Boer History1775 at the Cape of Good Hope: Fish River District Line, Farm Apprenticeships, and Cook Homeward
First Full Year: Castle Continuity — 1775
Calendar 1775 opened in the installed chairs. Joachim van Plettenberg had sat the first chair by the Prince’s commission since the 18th of May 1774. 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; from the 12th of August 1771, the morning after Ryk Tulbagh died, he sat both. 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 three names had all been on the ground since December. Calendar 1775 was the first full year in which they sat together. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was the civic fact of the first full installed year as much as novelty of a first chair 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. Christoffel Brand sat the winter port, the chair Jan Frederik Kirsten had left in May 1774, with a stone pier. Damien Hugo Staring sat the naval establishment, confirmed by the supreme authorities after a provisional detention. 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. Waveren, emptied in June 1774 when Remmerus Harders retired on pension, still sat without a clergyman. The Rev. Daniel Goldbach sat Zwartland, the charge he had taken in April 1774. 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 first full installed year inherited the habit, two coffins under the church pavement, a hospital still rising on a November stone, a Hague advocate in his first full fiscal year, and a first chair that May 1774 had at last filled with ceremony. [3] [8] [9]
Outward, the land regime still opened on 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. The summer commando of 1774 under Godlieb Rudolph Opperman had reported five hundred and three San killed and two hundred and thirty-nine taken. It had no such effect as was hoped. They became even more troublesome than before. Calendar 1775 inherited that northern paper, that eastern line still named Bruintjes Hoogte and the Gamtoos, a hunter who had evaded an October 1772 summons, a hospital stone of the 2nd of November 1772, and a first chair that May had already filled. [3] [4] [7]
In the Republic, Prince William V still sat as Stadholder, of age since 1766. The Cape still sat under the Seventeen and an installed 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 first full installed year sat one hundred and twenty-three 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. On the surface, the first years of Van Plettenberg’s administration—following the two in which he had held the reins as acting governor—did not give any clear indication of the explosive situation in which the settlement would later find itself. 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. Calendar 1775 sat inside those averages as the fourth produce year and the fourth year of the shipping jump, with a Hague advocate already in the fiscal’s chair since December, and an eastern paper that July would at last rename. [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 still 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 installed settlement, a paying roadstead, a clock that told the hour, a stone in the hospital ground still rising, two coffins under the church, and a first chair that May had already filled. [3] [9]
Cook Homeward — March 1775
The English explorer Captain James Cook touched at Table Bay with the Resolution and Adventure on the homeward passage in March 1775. He had touched the same roadstead outward in November 1772. The first full installed year therefore sat a return that the acting years had seen leave. The two ships needed fresh provisions, as every foreigner on that roadstead needed them. The directors admitted that such callers should be encouraged, as they brought ready money into the country and increased the revenue. March seated that encouragement in English oak, on a homeward tack from the South Polar Sea. [3]
While Van Plettenberg was governor, the colony was visited by distinguished travellers of various nationalities, who left impressions of what they saw in several volumes. First among these ranked the Swedish naturalist Sparrman. Dr. Thunberg, also a Swede, Captain Stavorinus, a Zeelander, Lieutenant Paterson, an Englishman, and M. Le Vaillant, a Frenchman, gave accounts of the country of greater or less value. Calendar 1775 sat Cook’s homeward call inside that travelling decade, not as a wreck and not as a new battery, but as two English ships in Table Bay in March, on a roadstead that from 1772 had jumped its seventy-a-year tally, and that during the nine years 1772–1780 would average fifty-two Dutch ships and sixty-five under various other flags at the two ports. [3] [9]
March therefore sat the roadstead as the tavern of the seas still sat it: Dutch, French, English, Scandinavian and even Austrian hulls wanting meal, meat and wine, a contractor charging foreigners twopence more than the Company’s meat, and a fiscal whose leave was needed before a muid of grain went over a stranger’s rail. Cook’s homeward pair did not change that arithmetic. They sat inside it, two more English ships in the fourth year of the jump, on a Table Bay that strangers had begun to call Cape Town. [3] [9]
