Boer History1774 at the Cape of Good Hope: Plettenberg Installed, Opperman’s Northern Commando, and Brand at Simon’s Town
Installed Year: Castle Continuity — 1774
Calendar 1774 opened still in the acting chairs. Joachim van Plettenberg had sat both the first chair and the second since the morning after Ryk Tulbagh died, elected by the council 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 fiscal’s duties; Olof Godlieb de Wet sat the fiscal’s routine. From the 12th of August 1771 he sat both chairs. Called to succeed a model governor, he was from the first moment at a disadvantage. January 1773 had buried the named governor Pieter van Reede van Oudtshoorn under the same pavement as the landsfather. The Prince of Orange had then, upon the nomination of the directors, named Van Plettenberg governor, Otto Luder Hemmy secunde, and Advocate Willem Cornelis Boers fiscal. Those names were already the Castle’s paper. The ceremony of installation still belonged to May. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the civic fact of the installed year as much as novelty of a first chair at last filled on paper. Marthinus Adriaan Bergh sat Stellenbosch, the chair Lucas Sigismundus Faber had left in August 1773, after Abraham Faure had acted through September. Joachim Frederik Mentz still sat the hamlet that Horak had left. Jan Frederik Kirsten still sat the winter port with the title of resident when January opened, 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. Stellenbosch’s pulpit, emptied by the Rev. Johannes Appeldoorn in September 1772, still sat a consulent. The Rev. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein, and sat it inside the elder controversy that January 1772 had opened over Thomas Arnoldus Theron. Remmerus Harders still sat Waveren when January opened. Zwartland, without a resident since Gerhardus Croeser’s death, still sat the Cape three month about. 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 installed year inherited the habit, two coffins under the church pavement, a hospital rising on a November stone, and a named governor who had not yet been installed. [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 1774 inherited that northern paper and that eastern line, a hunter who had evaded an October 1772 summons, a hospital stone of the 2nd of November 1772, and a first chair that May would at last fill with ceremony. [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 until May. 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 installed year sat one hundred and twenty-two years from those gardens, with a first chair emptied in August 1771, a named governor buried under the church in January 1773, a hospital ground that from November 1772 held a stone, and a roadstead that from 1772 had jumped its seventy-a-year tally. 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. Calendar 1774 would not break the line at Bruintjes Hoogte on paper. It would install the acting baron, seat a Capetonian in the second chair, wait until December for a Hague advocate, fill Zwartland in April, empty Waveren in June, change the winter port in May, and send a northern commando along three hundred miles of mountain. [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. Two governors now lay under the pavement of the church, not in the new cemetery: Tulbagh since the 17th of August 1771, Oudtshoorn since a few days after the Asia arrived. The hospital in Table Valley had been falling to ruins; the directors had resolved to build a new one; the ground had been prepared before Tulbagh’s death; the foundation stone had been laid by Van Plettenberg on the 2nd of November 1772, designed for one thousand four hundred and fifty patients, with quarters for the medical officers and attendants, and spacious storehouses. Most of the materials came from the Netherlands. January therefore opened on an acting settlement, a paying roadstead, a clock that told the hour, a stone in the hospital ground, two coffins under the church, and a ceremony that May would at last hold. [3] [9]
Plettenberg Installed — 18 May 1774
The Prince of Orange, upon the nomination of the directors, had appointed Van Plettenberg governor, Otto Luder Hemmy secunde, and Advocate Willem Cornelis Boers fiscal after Oudtshoorn’s death at sea. Hemmy, who had previously filled the post of chief salesman, was a Capetonian. Boers was practising at the Hague when he received his appointment. With such short-cuts, Joachim van Plettenberg became the named governor of the Cape Colony while still sitting the acting chairs. The Seventeen’s letters travelled at the slow pace of the ocean. January 1773’s death had not emptied the acting years. It had confirmed them, until a ceremony could be held. [3] [9]
