Boer History1777 at the Cape of Good Hope: Hemmy’s Death, Two Kuys Pulpits, Gordon and Paterson, and a Poor Grain Year
Third Full Installed Year: Castle Continuity — 1777
Calendar 1777 opened in the same installed chairs that 1776 had sat through its second full year, with one Batavia rank already hung on the first of them. 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 1774. Calendar 1777 was the third full year in which they were meant to sit together. January would empty the second chair. [3] [7] [9]
Continuity of persons was still the civic fact of the third full installed year as much as novelty of a Batavia title already a year old on paper. Marthinus Adriaan Bergh sat Stellenbosch, the chair Lucas Sigismundus Faber had left in August 1773, after Abraham Faure had acted through September. Pieter Diederik Boonaker still sat the hamlet that Joachim Frederik Mentz had left at his own request in February 1776, until May asked the sergeant to give way. 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 when the year opened. The Rev. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein, and sat it inside the elder controversy that January 1772 had opened over Thomas Arnoldus Theron, and that 1775 had already sent Marais and Roos to Holland. 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 third 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 third fiscal year, a first chair that May 1774 had filled with ceremony and that February 1776 had raised without changing the man, and a Capetonian secunde who would not see February. [3] [8] [9]
Outward, the land regime still opened on the 11 July 1775 names. The eastern boundary of Stellenbosch, according to the resolution of the council of policy, remained the Fish river; Swellendam’s eastern paper remained the Bushman’s river. The Gamtoos name of 18 February 1770 had already ceased to be Swellendam’s eastern paper; Bruintjes Hoogte had already ceased to be Stellenbosch’s eastern paper. Willem Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish inside a district. 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. Year after year it was necessary to call out commandos against them. Adriaan van Jaarsveld had already left the Sneeuwberg for Bruintjes Hoogte in 1776, resolved not to move again if he could hold his own. Calendar 1777 inherited that northern paper, that eastern line already renamed Fish and Bushman’s, a hunter who had evaded an October 1772 summons, a hospital stone of the 2nd of November 1772, a first chair that May 1774 had already filled and that February 1776 had already raised, and a second chair that January would empty. [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 with a Batavia rank. 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 third full installed year sat one hundred and twenty-five 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 1777 sat inside those averages as the sixth produce year and the sixth year of the shipping jump, with a Hague advocate already in his third fiscal year, an eastern paper that July 1775 had already renamed, a January wreck of 1776 already beached by the jetty, and a drought that would take the wheat. [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, a first chair that May had already filled and February 1776 had already raised, and a second chair that a Capetonian still sat—until January took him. [3] [9]
Hemmy Dies; Hacker Secunde — January–February 1777
In January 1777 the secunde Otto Luder Hemmy died. The second chair emptied in the first month of the third full installed year. Hemmy had been a Capetonian, former chief salesman, named secunde after Oudtshoorn’s death, and had taken the chair about three weeks before the 18th of May 1774. He had sat it through the installation, through February 1776’s Batavia despatch, through the Nieuw Rhoon on the island reef, through Cook’s last outward call, and through the directors’ refusal of burgher wine exports to Holland. January took the man without taking the rank of the first chair or the fiscal’s leave of the third. The council of policy still sat. The first chair still sat the Friesland baron. The fiscal’s chair still sat the Hague advocate. The second chair sat empty until the first of February. [3] [9]
The council met on the 1st of February to elect an acting successor. The post was offered to Fiscal Boers. He declined to accept it. The Hague advocate kept the grain leave and the fiscal’s chair; he did not take the second. The offer and the refusal sat the same morning. Boers had arrived on the 10th of December 1774, practising at the Hague when he received the appointment, and had already sat two full years and a month of a third as independent fiscal. Governor and fiscal spoke the same language. They could even share the same jokes, whether these were told in Dutch, French or Latin. February’s council did not move that pair. It asked the fiscal to sit a second chair as well, and the fiscal said no. [3] [9]
