Boer History1772 at the Cape of Good Hope: Hospital Foundation, Oudtshoorn Named Governor, San Commandos, and Cook Outward
Acting Year: Castle Continuity — 1772
Calendar 1772 opened in the first full year of Joachim van Plettenberg as acting head of the government, elected by the council the morning after Ryk Tulbagh died, until the pleasure of the directors could be known. He had been educated as a lawyer and had very little experience in any other employment. A Friesland baron, born at Leeuwarden on the 8th of March 1739, son of Hendrik Casimir Baron van Plettenberg and Agatha Petronella van Ammema, he had gone from the Latin school to Utrecht, sailed for Batavia on the Amerongen on the 8th of May 1764 as adjunct-fiscal at twenty-five, and arrived in the colonial capital on the second day of 1765. In 1767 he married Cornelia Charlotte Feith, widow of Louis Taillefer, Director of Bengal. That same year saw the Van Plettenbergs at the Cape, where Joachim had been appointed independent fiscal. From the 30th of May 1770 he had sat the second chair as well as the important duties of fiscal; Olof Godlieb de Wet sat the fiscal’s routine. From the 12th of August 1771 he sat both the first chair and the second. Called to succeed a model governor, he was from the first moment at a disadvantage. The council of policy had had no choice: he was the only senior executive in the settlement when Father Tulbagh died. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the civic fact of the acting year as much as novelty of a named governor still in Holland. The same castle, the same boards, and many of the same officers remained. Lucas Sigismundus Faber still sat Stellenbosch; Joachim Frederik Mentz still sat the hamlet that Horak had left; Jan Frederik Kirsten still sat the winter port with the title of resident, with a stone pier. 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, and still held service at Zwartland monthly in succession, no successor having been named for Gerhardus Croeser. The Rev. Johannes Appeldoorn still sat Stellenbosch when January opened. The Rev. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein. Remmerus Harders still sat Waveren. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759. The Castle’s ordinary business—open access, fixed fees, no private trading by officers—had been the landsfather’s habit. The acting year inherited the habit and the empty chair. 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] [8] [9]
Outward, the land regime did not change from the 18 February 1770 names. The eastern boundary of the colony, according to the resolution of the council of policy, remained Bruintjes Hoogte and the Gamtoos river; but, in defiance of that prohibition, Europeans were settled along the high lands as far as the Little Fish river. 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. Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in the old districts, but occasionally the peace was disturbed by San marauders. About the year 1770, cattle thefts and massacres of native herdsmen, and even of white colonists, had become events of such frequent occurrence that farms along the Nieuwveld, the Sneeuwberg, and the Winterberg were unsafe. Calendar 1772 inherited that northern paper and that eastern line, and added a May letter from Stellenbosch, an October summons that a hunter evaded, and a November stone in Table Valley. [3] [4] [7]
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 an acting baron. 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. The acting year sat one hundred and twenty years from those gardens, with a first chair emptied in August, a second chair still unconfirmed from Amsterdam, and a hospital ground prepared before Tulbagh died that still waited for a stone. During the twenty-one years 1751–1771 the average yearly number of ships at the two ports had been 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 excepting the Spanish man-of-war of 1770 that Münster and Utrecht had limited to water and fuel. Calendar 1772 would break that seventy-a-year tally. It would not break the line at Bruintjes Hoogte on paper. It would name a governor who had not yet arrived, lay a foundation stone for 1,450 patients, load a packet of about three hundred tons, and count a November English circumnavigator on the outward passage. [3] [9]