The winter port sat Brand. Kirsten had been promoted in May 1774; the bookkeeper Christoffel Brand had been appointed to succeed him. Simon’s Bay had already taken Kerguelen’s Rolland and Oiseau in May 1773, and had taken them again a year later on the return to Brest. Table Bay in March took Cook. The two open ports of the first full installed year therefore sat both an English homeward explorer in the summer roadstead and a Dutch resident in the winter one, with Staring confirmed over the naval establishment and a hospital still rising on Dutch materials for one thousand four hundred and fifty. March did not rename an eastern river. It filled a Table Bay berth that November 1772 had emptied. [3]
Farm Apprenticeships — 1775
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 had sat that farm fact as an inherited paper, not yet as a new regulation. Calendar 1775 sat it as a regulation first put in force. [3]
These circumstances gave rise to a regulation which was first put in force in 1775, and which provided that children born of Khoikhoi mothers by slave fathers, upon attaining the age of eighteen months, should be apprenticed to the owner of the farm on which they were living until they were twenty-five years old. In every case a formal application to the board of landdrost and heemraden of the district was to be made by the owner of the farm, and a register of all apprenticeships was to be kept by the secretary of the board. Khoikhoi mothers were to be at liberty to remove their children under eighteen months of age. The apprentices were to be properly fed and clothed, and were to be otherwise well treated. Bergh’s Stellenbosch board and Mentz’s Swellendam board therefore sat a new register in the same year that the council sat a new eastern line. The farm child’s paper and the district river’s paper were the year’s two domestic decrees. [3]
The northern commando of the previous summer had already apprenticed some of the two hundred and thirty-nine San taken, for a term of years; others had been released. The 1775 farm regulation was a different paper. It did not follow a three-hundred-mile scouring. It followed a farm arithmetic that the Company had watched since early times: more male slaves than female, Khoikhoi women on the places, children without a return in labour. Application went to landdrost and heemraden; a secretary kept the book; a mother might still take a child under eighteen months. From eighteen months to twenty-five the child sat the farm. Calendar 1775 therefore sat two apprenticeships—the San taken in 1774, already on terms of years, and the mixed children of the old districts, now on a board register until twenty-five. [3] [4]
Fish and Bushman’s Rivers — 11 July 1775
Willem Prinsloo and others were already living beyond Bruintjes Hoogte. In June 1771 the old elephant hunter 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 banks of the Little Fish. In October 1772 the acting governor had come to hear that Prinsloo was living beyond the boundary, and had instructed the landdrost of Stellenbosch to have him removed; he had managed to evade the summons. Several others had soon followed him. These settlers sent a petition that they might be authorised to remain where they were. Calendar 1774 had not answered that petition with a new eastern line. It had sat the 18 February 1770 names—Bruintjes Hoogte and the Gamtoos—and it had 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. Calendar 1775 answered the petition with rents. [3] [4] [4]
In order to secure the land rents, on the 11th of July 1775 the council of policy decreed the extension of the district of Stellenbosch eastward to the Fish river and of that of Swellendam to the Bushman’s river. The Gamtoos name of 18 February 1770 therefore ceased to be the eastern paper of Swellendam. Bruintjes Hoogte ceased to be the eastern paper of Stellenbosch. The Little Fish farms, the Boschberg, the high lands already occupied, sat inside a district at last, so that a landdrost could collect what the 1732 quit-rent had named at five pounds a year when it could be recovered. The prohibition of 1770 had not pulled Prinsloo back. The decree of July 1775 pulled the district line forward to where the hunters already sat. [3] [4] [7]
The boundary between the new portions of the two districts was referred for settlement to the combined landdrosts and heemraden, who fixed upon the mountain range corresponding to the Zwartberg and parallel to the coast. The district of Swellendam was thus clearly defined on all sides, but Stellenbosch had no fixed limit on the north. In that direction, the Kamiesberg, the Hantam mountain in the later district of Calvinia, the country about the sources of the Zak river in the Nieuwveld mountains, and the Sneeuwberg had been occupied for several years. Combined landdrosts and heemraden had already, in December 1769, used a Zwartberg line between Stellenbosch and Swellendam in the old portions. July 1775 asked them to draw that parallel again, east of the Gamtoos, through the new portions, so that Bergh’s board and Mentz’s board would know where one district ended and the other began, now that Stellenbosch ran to the Fish and Swellendam to the Bushman’s. [3]
The sons of the vine- and fruit-planters of the western districts had become the frontiersmen of the eastern, who extended the boundaries until a governor could fix the limits on the banks of the Fish river, and northwards nearly as far as the Orange. The Tulbagh kloof had formed the gateway. As the extension northwards and eastwards proceeded, large herds of cattle and sheep were reared in the upland plateau districts. The San who inhabited the great mountain regions of the interior made constant war on the cattle farmers and graziers. After the 1774 campaign the graziers had taken their flocks beyond the great mountain ranges, and occupied part of the upland plain country south of the Orange river. July 1775 did not name the Orange. It named the Fish and the Bushman’s, so that rents could be taken where placaats had failed. The northern occupation of Kamiesberg, Hantam, Zak sources and Sneeuwberg remained without a fixed Stellenbosch limit. The eastern occupation sat inside two districts at last. [3] [7]