Pieter Hacker, who had long been in service at the Cape and then filled the situation of master of the wine stores, was thereupon chosen. His appointment as secunde was shortly afterwards confirmed by the directors. He was succeeded as master of the wine stores by Jacobus Johannes le Sueur. The second chair therefore filled from the wine stores, not from the fiscal’s office and not from the military branch. Hacker had been on the ground a long time. The directors confirmed a Cape servant. Le Sueur took the stores Hacker left. February’s paper was a death’s aftermath: an offer declined, a storekeeper raised, a storekeeper named. The three names that December 1774 had set on the Castle were no longer three. Plettenberg, Hacker, Boers: that was the third full installed year’s new set, confirmed from the Netherlands after a Cape election on the first of February. [3]
On the surface, the first years of the administration still did not show the later explosion. February’s filling sat inside that surface. The farmers of the more distant districts were still, in this third full year, appreciative of honest attempts to understand them and their needs. Most settlers still agreed that the Baron was a solid worker, who tried hard to be a good governor, though the comparisons made between his and Tulbagh’s administration always went in favour of the latter. Hemmy’s death did not change that comparison. It changed the second chair’s man. The Castle still sat an installed baron with a Batavia rank, a Hague fiscal who had declined to add the secunde’s duties to his own, and a wine-store master now confirmed in the second chair. January buried a Capetonian. February named another Cape servant. The first chair did not move. [3] [9]
Two Kuys Pulpits — April 1777
At Stellenbosch the death of Mr. Appeldoorn in September 1772 had left the congregation without other ministrations than those of a consulent. The post remained vacant until April 1777, when the Rev. Philip Kuys arrived from Holland and was appointed resident minister of Stellenbosch. Four years and seven months of a consulent’s paper ended in the same April that filled Waveren. Stellenbosch had sat empty of a settled clergyman through the acting years, through the installation, through the first full year, through the second, and through January’s death in the second chair. April put a Holland name in Appeldoorn’s pulpit. The congregation that had buried its minister in September 1772 sat a resident again in the third full installed year. [3]
In June 1774 the congregation of Waveren had been left without a clergyman by the failure of Mr. Harders’ health and his consequent retirement on a pension. In April 1777 the Rev. Johannes Abraham Kuys arrived from the Netherlands and was stationed there. Waveren had sat empty through the installation, through February 1776’s Batavia rank, through Cook’s last outward call, and through Hemmy’s death. April filled it. Two Kuys names therefore sat two country pulpits in the same month: Philip at Stellenbosch, Johannes Abraham at Roodezand. The Land of Waveren, occupied from the 31st of July 1700 and the military post of the 16th of October 1700, sat a settled clergyman again after thirty-three months without one. Harders’ pension paper of June 1774 closed in April’s arrival. [3] [7]
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 when the third charge was made permanent. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759. Zwartland still sat Goldbach, the charge of April 1774. The third full installed year therefore sat five settled pulpits after April: three at the Cape, one at Stellenbosch, one at Waveren, one at Zwartland—six names if the Cape’s three are counted with the country three. Before April it had sat three at the Cape, a consulent at Stellenbosch, an empty Waveren, and Goldbach at Zwartland. April’s two arrivals were the year’s church paper, not a new Cape third and not a Lutheran leave. Before 1780 no other public worship than that of the Dutch Reformed church was tolerated in the colony; calendar 1777 still sat inside that tolerance. [3] [8]
The church at Drakenstein was still 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 had been excommunicated by the consistory. By 1775 the strife was so great that many persons refused to attend the services, and the disaffected party had sent Messrs. Pieter Marais and Jan Roos to Holland, to bring their case before the directors and the classis of Amsterdam. Mr. Marais had died soon after reaching the Netherlands. The directors had declined to interfere in the matter, but the classis had investigated the dispute and tried to conciliate the opposing factions. The dissension in the congregation was continued. Van der Spuy still sat that pulpit in 1777. April’s two Kuys arrivals did not sit Drakenstein. They sat Stellenbosch and Waveren. Drakenstein kept Theron’s name and Roos’s Holland paper, and kept a clergyman already in the chair while two country pulpits that had sat empty received men from the Netherlands in the same April. [3] [8]