The town in Table Valley had already been considerably enlarged. Strangers had begun to know it by the name of Cape Town, though by the colonists it was still termed the Cape. Several new streets had been laid out. The parade ground had been levelled again, and an oak hedge planted round it. The artificial fountains had been renewed. The town house had been built by the burgher council. The fortifications had been repaired, and a new battery constructed near the mouth of Salt River. The tower of the church had been raised a few feet, and a clock placed in it that from the 25th of November 1771 at last indicated the time. The graveyard round the church had been closed; the cemetery between the Lion’s Rump and the shore of the bay had been opened early in 1770. The landsfather lay under the pavement of the church, not in the new cemetery. The hospital in Table Valley was still falling to ruins; the directors had resolved to build a new one; the ground had been prepared before Tulbagh’s death; the work had not been commenced. January therefore opened on an acting settlement, a paying roadstead, a clock that told the hour, and a hospital that still waited for its stone. [3] [9]
Oudtshoorn Named Governor — 4 September 1772
Before the death of Tulbagh was known in the Netherlands, the Prince of Orange, acting upon the nomination of the directors, appointed Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn secunde, as that gentleman had applied for employment again in South Africa, where some of his children were residing. It was then intended that Van Plettenberg should resume the duties of fiscal. Oudtshoorn was an old hand in Cape affairs. He had assumed duty as fiscal independent in September 1741 and had become secunde in December 1760. Prior to Tulbagh’s death he had been named to the second chair, but when the governor passed away he had not yet sailed from the Netherlands. So it happened that Plettenberg was the only senior executive in the settlement, and the council had no choice but to make him acting head. [3] [9]
Despatches announcing the death of Tulbagh arrived from the Cape, however, before Oudtshoorn could leave Holland, and he then had the office of governor conferred upon him, Van Plettenberg being at the same time appointed secunde. This information was received at the Cape on the 4th of September 1772. The acting year therefore acquired, in September, a named governor who had not yet arrived and a named secunde who already sat both chairs. The directors had expressed their pleasure. The roadstead had not yet seen the man. Children of his were already residing. The Castle sat the news, and sat the acting baron still in the first chair, now named to the second by the same paper that named another man to the first. [3] [9]
The eastern boundary on that September paper was still Bruintjes Hoogte and the Gamtoos. In June 1771 the old elephant hunter Willem Prinsloo had obtained permission from Tulbagh to select two farms within the colonial limits, but had gone beyond them and occupied the site of the later village of Somerset East on the Little Fish. The Boschberg had been invaded during the year after the Gamtoos was named the extreme limit. Placaats had not produced a retreat. In October 1772 the acting governor came to hear that Prinsloo was living beyond the boundary, and instructed the landdrost of Stellenbosch to have him removed; but he managed to evade the summons. Several others were already along those high lands. The 4th of September named a governor. The October instruction named a hunter who did not come in. Faber still sat the drostdy that was to serve the summons. The line on paper did not move. [3] [4]
September’s news did not install a governor. It named one. It did not empty the acting chair. It confirmed that Amsterdam had read the August death and had written two names: Oudtshoorn to the first, Plettenberg to the second. The acting baron, moon-faced in the later portraits, cold-eyed, a sharp lawyer’s nose, born a century too late for the people he had to administer—tough, self-made settlers in a rough country—still sat both chairs because the named governor had not yet sailed into Table Bay. History would later be unkind to him. Calendar 1772 did not yet write that unkindness. It wrote a 4 September despatch, an October hunter who evaded, and a November stone. The first five years of his later administration, following the two in which he held the reins as acting governor, would sit on a surface that did not yet give a clear indication of the explosive situation to come. The acting year sat the surface: a named governor still in Holland, a paying roadstead, and a hospital that at last received its stone. [3] [7] [9]
Appeldoorn Dies; Hospital Stone — September–November 1772