Eastern Neighbours and the Northern Border — 1775
East of the new Stellenbosch line sat the western Xhosa clans of Rarabe’s house. The exploring expedition of 1752 had found the Keiskama the dividing line between the Bantu and the Khoikhoi, but in 1756 the hunter Dirk Marx had reported that he met them as far westward as the Great Fish river. Rarabe, for a man of his time, governed his people with ability, and was so greatly esteemed that his name was adopted by the Ciskeian clans. He was the favourite son of his father Palo, who had crossed the river and continued to reside near him until the death of the old chief, which occurred about the year 1770. At this time Rarabe’s paramount authority was recognised throughout the whole district between the Great Fish river and the Kei. But each clan had its own head, and these often acted in important matters without consulting him. The Imidange clan, under the chief Mahuta, was then the farthest western outpost of the tribe, occupying the country along the right bank of the Koonap. Galeka, who usually resided beyond the Kei, was acknowledged in name as the head of the whole Xhosa tribe; but practically the adherents of Rarabe were not in any way subject to his authority. July 1775 therefore drew a Company district line along a river that Rarabe’s people already treated as a western edge, and that Prinsloo’s people already treated as a home. [3] [4]
The colonists on the eastern border had to deal with those advanced clans, a people who might be called settled when compared with San, but who were almost as expert stocklifters. Calendar 1775 did not yet sit a crossing of the Fish by Mahuta’s Imidange, nor a first war. It sat a district paper that named the Fish as Stellenbosch’s eastern limit, and it sat Rarabe’s people on the far bank, with Imidange on the Koonap, and a hunter on the Little Fish whose petition July had answered with rents. The two expansions—westward of Rarabe’s house, eastward of the Stellenbosch graziers—had been moving toward the same river for a generation. The council’s July decree did not ask Rarabe to sign it. It asked Bergh to collect on this side of it. [3] [4]
Northward, the punishment inflicted by Opperman, Van der Merwe and Van Wyk in the previous summer had not deterred the San from continuing hostilities. They became even more troublesome than before. In spite of those 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 raiders, and hardly gave a thought to the Company’s interest in the town when a commandant called. After the 1774 campaign the graziers had taken their flocks beyond the great mountain ranges. Calendar 1775 sat both that occupation and the fact that the three-hundred-mile scouring had not closed the border. [3] [4] [7]
Some Khoikhoi were still 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 called Lily Fontein, in the Kamiesberg, remained a reserve secured to the Khoikhoi captain Wildschut and his people by Van Plettenberg in 1772. Others of this people were living with the colonists, either in charge of herds of cattle or as domestic servants. As many as were needed had joined the burghers on the 1774 expedition against the common enemy, and had been provided with firearms and ammunition. The Hottentots and half-breeds had been just as anxious as the colonists to chastise the San, for they had suffered equally from their attacks. Calendar 1775 sat Wildschut’s reserve, Opperman’s northern command, Bergh’s new eastern limit at the Fish, Mentz’s new eastern limit at the Bushman’s, and a San border that the previous summer’s count of five hundred and three had not closed. [3]
Produce, Foreign Demand, and Fiscal Boers — 1775
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 1775 sat inside those averages as the fourth produce year and the fourth year of the shipping jump, with Cook’s Resolution and Adventure among the English of Table Bay in March. [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 1774 that fiscal was Boers. Calendar 1775 was his first full year over the grain leave. [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 1775 sat inside the new averages as the fourth year of the produce cargoes, a hospital still rising on Dutch materials, and a packet paper already proved by the Zon. [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. 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 Fish. The fiscal who had come ashore in December 1774 still sat a 1657 paper over a 1775 colony. Governor and fiscal spoke the same language. They could even share the same jokes, whether these were told in Dutch, French or Latin. An additional disadvantage for the colonists was that Boers’s chin was much firmer than the Baron van Plettenberg’s. Calendar 1775 was the first full year of that pair over grain leave, wine surplus, and a district line drawn to collect rents. [3] [9]
Church, Drostdies, and Civic Works — 1775