Van Ryneveld at Swellendam — May 1777
In February 1776 Landdrost Mentz of Swellendam had retired from the service at his own request, and Sergeant Pieter Diederik Boonaker had been appointed by the council to succeed him. The second full installed year had filled a drostdy from the military branch. The third full installed year inherited that sergeant. Swellendam’s eastern paper still ran to the Bushman’s river from the 11th of July 1775. The hamlet that Horak had left, that Mentz had sat for ten years, sat a sergeant through January’s death in the second chair and through April’s two pulpits. May would not keep him. [3]
Upon this appointment being reported to the directors, they expressed their disapproval of it, on the ground that a new landdrost should have been chosen from the civil—not from the military—branch of their service. The Cape council had named a sergeant. The Seventeen wanted a civil servant. The disapproval sat the same paper that had raised the first chair to councillor extraordinary in February 1776 and that would confirm Hacker in the second chair after February 1777. A military drostdy was not a Batavia rank. It was a branch the directors would not have filled from the garrison. [3]
Sergeant Boonaker was therefore replaced in May 1777 by Daniel van Ryneveld. The Breede hamlet sat a civil name again. May’s paper was the directors’ paper made local: not a sergeant, a van Ryneveld. Swellendam’s board of landdrost and heemraden still sat the apprenticeship register first put in force in 1775, under which children of Khoikhoi mothers by slave fathers were apprenticed from eighteen months to twenty-five, on application to landdrost and heemraden, with a register kept by the secretary. The farm child’s paper and the district river’s paper both still went through landdrost and heemraden in the third full installed year. Swellendam’s board changed its first name for the second time in fifteen months. Stellenbosch’s board did not. Bergh still sat the Fish-river district. Van Ryneveld now sat the Bushman’s-river district. [3]
In the staff of officers in the country districts, Bergh still sat Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. Van Ryneveld sat Swellendam from May, the chair Mentz had left at his own request and Boonaker had sat against the directors’ later word. Brand still sat Simon’s Town. Staring still sat the naval establishment. The winter port had already taken Kerguelen’s Rolland and Oiseau in May 1773, and had taken them again a year later on the return to Brest; it had not taken a new resident in 1777. Table Bay in January 1776 had taken the Nieuw Rhoon on a reef and then on a beach. The two open ports of the third full installed year therefore still sat a Dutch resident in the winter one and a Dutch hospital still rising on Dutch materials for one thousand four hundred and fifty, with Hacker now in the second chair, two Kuys names in two country pulpits, and a civil landdrost on the Breede where a sergeant had sat. [3]
Drought, Grain, and the Fiscal’s Leave — 1777
From 1772 until the commencement of the war with England, a period of nine years, a quantity of Cape produce was yearly sent to the Netherlands. In 1777 the grain crop was very poor, owing to a severe drought, and after the requirements of the Company in India had been met, no wheat could be spared, but the usual quantity of wine was forwarded. The sixth produce year therefore sat a wheat gap and a wine continuance. India took what grain there was. Europe took none of that grain. Europe took wine as usual. The gardens of 1652 had been planted to refresh ships; calendar 1777 refreshed the eastern warehouses first, and had no wheat left for Amsterdam after that. [3]
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, but neither regularly nor of sufficient value to need further notice. During these nine years the average export to India was 14,419 muids of wheat, 180 muids of rye, 66 muids of barley, 87 muids of beans, 100 muids 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. Calendar 1777 sat inside those averages as the year the wheat leg of the European average could not be met. The wine leg was met. India was met first. [3]
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 1777 the drought took the grain. The Company’s price would have taken it cheaply if the grain had been there. Foreigners would have paid more than double if the fiscal had given leave and if the barns had been full. The barns were not full. Wheat and wine still topped the lists of products sent to the Netherlands and the Indies when there was wheat to send; butter, aloes, and horses sat on those lists as well. 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. A drought year made the toil’s return smaller still. [3] [9]