In September 1772 the Rev. Johannes Appeldoorn died. He had been stationed at Stellenbosch since October 1753. The death left that congregation without other ministrations than those of a consulent. The post remained vacant. The Cape pulpit still sat three deep—Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau—and still held Zwartland monthly in succession. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein. Harders still sat Waveren. Combined consistories had ceased in 1759; their travelling charges would not sit on the congregations in the acting year. Stellenbosch, which had expanded after the drostdy fire of October 1762 and had moved the river after May 1768, and which from June 1769 had seated a new landdrost in Faber’s handsomer building, now sat a church without a resident minister. The acting year therefore changed one outer pulpit and left the rest sitting. [3] [8]
The church at Drakenstein was an arena of strife during the early years of this period. The election in January 1772 of Thomas Arnoldus Theron as an elder was objected to by a considerable section of the congregation, on the ground that he was not properly qualified, and the controversy soon became violent. Van der Spuy still sat that pulpit. Huguenot valleys of Drakenstein, Franschhoek, and Val du Charron still sent fruit and grain toward Table Valley. In the same year Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, son of the Rev. Roger David Naudé, professor at the French College and minister of the French church at Berlin, who had arrived in 1754 in the Company’s service and in 1766 received his discharge and gone to reside at Drakenstein, passed a power of attorney in favour of David Naudé, astronomer, and the Rev. Louis Ancillon, minister of the French Reformed Monastery Church, both of Berlin, to receive from the burgomasters of that city monies due to him from the estates of his late father and mother. January’s elder and a Berlin power of attorney therefore sat the same Drakenstein year as September’s empty Stellenbosch pulpit. [3] [7] [8]
The ground upon which the new hospital was to stand had been prepared before the death of Governor Tulbagh, but the building had not been commenced. It was designed for the accommodation of one thousand four hundred and fifty patients, with quarters for the medical officers and attendants, and spacious storehouses. The foundation stone was laid by Van Plettenberg on the 2nd of November 1772. As most of the materials used in the construction of this building—later the military barracks—were sent from the Netherlands, the directors, in a despatch dated the 18th of October 1771, required the council to provide return cargoes of Cape produce for the ships bringing them out, provided produce of good quality could be had at reasonable rates. They complained of the high prices and inferior quality of various samples previously sent home, excepting wheat, and they therefore issued orders that the bulk of the cargoes should consist of that grain. [3]
November’s stone sat the prepared ground that August’s death had left waiting. The acting baron who had not been given a gilded coach to meet Clive, and who had not yet been given a confirmed first chair, laid a foundation for 1,450 in the year that named another man governor. The hospital in Table Valley had been falling to ruins through the last years of the landsfather. Materials had been collected. The work had not been commenced. The 2nd of November commenced it. Simon’s Town already sat the square hospital of 130 feet frontage completed in 1765, the stone pier of 1768, the slaughter house, the bakery, the workshops, the dwelling, and the old Swellengrebel building of 450 feet now used solely as quarters for the garrison and workmen. Kirsten still sat that station. Table Valley now sat a stone where ruins had stood the paper. The clock that from the 25th of November 1771 indicated the time indicated it over a foundation at last begun. [3] [9]
The 18 October 1771 despatch and the 2 November 1772 stone were one paper: materials out, produce home, wheat in bulk, a hospital for 1,450. When those instructions arrived, the French were laying in large supplies of meal, wine, and meat for their men-of-war and magazines at Mauritius, and the preceding harvest had not been quite as good as usual, so that prices were ruling high. In 1772 only one ship laden with materials for the Cape arrived, but she was a large one, and brought out reinforcements of troops also. The council found it would not be possible to get a full cargo for her, so they sent her to Batavia for orders, and prepared the Cape packet Zon, a vessel of about three hundred tons burden, to take produce to Europe. To obtain even this quantity, it was necessary to prohibit for a time the sale of grain to foreigners for exportation. September’s empty Stellenbosch pulpit, January’s Drakenstein elder, and November’s stone therefore sat inside a harvest that was not quite as good as usual and a roadstead that the French were already buying for Mauritius. [3]
Roggeveld Raids and Cape Sentences — 1772