The church in Cape Town continued to be ministered to by three clergymen. Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier of Hanau still sat that pulpit three deep, as the directors had ordered in 1761. At Stellenbosch the death of Appeldoorn in September 1772 still left the congregation without other ministrations than those of a consulent. The post remained vacant through the whole of 1775. The church at Zwartland sat Goldbach, appointed in April 1774. Waveren, left without a clergyman in June 1774 by the failure of Harders’ health and his retirement on a pension, still sat empty. Two country pulpits without residents; one country pulpit filled the previous April; the Cape three still three. Combined consistories had ceased in 1759. The inner chairs had filled in 1774. The outer pulpits had not. [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 had been objected to by a considerable section of the congregation, on the ground that he was not properly qualified, and the controversy had soon become violent. Four of the opposite faction were excommunicated by the consistory. By 1775 the strife was so great that many persons refused to attend the services, and the disaffected party sent Pieter Marais and Jan Roos to Holland, to bring their case before the directors and the classis of Amsterdam. Marais died soon after reaching the Netherlands. The directors declined to interfere in the matter, but the classis investigated the dispute, and tried to conciliate the opposing factions. The dissension in the congregation was continued. Van der Spuy still sat the pulpit. Theron’s paper still sat the consistory. Calendar 1775 therefore sat a Drakenstein that would not come to church, and two men on a ship to Amsterdam with an elder quarrel that January 1772 had opened. [3] [8]
The Huguenot surnames of that valley still sat the quarrel. Philippe Jacob Naudé of Berlin, son of the Rev. Roget David Naudé, had married Johanna Elizabeth du Plessis on the 4th of August 1774 and still resided at Drakenstein. Serrurier of Hanau still sat the Cape three. The disaffected party’s Roos was not the only Roos in the French books; the consistory’s excommunications had already named four. Calendar 1775 sent Marais and Roos to Holland with a Drakenstein paper already named Theron against Roos, which Amsterdam’s classis would try to conciliate without the directors’ interference. [3] [8]
In the staff of officers in the country districts, Bergh still sat Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, the chair he had taken in October 1773 after Faber’s death and Faure’s acting months. Mentz still sat Swellendam. Brand still sat Simon’s Town. Staring still sat the naval establishment. The outposts at Saldanha Bay, Groenkloof, Klapmuts, Zonder End, and Buffeljagts River were still maintained. July asked Bergh and Mentz, with their heemraden combined, to draw a Zwartberg-parallel through the new portions, now that Stellenbosch ran to the Fish and Swellendam to the Bushman’s. The same boards sat the new apprenticeship register. The farm child’s paper and the district river’s paper both went through landdrost and heemraden in the first full installed year. [3]
The clock in the raised tower had indicated the time since the 25th of November 1771. The first full installed year sat its civic paper not with a new street and not with a new battery, but with a hospital still 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. Cook sat Table Bay in March. Brand sat the winter port. Goldbach sat Zwartland. Harders’ Waveren still sat empty. Boers sat the fiscal’s chair through his first full year. Bergh sat a Stellenbosch that from the 11th of July ran to the Fish. Mentz sat a Swellendam that from the 11th of July ran to the Bushman’s. Drakenstein sat Theron’s strife so great that Marais and Roos went to Holland. Opperman’s northern paper still sat a border that five hundred and three had not closed. Oudtshoorn’s coffin still sat the church pavement, and Plettenberg sat the first chair by commission, in the first full year that commission had owned. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s remainder, its bench, its rivers, its graves, and its winter port: in March Captain Cook touched at Table Bay with the Resolution and Adventure on the homeward passage; a regulation first put in force in 1775 apprenticed children of Khoikhoi mothers by slave fathers from eighteen months to twenty-five, on application to landdrost and heemraden, with a register kept by the secretary; on the 11th of July the council of policy extended Stellenbosch eastward to the Fish river and Swellendam to the Bushman’s river, to secure the land rents, and combined landdrosts and heemraden later fixed the Zwartberg-parallel as the line between those new portions; by 1775 Drakenstein’s elder strife was so great that many refused to attend, and Pieter Marais and Jan Roos went to Holland. Stellenbosch’s pulpit still sat a consulent; Waveren still sat empty; Goldbach still sat Zwartland; Brand still sat Simon’s Town; Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish, now inside a district; Lily Fontein still sat Wildschut; the hospital rose on Dutch materials; foreign ships still paid more than the Company; Boers still sat the grain leave. Under the installed baron, 1775 was the year the district line caught up with the hunters, the farm child’s paper caught up with the board, an English explorer came home through Table Bay, and Drakenstein sent two men to Amsterdam with an elder quarrel that would not sit still. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]