants, and some as far as the Copper mountains of Namaqualand. Into the interior, through the Hex River Pass to the Wittebergen and the Klein Zwartberg range, and across those mountains onto the great Karroo plains, went the explorers and hunters and graziers. The December line along the Zwartberg did not invent that crossing. It named the range that already sat between Stellenbosch’s north and Swellendam’s south, and it sent two landdrosts to look at the farms beyond. What they saw between the Gamtoos and the Fish was the same semi-nomadic habit written as rent unpaid, or rent paid for one farm and cattle moved to another. [3] [7]
The well-beaten waggon-road from Swellendam into Xhosa country was the other December sentence. A placaat had prohibited the purchase of cattle from natives. The commission believed a large trade was nevertheless being carried on, because the road was there. Dirk Marx’s older report that Xhosa sat as far west as the Great Fish was no longer only a wreck-year note. It was a beaten track from the hamlet eastward, seen by Faber, Mentz, four heemraden, and two secretaries. The Castle had wanted a permanent boundary between two districts. It received a mountain, and it received a road. The nineteenth year did not resolve what to do with the unpaid herds and the moving cattle. It recorded them. North of the Zwartberg the farms were Stellenbosch’s; south of it they were Swellendam’s. Beyond the most distant of them the commission had already counted persons who paid no rent, and persons who paid for one place and grazed another. [3] [4]
First Horses Exported — 25 December 1769
The first horses were exported from South Africa in 1769. Six years earlier the horse sickness had been unusually severe, the burghers losing over 2,500 within a few months; but the loss had been made good by breeding, and when some English officers visited the Cape to procure remounts for India, there were plenty to be had, though they were small and not very handsome. On the 25th of December 1769 the Duke of Kingston sailed from Table Bay with a shipment for Madras. [3]
The 1763 sickness had sat in a drought year. 1763 was named among the five years of drought, more or less severe, in the corn-growing districts during Tulbagh’s twenty-one years—1755, 1756, 1763, 1764, and 1771—and 1765 had continued that dryness until there was hardly any harvest and rice was imported to compensate. Horse sickness and a poor wheat year had arrived together. Breeding had made the horse loss good by the time English officers came for India. The wheat arithmetic sat the twenty-one-year average: 11,791 muids of wheat to India, 202 of rye, 68 of barley, 202 of peas, 174 of beans, and 346 leggers of common wine. Butter, first exported to India in 1754, averaged 22,322 pounds a year, usually purchased at the Company’s stores at six pence to eight pence a pound, occasionally a shilling in times of scarcity. A small quantity of dried fruit and a little ivory also went to India. Horses in 1769 were a new line on that list, not a replacement of it. [3]
In 1761 the first aloes had been exported from South Africa. A quantity of two hundred and eighteen pounds in weight was produced by the old burgher councillor Petrus Johannes de Wit, who lived at the Cape but had a farm in the country, and had caused the drug to be prepared there. The council of policy decided to send it to Europe, where it was pronounced of good quality. The directors issued instructions to purchase it at the stores at a price not exceeding two shillings and three pence half-penny a pound. From that date it was an article of export to Europe, but the quantity in demand being inconsiderable, it was not of much advantage to the colony. De Wit was the same burgher with whom Clive had lodged in April 1767. Aloes to Europe and horses to Madras sat eight years apart on a list that also held wheat, wine, butter, dried fruit, and ivory. The Christmas ship did not make aloes important. It made horses an export. [3] [9]
English officers coming for remounts was the peace-year traffic, not the wartime bid. Intelligence of peace between France and England had been received in March 1768 and had ended the provision boom that, from the French refreshment fleets of December 1758 and January 1759 until that March, had doubled and trebled prices and emptied magazines of surplus wheat. Foreigners still obtained whatever they chose to pay for, excepting when the council thought it necessary to prohibit the sale of such articles as the Company needed. English visitors had been treated in a liberal manner since the 1761 instructions, after the Chinsurah affair of 1759 had briefly disturbed the friendly feeling between Great Britain and the United Provinces. Lynn in the Chatham and York in January 1762 had been refused English seamen out of Dutch ships; Clive in the Kent in December 1764 and again in April 1767 had been received with all possible honour. The Duke of Kingston in December 1769 was not Clive’s Kent. It was a remount ship. Small Cape horses, not very handsome, plenty of them after breeding had repaired 1763, went to Madras on Christmas Day. [3] [9]