In May 1772 a letter was received from the landdrost of Stellenbosch, giving information that a party of San on the border of the Roggeveld had murdered a burgher named Hendrik Teutman, his wife and daughter, and a servant of Adriaan Louw, and that they had driven off the cattle from several farms. The field corporal Willem van Wyk raised a commando, followed the marauders to a mountain, and besieged a cave in which they took shelter, but was unable to capture it. He then wrote to the landdrost for help. The council of policy resolved to send a corporal and five grenadiers, with a supply of hand grenades, to aid him. A party of Khoikhoi was also engaged to assist, and upon the arrival of these reinforcements the cave was stormed. Six San were killed, and fifty-eight of both sexes, great and small, were captured. The prisoners were forwarded under escort to the Cape, where they arrived on the 27th of June. [3] [7]
After some delay the men were brought to trial before the high court of justice, and on the 31st of December sentence was passed. One was broken alive on a wheel; one was hanged; four were flogged, had the tendons of their heels severed, and were kept to hard labour for life; and three were flogged and kept to hard labour for life. The women and children were distributed as servants for periods varying in duration. The acting year’s northern paper therefore closed on New Year’s Eve with a wheel, a rope, severed tendons, and a distribution of servants. It had opened on a May letter and a cave that a field corporal could not take without grenadiers. [3]
In October of the same year the landdrost of Stellenbosch reported that a party of San had stolen eighty-eight head of cattle from the burgher Gerrit van Wyk. Thereupon a commando assembled, followed up the robbers, shot thirty-one of them, and recovered thirty-nine of the cattle. Despite such punishment, the San seemed to become constantly bolder, and at length they did not fear to attack farmhouses in open day. Horned cattle, sheep, and goats were driven off in hundreds together, the herdsmen were murdered, and from several localities the Europeans were obliged to retire. The method of conducting warfare against these hunter-gatherers needed no knowledge of complicated military movements. There were probably many contests between farmers and San of which the government never heard. Those that are recorded give very plain pictures of what was taking place. The May cave and the October recovery were two of those pictures in the acting year. [3] [4]
Some of the Khoikhoi were living in reserves, under captains recognised by the Cape government, and were not subject to colonial courts of law except in cases affecting white people. The tract of land called Lily Fontein, in the Kamiesberg, was a reserve secured to the Khoikhoi captain Wildschut and his people by Van Plettenberg in 1772. Others of this race were living with the colonists, either in charge of herds of cattle or as domestic servants. As many as were needed joined the burghers against the common enemy, and were provided with firearms and ammunition. The May storming of the cave had already engaged a party of Khoikhoi beside the corporal and five grenadiers. Lily Fontein sat the other northern paper of the acting year: a named reserve under a named captain, in the same calendar as a wheel and a rope at the Cape. [3]
North and east the acting year therefore stretched two papers at once. Eastward, Prinsloo evaded an October summons on the Little Fish, and the Boschberg remained occupied in defiance of the February 1770 line at Bruintjes Hoogte and the Gamtoos. Northward, a May murder on the Roggeveld brought grenades to a cave, fifty-eight prisoners to the Cape on the 27th of June, and a 31 December sentence; an October theft of eighty-eight brought thirty-one shot and thirty-nine recovered; and a Kamiesberg reserve sat Wildschut’s name on Lily Fontein. Faber still sat the drostdy that wrote the letters. The high court still sat the sentences. The acting baron still sat both chairs. The northern border did not wait for a named governor to arrive from Holland. [3] [4] [7]
The Zon Cargo and Foreign Demand — 1772
The first cargo of Cape produce sent to Holland consisted of 2,997 muids of wheat, purchased at 9s. 7¾d. a muid free of the tithe; 87 muids of rye, purchased at 8s. 4½d. a muid; 222 muids of barley, purchased at 4s. 9¾d. a muid; 82 leggers of assorted wines, for which the farmers were paid from £5 8s. to £18 8s. a legger according to quality; and 5,300 pounds of tallow, purchased at 20s. the hundred pounds. On arrival at Amsterdam, the wheat was sold at 16s. 2d. to 16s. 6d. a muid, and the wine at £11 16s. to £48 19s. a legger. These profits were so satisfactory to the directors that they resolved to continue the importation of South African produce, especially as the Cape government wrote that purchases would in future be made at much lower rates. From this date until the commencement of the war with England, a quantity of Cape produce was yearly sent to the Netherlands. [3]