With grain it was different from wine. As much grain 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. Boers still sat that leave in 1777. He had declined the second chair on the 1st of February; he had not declined the grain leave. In a drought year the leave sat over empty barns as much as over full ones. 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. They protected their own trade, however: in 1776, when some burghers had requested to be allowed to export wine to Holland, they had declined to give permission. Calendar 1777 forwarded the usual wine under that refusal still standing. [3]
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 until the commencement of the war with England. During these 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 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. 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. Calendar 1777 sat inside those callers as a drought year: meat and wine could still meet a roadstead; wheat could not meet Europe after India. [3] [9]
Zwart River Outpost — July 1777
The outposts at Saldanha Bay, Groenkloof, Klapmuts, Zonder End, and Buffeljagts River were still maintained. They had been maintained through the acting years, through the installation, through the first full year, and through the second. They did not take the Nieuw Rhoon in January 1776; the jetty took her. They did not take April’s pulpits or May’s drostdy. They sat the Company’s oldest work away from Table Valley: a bay, a kloof, a muts, a river without end, a buffalo-hunt river. Calendar 1777 kept them, and in July added another. [3]
In July 1777 another outpost was formed at Zwart River, in Outeniqualand, between the present villages of George and Knysna. A few soldiers were sent there, but the object was not so much to establish a military station as to assist a party of woodcutters who were employed in felling and preparing timber for the Company’s use. July’s paper was timber, not a new eastern river and not a new northern commandant. The Fish still sat Stellenbosch’s eastern name. The Bushman’s still sat Swellendam’s. Zwart River sat between later George and later Knysna, a Company axe in Outeniqualand, a few soldiers beside the woodcutters. [3]
The hospital still rising on the November stone needed timber as it needed Dutch materials. The Company still needed timber for stores, for the naval establishment Staring sat, for the winter port Brand sat, for a town that strangers had begun to call Cape Town. Outeniqualand’s woods sat far from Table Valley. A few soldiers and a party of woodcutters sat them in July. The outpost was not Opperman’s northern paper and not Van Jaarsveld’s Bruintjes Hoogte. It was an axe-station on a black river, named for the river, placed where later villages would stand, maintained as the five older outposts were maintained: not to redraw the 11 July 1775 line, but to keep a Company work going where the work was. [3]
East of the woodcutters, Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish inside a district. South of them, Swellendam’s paper ran to the Bushman’s under Van Ryneveld from May. West of them, Zonder End and Buffeljagts River still sat their older posts. The third full installed year therefore sat six outposts after July where it had sat five before: the five inherited names, and Zwart River added for timber. A drought year that could spare no wheat for Europe after India could still fell Outeniqualand wood for the Company’s use. July did not fill a pulpit and did not fill a drostdy. It put soldiers beside axes. [3]
Gordon, Paterson, and Leiste — June and October 1777
Captain Robert Jacob Gordon had recently been engaged by the East India Company, and arrived at the Cape on the 1st of June 1777. At this time he was second in command of the garrison, the chief military officer being Lieutenant-Colonel Van Prehn. He had previously been an officer in the Scotch regiment under Colonel Dundas in the service of the United Provinces. June’s paper was a garrison paper: not a new first chair, not a new secunde, not a new landdrost. A Scots-Dutch captain took the second military chair under Van Prehn, four months after Hacker took the second civil chair, one month after Van Ryneveld took Swellendam, two months after two Kuys names took two pulpits. The third full installed year sat a new second-in-command before it sat his October journey. [3]