Hemmy took over the duty of secunde some three weeks before the installation, in April. The ceremony of installation of the new governor took place on the 18th of May 1774, another telling confirmation of the slow pace at which letters were travelling in those days. From that morning the acting chairs were no longer acting. The Friesland baron who had sat both since August 1771 now sat the first chair by the Prince’s commission and the directors’ nomination, and a Capetonian sat the second. The fiscal’s chair still waited on a ship from the Hague. [3] [9]
The office of master of the naval establishment had become vacant in April 1773, and the council had filled it provisionally by detaining an energetic skipper named Damien Hugo Staring. His appointment was now confirmed by the supreme authorities. The winter port’s resident would change in the same month as the installation. The inner chairs had waited from a death at sea in January 1773 to a ceremony in May 1774. The outer naval chair had waited from a detention to a confirmation. The Castle’s paper and the Castle’s men at last matched. [3]
Studying the Baron’s picture one understands why this governor who occupied Jan van Riebeeck’s old chair could never become a father to his people as his predecessor had been. He is moon-faced; his moon does not beam; it looks defiant. The eyes are cold and stand wide apart. They have to, for the sharp lawyer’s nose is large. The mouth is good and sensitive. The chin is weak. He was born a century too late, and the people he had to administer were no well-bred Dutchmen, Englishmen, Frenchmen or Germans, but tough, self-made settlers in a rough country, without much schooling and culture. Always fighting himself—now acting as the authoritarian to be obeyed without questioning, now descending graciously to the level of “the unlettered peasants,” as his friend the fiscal would describe the colonists—he sat from the 18th of May a first chair that the landsfather had made look easy. On the surface, the first years of the installed administration, following the two in which he had held the reins as acting governor, did not yet give a clear indication of the explosive situation in which the settlement would later find itself. Calendar 1774 was the year the paper caught up with the chairs. [9]
Fiscal Boers Arrives — 10 December 1774
Advocate Willem Cornelis Boers, who was practising at the Hague when he received his appointment, did not arrive in the colony until the 10th of December 1774. Seven months after the installation, the third of the three names the Prince had signed after Oudtshoorn’s coffin came ashore. Hemmy had already sat the second chair since April. Plettenberg had already sat the first by commission since May. Olof Godlieb de Wet had sat the fiscal’s routine through the acting years. December seated a Hague advocate in the independent fiscal’s chair. [3] [9]
In 1774, when Fiscal Boers commenced his Cape career, discontent accelerated. The sophisticated lawyer, being used to moving in the best circles at the Hague, felt like a fish out of water in the colony, and behaved as such. Why he had ever condescended to accept, or perhaps even solicit, an appointment as independent fiscal at the Cape, is a mystery. He came, and his arrival heralded trouble. His contempt for the freeburghers was so great and outspoken that he became their prosecutor even in the literal sense of the word. He was still thinking of the terms on which Commissioner Ryklof van Goens had permitted Jan van Riebeeck to create the first freeburghers in 1657. He saw them as people released from the Company’s employ by the grace of a benevolent government, and bound morally in their newly acquired freedom to sweat exclusively for their former masters, at the cost price of their products. Time had not stood still. The gardens of 1652 had become a paying roadstead of foreigners; the first freeburghers’ heirs sat cattle runs of five or six thousand acres as far as the Little Fish. The fiscal who came ashore in December still sat a 1657 paper over a 1774 colony. [3] [9]
The economic conditions were not bad. Foreign shipping had greatly increased. Not only Table Bay but also the roads of Simonstown were full of Dutch, French, English, Scandinavian and even Austrian vessels, all requiring fresh produce. Exports increased as well, wheat and wine topping the lists of products sent to the Netherlands and the Indies, but also included were butter, aloes and horses. Yet 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. Boers’s arrival in December sat that bitterness a prosecutor. The installed year closed with a Hague advocate in the fiscal’s chair, a Capetonian in the second, and a Friesland baron in the first—three names the Prince had signed after a leaden coffin, at last all on the ground. [3] [9]
Goldbach at Zwartland; Harders Leaves Waveren — 1774