The increase of exports above those of previous years did not, however, cause increased prosperity to the colonists. The prices paid by the Company were ruinously low. For the wheat sent to India the farmers received only 8s. 9¾d. and for that sent to Europe only 5s. 11½d. a muid, after the government dues were deducted. The butter was bought at 6d. to 8d., and the tallow at about 2d. a pound. At the same time there was a constant demand for all kinds of farm produce at more than double the prices which the Company was giving. It was specifically in the domain of exports that the first more serious grumblings were heard. Instead of boosting the prosperity of the farmers who participated in the supplies, the exports had rather the effect of causing frustration and bitterness. The prices paid by the Company were so low that it was hardly worthwhile to toil. The Zon’s 2,997 muids therefore sat inside a paying roadstead that paid the farmer less than the stranger paid. [3] [9]
In the year 1772 there was a sudden and great increase in the foreign shipping that put into South African ports, and the number of vessels did not fall off again until the commencement of the war with England. During the nine years 1772–1780 there put into Table Bay 418 Dutch ships, 159 English, 192 French, 41 Danish, 7 Swedish, 16 Spanish, 9 Portuguese, and 3 Austrian; and into Simon’s Bay 47 Dutch, 85 English, 46 French, 17 Danish, 1 Austrian, and 6 Swedish ships; or, on an average, 52 Dutch ships and 65 under various other flags touched yearly at the two ports. All of them needed fresh provisions. Some of the French vessels, indeed, were sent here from Mauritius expressly to obtain cargoes of grain, meat, and wine; and occasionally an English vessel arrived from St. Helena for the same purpose. The directors admitted that they should be encouraged to call, as they brought ready money into the country and increased the revenue. Not only Table Bay but also the roads of Simon’s Town were full of Dutch, French, English, Scandinavian and even Austrian vessels, all requiring fresh produce. [3] [9]
Owing to them, the contract for the supply of meat to the Company could now be taken at less than 4d. a pound, for the contractor had the privilege of charging foreigners more. The farmer of the duty of £1 a legger on wine and spirits sold to foreigners for exportation could now afford to pay nearly £1,000 a year for it. The licensed retail dealer in wines and spirits could afford to bid £1,000 a year more for his monopoly. The average production of wine was 8,244 leggers, and the Company needed only 945 leggers for its own use and for sale in Europe and India. The directors were therefore only too glad to know that the surplus could be sold at high rates at the Cape. With grain it was different. As much of this as could be produced could be sold at a profit, and it therefore became a matter for calculation to get as large a quantity as possible without driving foreigners away. The fiscal took control of the trade, and permitted nothing to be sold to strangers without his leave. The burghers protested against this infringement of their rights, but to no purpose. The acting year’s prohibition on grain to foreigners for export, needed to fill the Zon, sat inside that fiscal control. [3]
The twenty-one years 1751–1771 had averaged 11,791 muids of wheat, 202 of rye, 68 of barley, 202 of peas, 174 of beans, and 346 leggers of common wine to India, with butter from 1754 averaging 22,322 pounds a year, and rather over 100 leggers of common wine to Europe besides as much Constantia as could be obtained, usually not more than 14 or 15 leggers. The acting year opened a different stream: the Zon’s first cargo to Holland, and a nine-year average, 1772–1780, of 15 leggers Constantia, 98 leggers ordinary wines, 10,714 muids of wheat, 28,800 pounds of tallow, and 8,614 pounds of aloes to Europe, with small quantities of brandy, rye, barley, vegetable wax, oxhides, sheepskins, coarse wool, skins of wild animals, and leather. The average export to India across those nine years would be 14,419 muids of wheat, 180 of rye, 66 of barley, 87 of beans, 100 of peas, 296 leggers of wine, 18,618 pounds of butter, 11,555 pounds of tallow, and 1,183 pounds of ivory. Calendar 1772 did not wait for the nine-year count. It loaded 2,997 muids, 82 leggers, and 5,300 pounds of tallow into a packet of about three hundred tons, sent the materials ship on to Batavia, and watched the flags in the two bays jump. [3]