In October 1777 Captain Gordon left Cape Town in company with Lieutenant William Paterson, an English traveller, on a journey of exploration. He proceeded by way of the Sneeuwberg to the Great river, which he came upon quite unexpectedly somewhere near the twenty-sixth meridian from Greenwich. He travelled for a day along its southern bank in search of a ford, but did not find one, so was unable to cross. From the summit of a hill he observed that the river was formed by the junction of two streams, at no great distance to the eastward. Lieutenant Paterson had returned to the Cape, in ill health, some time before. October’s journey therefore sat a captain on a southern bank that would not give a ford, a hill that showed two streams joining, and an English traveller already turned back ill. The Sneeuwberg that Van Jaarsveld had left in 1776, to be free of San depredations, sat Gordon’s road north in 1777. [3] [4]
The Great river Gordon came upon was not the Fish and not the Bushman’s. It was not Swellendam’s eastern paper and not Stellenbosch’s. It sat far north of Opperman’s Piketberg-to-Sneeuwberg command, near the twenty-sixth meridian, a day’s fruitless search for a ford, two streams joining to the east as seen from a hill. Graziers had already occupied the Kamiesberg, the Hantam mountain, the country about the sources of the Zak river in the Nieuwveld mountains, and the Sneeuwberg for several years. Gordon’s October road used that occupied paper as a way, not as a grant. He did not name the river in 1777. He saw it, walked a day beside it, failed to cross it, and saw from a height how it was made. Paterson, who would later give an account of journeys into the country, did not see that junction. Illness had already turned him back. [3] [7]
The same month surveyor Hieronymus Leiste was sent to inspect the country as far as it was occupied by Europeans, and to frame a map. He made but slight acquaintance with the interior. October therefore sat two inspections: a captain’s unexpected river without a ford, and a surveyor’s occupied-country map that did not go deep. Leiste’s orders were the occupied paper—the Fish, the Bushman’s, the Sneeuwberg, the Hantam, the runs of five or six thousand acres—not the unforded Great river Gordon had come upon by the twenty-sixth meridian. The council wanted a map of what Europeans already sat. Gordon wanted a ford across what he had not expected to find. Neither October journey redrew the 11 July 1775 line. [3] [9]
North and south the year stretched the colony’s remainder, its bench, its rivers, its graves, its winter port, and a river a captain could not ford: in January the secunde Hemmy died; on the 1st of February the council offered the acting post to Fiscal Boers, who declined, and Pieter Hacker, master of the wine stores, was chosen and shortly confirmed, with Jacobus Johannes le Sueur succeeding him in the stores; in April the Rev. Philip Kuys arrived from Holland as resident minister of Stellenbosch, ending a consulent’s vacancy from September 1772, and the Rev. Johannes Abraham Kuys arrived from the Netherlands and was stationed at Waveren, ending Harders’ empty pulpit from June 1774; in May Sergeant Boonaker was replaced at Swellendam by Daniel van Ryneveld, after the directors disapproved a landdrost chosen from the military branch; the grain crop was very poor owing to a severe drought, and after the Company’s India requirements were met no wheat could be spared for Europe, though the usual wine went forward; on the 1st of June Captain Robert Jacob Gordon arrived and sat second in command of the garrison under Lieutenant-Colonel Van Prehn; in July an outpost was formed at Zwart River in Outeniqualand, between the later villages of George and Knysna, a few soldiers beside Company woodcutters; in October Gordon left Cape Town with Lieutenant William Paterson by the Sneeuwberg to the Great river near the twenty-sixth meridian, walked a day along the southern bank looking for a ford, found none, and from a hill saw two streams joining to the east, Paterson having already turned back ill; the same month surveyor Hieronymus Leiste was sent to inspect occupied country and frame a map, and made but slight acquaintance with the interior. Stellenbosch’s pulpit sat Philip Kuys; Waveren sat Johannes Abraham Kuys; Goldbach still sat Zwartland; Kroonenburg, Bode, and Serrurier still sat the Cape three deep; Brand still sat Simon’s Town; Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish, inside a district; Van Jaarsveld still sat Bruintjes Hoogte; Opperman’s northern paper still sat a border that five hundred and three had not closed; the hospital rose on Dutch materials; foreign ships still paid more than the Company; Boers still sat the grain leave over a drought; the average wine crop still sat 8,244 leggers against 945 the Company needed. Under the installed baron, 1777 was the year the second chair took a wine-store master, two country pulpits took two Kuys names, Swellendam took a civil landdrost, the wheat failed for Europe after India, Outeniqualand took an axe-post, a Scots-Dutch captain took a garrison chair and then a Great river he could not cross, and a surveyor took a map that barely knew the interior. January emptied a Capetonian. February named Hacker. The first chair did not move. [3] [4] [7] [8] [9]