The church at Zwartland had been without a clergyman until April 1774, when the Rev. Daniel Goldbach arrived from the Netherlands, and was appointed to that charge. Since Gerhardus Croeser’s death the Cape three—Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau—had held service there monthly in succession. April seated a resident. The Cape pulpit remained three deep. Combined consistories had ceased in 1759. Serrurier of Hanau, married on the 9th of November 1760 to Margaretha Elisabeth Timmendorf, still sat the Cape as third clergyman. Goldbach’s arrival closed a vacancy that the monthly rotation had only papered. [3] [8]
In June 1774 the congregation of Waveren was left without a clergyman by the failure of Harders’ health, and his consequent retirement on a pension. The chaplain whom commissioner Looten had taken off a ship in January 1758 and sent to Waveren, made permanent there by the directors in 1761, left the Roodezand pulpit. The post sat empty. Stellenbosch’s pulpit, emptied by Appeldoorn in September 1772, still sat a consulent through the whole of 1774. Two country pulpits now sat without residents; Zwartland, which had sat without one, now sat Goldbach. The inner chairs had filled in May and would fill in December. The outer pulpits moved the other way in June. [3]
The church at Drakenstein remained an arena of strife. The election in January 1772 of Thomas Arnoldus Theron as an elder had been objected to by a considerable section of the congregation, on the ground that he was not properly qualified, and the controversy had become violent. Four of the opposite faction would be excommunicated by the consistory. Calendar 1774 sat that strife as an inherited paper, not as a new election. Van der Spuy still held the pulpit while the parties did not hold the peace. Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, son of the Rev. Roget David Naudé, professor at the French College and minister of the French church at Berlin, and Elizabeth Borrel, who had arrived in 1754 in the Company’s service and in 1766 received his discharge and gone to reside at Drakenstein, married Johanna Elizabeth du Plessis on the 4th of August 1774. In 1772 he had passed a power of attorney in favour of David Naudé, astronomer, and the Rev. Louis Ancillon of Berlin. The Huguenot valleys still sat French names on Dutch pulpits. [3] [8]
At the Cape, Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau were all in active service. The various churches in the colony were still well supplied with clergymen, save Stellenbosch, and, from June, Waveren. Goldbach’s April and Harders’ June were the year’s pulpit facts: one vacancy closed at Zwartland, one opened at Roodezand, one remained at Stellenbosch, and Drakenstein still sat Theron’s strife. The installed governor’s year moved the pulpits as well as the chairs. [3] [8]
Brand at Simon’s Town — May 1774
In May 1774 Jan Frederik Kirsten, the resident at Simon’s Town, was promoted, and the bookkeeper Christoffel Brand was appointed to succeed him. Kirsten had sat the winter port since May 1761, through the stone pier and the square hospital of 130 feet frontage, through the years when strangers began to know the town in Table Valley as Cape Town. Brand, a bookkeeper, took the resident’s title in the same month that Plettenberg took the governor’s. The outposts at Saldanha Bay, Groenkloof, Klapmuts, Zonder End, and Buffeljagts River were still maintained. [3]
The French explorer Captain Kerguelen, when proceeding to visit the South Polar Sea, had put into Simon’s Bay with the Rolland and the Oiseau in May 1773. Just a year later he put into the same port again when returning to Brest. Calendar 1774 therefore sat Kerguelen’s return in the same month as Brand’s appointment and Plettenberg’s installation. The winter port that had received two French exploring ships in May 1773 received them again in May 1774, under a new resident, on their way home. Staring, confirmed as master of the naval establishment, sat the yard that served them. [3]
Simon’s Town had already been enlarged under Tulbagh: a stone pier, a large hospital, expensive works. Foreign shipping from 1772 had filled not only Table Bay but also the roads of Simonstown—Dutch, French, English, Scandinavian and even Austrian vessels, all requiring fresh produce. Brand sat that paying winter roadstead in the first month of an installed governor, with Kerguelen’s two ships on the return to Brest among the foreigners who paid more than the Company. The bookkeeper’s chair at the winter port was not a small chair in a year when sixty-five foreign flags a year, on the nine-year average, touched the two ports beside fifty-two Dutch. [3] [9]
Opperman on the Northern Border — 1774