Cook Outward — November 1772
The English explorer Captain James Cook touched at Table Bay with the Resolution and Adventure on his outward passage in November 1772. He had already called in the Endeavour on his homeward passage, on the 15th of March 1771, and after refreshing his crew and taking in a stock of provisions had sailed again on the 14th of April. Thirty days in the roadstead then. November now sat two ships on the outward passage, in the first full year of an acting baron, in the month after a hospital stone, in the year of a packet of about three hundred tons. The tavern of the seas sold him what foreigners who were not Spanish were still allowed to buy: beef, wine, water, garden stuff, whatever he 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—and excepting, in this year, grain for export while the Zon was being filled. [3] [9]
During the 21 years 1751–1771 there had 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 had put into Simon’s Bay. The whole number that touched at the two ports was 1,472, and the average yearly number 70. The Prussian flag had first been seen on a ship in Table Bay in 1755, and the Swedish in 1759. The Spanish ship had touched here in 1770. Calendar 1772 closed that seventy-a-year tally and opened the jump: on average fifty-two Dutch and sixty-five other flags a year at the two bays until the war. Cook’s Resolution and Adventure sat inside the English of that jump. They did not pause the Roggeveld paper. They did not fill the Zon. They refreshed in November and sat the outward passage in a year that had already named a governor, laid a stone, and sentenced a cave. [3] [9]
Among persons of note that had called at the Cape during Tulbagh’s government, Lord Clive had touched here on the 17th of December 1764 in the Kent, remained ashore until the 12th of January 1765, and had arrived again on the 22nd of April 1767 on his return passage, lodging with the burgher Petrus Johannes de Wit and leaving on the 4th of May. The Abbé Nicolas Louis de la Caille, Louis de Bougainville, and Professor Allemand of Leiden had also sat the tavern’s books. Of the English, Cook now sat a second Cape line: homeward in the Endeavour in 1771, outward with the Resolution and Adventure in November 1772. Clive’s first call had sent the gilded coach with six horses; his second had been a little less conspicuous; both had been met with quiet courtesy. Cook’s November call did not need a gilded coach to be a named visitor. It needed a roadstead, a magazine, and an acting governor still sitting both chairs while a named governor had not yet arrived. [3] [9]
There were but few disasters on the coast at this period. The loss of the Doddington and the drifting ashore of the Meermin had already been written in earlier calendars. The acting year added no named wreck to that short list. It added an outward English captain with two ships, a French demand from Mauritius, and a packet of about three hundred tons. Cook’s crew refreshed in Table Bay, not in the winter port. November sat a paying roadstead inside a town that strangers called Cape Town, inside a first chair that still sat acting, and inside a hospital ground that from the 2nd of November held a stone. The Resolution and the Adventure counted as two of the English of the jump. They did not count a second horse ship. They counted a November call on the way toward the south. [3] [9]
Church, Reserve, and Civic Works — 1772
The various churches in the colony were still well supplied with clergymen, save Zwartland and, from September, Stellenbosch. At the Cape, Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau were all in active service, and still held service at Zwartland monthly in succession. Appeldoorn’s death in September left Stellenbosch to a consulent. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein, and sat it inside January’s elder controversy over Theron. Harders still sat Waveren, made permanent there by the directors in 1761. Combined consistories had ceased in 1759. Serrurier of Hanau, married on the 9th of November 1760 to Margaretha Elisabeth Timmendorf, still sat the Cape pulpit as third clergyman, and still sat Zwartland one month in three. The inner chairs had changed by one death in the previous year: Tulbagh’s, on the 11th of August 1771, Plettenberg acting as governor and secunde. The outer chairs had now changed by one pulpit: Appeldoorn’s. Faber still sat Stellenbosch’s drostdy. Mentz still sat the hamlet. Kirsten still sat the winter port. [3] [8]