To Europe were sent yearly rather over 100 leggers of common wine and as much Constantia wine as could be obtained, which was usually not more than 14 or 15 leggers. From 1736 to 1761 the Company had paid for red Constantia at a contract price that the proprietors complained of, because they could easily get double from foreigners; in 1761 an agreement with Jacobus van der Spuy, then owner of High Constantia, allowed him to deliver two-thirds to the Company at a raised price and sell the remaining third to whom he chose. A similar agreement was subsequently made with Lambert Myburgh, owner of Great Constantia. Horses did not join that Constantia contract. They joined the India list, on an English ship, at the price English officers would pay for remounts that were small and not very handsome. Table Bay on the 25th of December 1769 therefore sent a new Cape article east, while the ordinary wine, wheat, and butter averages still sat the magazines. The tavern of the seas added a Christmas clearance to Madras. [3]
Church, Drostdies, and Civic Works — 1769
The various churches in the colony were well supplied with clergymen during the administration of Mr. Tulbagh. At the Cape, Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau were all in active service, as the directors had ordered in April 1761 after Bode’s suspension and restoration with arrears. Appeldoorn still sat Stellenbosch, where he had been stationed since October 1753. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein, having gone there at his own request in January 1758. Croeser still sat Zwartland, having exchanged with Voltelen in November 1755. Harders still sat Waveren, made permanent there by the directors in 1761 after commissioner Looten had taken him off a ship in January 1758. Combined consistories had ceased in 1759 because the council considered that the meetings served no useful purpose and that the travelling charges of clergymen and elders were burdens too heavy for the congregations. The nineteenth year inherited that saving. It did not restore the combined meetings. Three pulpits in Table Valley, one at Stellenbosch, one at Drakenstein, one at Zwartland, and one at Roodezand, were enough. Serrurier of Hanau, married on the 9th of November 1760 to Margaretha Elisabeth Timmendorf, still sat the Cape pulpit as third clergyman. [3] [8]
The village of Stellenbosch, after the flood of the 30th of May 1768 and Melk’s diversion of the river, sat from June in Faber’s handsomer drostdy. Swellendam remained a mere hamlet, Mentz in Horak’s chair. The two outer chairs therefore changed by one name in 1769: Faber for Le Sueur, Mentz unchanged. The inner chairs had already changed in 1767: Cloppenburg confirmed secunde in March, Plettenberg landed fiscal independent on the 21st of December. The nineteenth year was Plettenberg’s second Cape calendar and Cloppenburg’s third as confirmed secunde. Kirsten still sat Simon’s Town, with the stone pier of 1768 under the resident’s title. Continuity of persons, which had been the civic fact of the fifteenth year and the broken fact of the sixteenth, was the civic fact of the nineteenth after June had changed only the Stellenbosch signature. [3] [9]
During the 21 years 1751–1771 there put into Table Bay 988 ships belonging to the Dutch East India Company, 168 English, 147 French, 31 Danish, 13 Swedish, 4 Prussian, 1 Portuguese, and 1 Spanish. During the same period 129 Dutch, 14 English, 11 French, 13 Danish, and 2 Swedish put into Simon’s Bay. The whole number that touched at the two ports was 1,472, and the average yearly number 70. Foreigners obtained whatever they chose to pay for, excepting when the council thought it necessary to prohibit the sale of such articles as the Company needed and of which the supply was insufficient for all. The nineteenth year sat inside that average after a March 1768 peace had ended the wartime bid and an April 1769 closing had ended the Danish remainder. A paying roadstead did not require a named drought year to stay a paying roadstead. Seventy ships a year still needed beef, wine, water, a hospital ward, a stone pier at the winter bay, and, on one Christmas Day, remounts for Madras. The tavern of the seas counted the horses as it had counted the boom and the peace. [3] [9]