The struggle between the farmers along the northern border and the San had become almost incessant. The two races could not live side by side. There were probably many contests of which the government never heard. Despite the punishments of 1772—the Roggeveld cave stormed after Hendrik Teutman’s murder, one broken on a wheel and one hanged at the Cape on the 31st of December; Gerrit van Wyk’s eighty-eight cattle followed, thirty-one San shot, thirty-nine cattle recovered—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. About the year 1770, cattle thefts and massacres of native herdsmen, and even of white colonists, had become events of such frequent occurrence that all the farms scattered along the base of the eastern end of the Nieuwveld mountains and the Sneeuwberg and Winterberg ranges were unsafe. The San were massing in such large numbers in these mountains that all frontiersmen had to be called to arms against the common enemy. [3] [4] [7]
In May 1774 the council of policy approved of the appointment by the board of militia of Stellenbosch of Godlieb Rudolph Opperman, a burgher of long experience and recognised ability, as field commandant of the whole northern border from Piketberg to Sneeuwberg, and operations were planned with a view of punishing the marauders and restoring the farmers to the places from which they had been driven. A commandant of the northern border was chosen by the burghers. The most trustworthy of the Boer farmers had been appointed field-commandants, authorised to call out men for this service. The government, while counselling them to do all in their power to maintain order and to avoid hostilities, itself provided gunpowder, flints and lead. To obtain official permission in each particular case was out of the question: the Cape was so far away and the promptest action was necessary. The government was not in a position to provide soldiers or anything of the nature of a police force for the maintenance of order on a border covering not less than ninety or a hundred thousand square miles. [3] [4] [7]
The Khoikhoi and half-breeds were just as anxious as the colonists to chastise the San, for they had suffered equally from their attacks. The Khoikhoi indeed were more embittered than the others, for many of them had lost all their cattle and had besides to lament friends and relatives put to death by torture. Some 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. Lily Fontein in the Kamiesberg, secured to captain Wildschut and his people in 1772, still sat that northern paper. 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. [3]
At the beginning of summer three parties of mixed burghers, half-breeds, and Khoikhoi, acting in concert, took the field under Commandant Opperman and the field corporals Nicholas van der Merwe and Gerrit van Wyk. The force consisted of a large number of farmers, Khoikhoi and half-castes. The base of operations was more than three hundred miles in length. The country along the great mountain range of South Africa was scoured, and all the San found who would not surrender were shot. According to the reports furnished to the government, five hundred and three were killed and two hundred and thirty-nine taken prisoners. Some of these were afterwards released, and others were apprenticed to the farmers for a term of years. Only one European was killed during the operations. From the leader of one party of San a promise was obtained to keep the peace and abstain from robbery, and to him presents were made as proofs of a desire for friendship. The instance, however, was a solitary one. [3] [4] [7]
It was hoped that the punishment inflicted would deter the San from continuing hostilities. It had no such effect. They became even more troublesome than before. In spite of these government commandos, there was no abatement in the career of spoliation. Depredations increased in extent, frequency, audacity and violence—so much so that farmers in some districts were compelled to abandon their dwellings and repair to safer regions. Year after year it would be necessary to call out commandos against them. Thus it often happened that the burghers were unable to attend the musters for drill which took place at the drostdies early in October. They had enough to do to defend their own homesteads. The men of the northern border considered their first duty to be the protection of their families against savages, and hardly gave a thought to the Company’s interest in the town when a commandant called. After this campaign the graziers took their flocks beyond the great mountain ranges, and occupied part of the upland plain country south of the Orange river. Calendar 1774 sat both the three-hundred-mile scouring and the fact that it did not close the border. [3] [4] [7]
Eastward, Willem Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish. In June 1771 he 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. In October 1772 the acting governor had instructed the landdrost of Stellenbosch to have him removed; he had managed to evade the summons. Several others had followed him. The settlers sent a petition that they might be authorised to remain where they were. Calendar 1774 did not answer that petition with a new eastern line. It sat the 18 February 1770 names—Bruintjes Hoogte and the Gamtoos—and it sat Europeans along the high lands as far as the Little Fish, placaats ineffectual, Bergh’s first full year as landdrost no more able to pull the hunter back than Faber’s last months had been. The northern commando was the year’s border fact. The eastern paper stayed the 1770 names. [3] [4]