At Simon’s Town expensive works had already been carried out. The hospital—a square building of 130 feet frontage—had been commenced in 1760 and completed in 1765. Substantial storehouses had then been put up, and when these were finished, in 1768 a stone pier had been constructed. A slaughter house, a bakery, workshops for smiths and carpenters, and a dwelling house for the officer in charge of the station had followed. The building erected in the time of Governor Swellengrebel—450 feet in length and previously used for all purposes—was now used solely as quarters for the garrison and workmen. Kirsten still sat that station with the title of resident, as he had since May 1761. The acting year did not add a second pier. It sat the pier already there, and added in Table Valley a foundation stone for 1,450 on the 2nd of November. Not only in town, but also in the country districts, the impact of Tulbagh’s energy had already been felt. Stellenbosch had been expanded after 1762. Swellendam remained a mere hamlet, Mentz in Horak’s chair. The Breede pontoon of 1757, close to the junction of the Zonder End, was still the public boat on that road. [3] [9]
Lily Fontein in the Kamiesberg sat the year’s named reserve. Wildschut and his people held it under a captain recognised by the Cape government, not subject to colonial courts except in cases affecting white people. Khoikhoi who still held together in compact bodies retained that form of government elsewhere as well. The greater number lived as dependents of farmers, or wandered and took service as they felt disposed. The courts were open for their protection. Land continued to be allotted to colonists without consulting Khoikhoi clans. Plenty of land still seemed left. The Kamiesberg, the Hantam mountain, the country about the sources of the Zak river in the Nieuwveld mountains, and the Sneeuwberg had been occupied for several years. Calendar 1772 did not draw a new northern line. It named a reserve at Lily Fontein, and it named a cave on the Roggeveld that grenades had taken. [3]
The clock in the raised tower had indicated the time since the 25th of November 1771. Many months of adjusting and revising had sat between the raising of the tower and the day the hands at last told the hour. The acting year therefore sat its civic paper not with a new street and not with a new battery, but with a hospital stone on the 2nd of November, a clock that already told the hour over a pavement that held the landsfather, and a cemetery between the Lion’s Rump and the shore that had been opened early in 1770. The Wapen Pleyn had once more been levelled and provided with a hedge of oak trees. The whole aspect of the Caabse Vlek had changed rapidly, and the name Kaapstad did not sound euphemistic any longer. November’s stone sat that changed town. Cook’s two ships sat its roadstead. The Zon sat its produce. Oudtshoorn’s name sat its first chair on paper, and Plettenberg still sat it in the Castle. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s remainder, its bench, its river, its graves, and its stone: in January Thomas Arnoldus Theron was elected elder at Drakenstein and a considerable section objected that he was not properly qualified; in May the landdrost of Stellenbosch reported that San on the Roggeveld border had murdered Hendrik Teutman, his wife and daughter, and a servant of Adriaan Louw, and Willem van Wyk besieged a cave that grenadiers and Khoikhoi then stormed, six killed and fifty-eight captured, the prisoners reaching the Cape on the 27th of June; in September Appeldoorn died and Stellenbosch was left to a consulent, and on the 4th the Cape learned that Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn was named governor and Plettenberg secunde; in October Prinsloo evaded a summons on the Little Fish, and a commando shot thirty-one San and recovered thirty-nine of Gerrit van Wyk’s eighty-eight; on the 2nd of November Plettenberg laid the foundation stone of a hospital designed for 1,450; in November Cook touched with the Resolution and Adventure on the outward passage; the packet Zon, about three hundred tons, took 2,997 muids of wheat, 87 of rye, 222 of barley, 82 leggers of wine, and 5,300 pounds of tallow to Holland, grain sales to foreigners for export prohibited for a time, only one large materials ship arriving and being sent on to Batavia; foreign shipping jumped and did not fall off; Lily Fontein in the Kamiesberg was secured to captain Wildschut; on the 31st of December the high court sentenced one to be broken on a wheel, one hanged, four flogged with tendons of the heels severed and hard labour for life, three flogged and hard labour for life. Under the acting baron, 1772 was not a year of installation but of a named governor still in Holland, a stone in Table Valley, a packet on the water, and a cave that grenades had taken. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]