Strangers had begun to know the town in Table Valley by the name of Cape Town, though by the colonists it was still termed the Cape. Several new streets were laid out. The parade ground was again levelled, and an oak hedge was planted round it. The artificial fountains from which the inhabitants got water were renewed. The town house—the same that is still in use—was built by the burgher council. The tower of the church was raised a few feet higher by the consistory, and a clock was placed in it, which did not yet indicate the time. The graveyard round the church was closed; the cemetery between the Lion’s Rump and the shore of the bay was not yet opened. The hospital was falling to ruins, and it had been resolved by the directors to build a new one, but the work was not yet commenced, though the materials were being collected. The fortifications were repaired, and a new battery was constructed near the mouth of Salt River. At Simon’s Town the hospital—a square building of 130 feet frontage—had been commenced in 1760 and completed in 1765; substantial storehouses followed; in 1768 a stone pier was constructed; a slaughter house, a bakery, workshops for smiths and carpenters, and a dwelling house for the officer in charge of the station followed. The building of Swellengrebel’s time, 450 feet in length, was now used solely as quarters for the garrison and workmen. Completing those winter-port works was the same civic energy pointed at Table Valley’s oak hedge and town house. Not only in town, but in the country districts, the impact of Tulbagh’s energy was felt. Stellenbosch had already been expanded after the drostdy fire of October 1762, the river moved after May 1768, and in June a new landdrost seated. The nineteenth year sat those works under a governor whose life had been despaired of, who had rallied without his former strength, who was sixty-eight and often tied to his bed, and who in March 1767 had been made ordinary councillor of Netherlands India. Public as well as private enterprise had slackened under the lingering pox and recovered its ordinary air when April closed the last cases. The oak hedge, the fountains, the town house, the raised tower, and the stone pier still stood. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s remainder, its bench, its mountain, and its horses: in January a commando assembled more hastily after the farms of Nicholas Loubser and Willem Engelbrecht were cleared, surrounded a San party, and shot the whole of them, closing the Bokkeveld account that winter 1768 had left blank after Vos’s death and Koekemoer’s three weeks; in April the Danish smallpox that a ship returning to Europe had brought in 1767, and that had lingered through the summer of 1767–8, quite disappeared, having attacked between eighteen and nineteen hundred and killed 575; in June Le Sueur was promoted and Lucas Sigismundus Faber became landdrost of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein; in December a commission of Faber, Mentz, two heemraden from each court, and the two secretaries took the Zwartberg as the dividing line, north to Stellenbosch and south to Swellendam, and found between the Gamtoos and the Fish unpaid herds, moving cattle, and a well-beaten waggon-road into Xhosa country; on the 25th of December the Duke of Kingston sailed from Table Bay with the first horses exported from South Africa, bound for Madras, small and not very handsome, plenty after breeding had repaired the 2,500 lost to the 1763 sickness. Under Tulbagh, 1769 was not a year of conquest but of a closed raid, a closed infection, a new drostdy signature, a named mountain, and a Christmas remount—while farmers still sold into a quieter bay at a neutral tavern of the seas, except when the Castle took first. The nineteenth year closed with Cloppenburg confirmed, Plettenberg in his second Cape calendar as fiscal independent, Faber in a handsomer drostdy beside a moved river, Mentz at the hamlet, Kirsten still styled resident at a winter port that had a stone edge, and Tulbagh still in the first chair, ordinary councillor, sixty-eight, often tied to his bed, without his former strength. The gardens of 1652 were a hundred and seventeen years behind. The pox had ended. The horses had sailed. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]