Produce, Foreign Demand, and Civic Works — 1774
The increase of exports above those of previous years did not 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. In the year 1772 there had been 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. 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. Calendar 1774 sat inside those averages as the third produce year and the third year of the shipping jump. [3] [9]
All of the foreign ships needed fresh provisions. Some of the French vessels were sent 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. 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 2d. 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. 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. From December that fiscal was Boers. [3]
From 1772 until the commencement of the war with England, a quantity of Cape produce was yearly sent to the Netherlands. The average exportation to Europe during these nine years, 1772–1780, was 15 leggers Constantia wine, 98 leggers ordinary wines, 10,714 muids of wheat, 28,800 pounds of tallow, and 8,614 pounds of aloes. Small quantities of brandy, rye, barley, vegetable wax, oxhides, sheepskins, coarse wool, skins of wild animals, and leather were also sent to Europe. During these nine years the average export to India was 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. Some dried and preserved fruits, mustard seed, peltries, and leather, though not to any great value, were also exported to India. 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. Calendar 1774 sat inside the new averages as the third year of the produce cargoes, a hospital still rising on Dutch materials, and a packet paper already proved by the Zon. [3] [9]
The number of male slaves imported was always much larger than that of females, and as a consequence many of those men who were unable to obtain wives of their own colour had formed connections with Khoikhoi women. A large class of half-breeds had sprung from such unions. From early times it had been observed that Khoikhoi women who formed connections with either Europeans or slaves had many more children than those who took husbands of their own race. The farmers could not prevent their union with slaves, for if they tried to do so the slaves were certain to run away. And if they permitted the women to remain on the farms, directly or indirectly they were obliged to maintain them and their offspring, without any return in labour. Calendar 1774 sat that farm fact as an inherited paper, not yet as a new regulation. [3]
The clock in the raised tower had indicated the time since the 25th of November 1771. The installed year sat its civic paper not with a new street and not with a new battery, but with a hospital rising on the November stone, a clock that already told the hour over a pavement that held the landsfather and a named governor, 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. Kerguelen’s return sat the winter port in May. Brand sat that port from May. Goldbach sat Zwartland from April. Harders left Waveren in June. Boers sat the fiscal’s chair from December. Opperman’s three parties sat three hundred miles of mountain at the beginning of summer. Oudtshoorn’s coffin still sat the church pavement, and from the 18th of May Plettenberg sat the first chair by commission. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s remainder, its bench, its river, its graves, and its winter port: in April Hemmy took the secunde’s chair and Goldbach took Zwartland; on the 18th of May Joachim van Plettenberg was installed governor, Kirsten left Simon’s Town and Christoffel Brand became resident, and Kerguelen put into Simon’s Bay again on the return to Brest; in June Harders’ health failed and Waveren sat without a clergyman; on the 4th of August Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin married Johanna Elizabeth du Plessis at Drakenstein; at the beginning of summer Opperman, Van der Merwe and Van Wyk took the field on a base more than three hundred miles long, and reports to government said 503 San were killed and 239 taken; on the 10th of December Advocate Boers arrived from the Hague as independent fiscal. Stellenbosch’s pulpit still sat a consulent; Drakenstein still sat Theron’s strife; Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish; Lily Fontein still sat Wildschut; the hospital rose on Dutch materials; foreign ships still paid more than the Company. Under the installed baron, 1774 was the year the acting chairs became a commission, the winter port changed hands, a Hague advocate came ashore, and a northern commando counted five hundred and three. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]