Boer History1778 at the Cape of Good Hope: Frontier Petition, Plettenberg’s Tour, and the Colebrooke
Fourth Full Installed Year: Castle Continuity — 1778
Calendar 1778 opened as the fourth full year of the Prince’s commission dated the 18th of May 1774. Joachim van Plettenberg still sat the first chair, a Friesland baron already raised, in February 1776, to councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India. Pieter Hacker sat the second chair, the post Otto Luder Hemmy had left in January 1777, after Fiscal Willem Cornelis Boers had declined it on the 1st of February. Boers still sat the fiscal’s office. The three names that May 1774 had meant to sit together were therefore two living chairs and a grave. Hacker’s confirmation had already put Jacobus Johannes le Sueur into the wine stores. Calendar 1778 inherited that arrangement. [3] [9]
In the country the same inherited chairs still sat. Stellenbosch and Drakenstein remained under Marthinus Adriaan Bergh, in the chair Lucas Sigismundus Faber had left in August 1773, after secretary Abraham Faure had acted through September of that year. Swellendam remained under Daniel van Ryneveld, who had replaced Sergeant Pieter Diederik Boonaker in May 1777. Christoffel Brand still sat the winter port. Damien Hugo Staring still sat the naval establishment. Captain Robert Jacob Gordon remained second in command of the military force under Lieutenant-Colonel Van Prehn, the post he had taken on the 1st of June 1777. The outposts at Saldanha Bay, Groenkloof, Klapmuts, Zonder End, and Buffeljagts River were still maintained; the woodcutters’ post formed in July 1777 at Zwart River, in Outeniqualand, between the later villages of George and Knysna, still sat a few soldiers beside axes. [3] [9]
The pulpits of the fourth full installed year were those 1777 had filled. The Cape church was still ministered to by three clergymen: the Rev. Hendrik Kroonenburg, the Rev. Johannes Frederik Bode, and the Rev. Johannes Petrus Serrurier of Hanau. Stellenbosch sat the Rev. Philip Kuys, who had ended a consulent’s vacancy that had lasted from September 1772. Waveren sat the Rev. Johannes Abraham Kuys. Zwartland sat the Rev. Daniel Goldbach. Drakenstein still sat the Rev. Van der Spuy inside the elder controversy that January 1772 had opened over Thomas Arnoldus Theron, and that 1775 had already sent Marais and Roos to Holland. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759. No Lutheran clergyman was yet tolerated in the colony. [3] [8]
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. Willem Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish inside a district. Adriaan van Jaarsveld still sat Bruintjes Hoogte, the ground he had taken in 1776, resolved not to move again if he could hold his own. 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. Europeans and Khoikhoi were living together on friendly terms in the old districts, but San marauders still disturbed the Nieuwveld, the Sneeuwberg, and the Winterberg. The summer commando of 1774 under Godlieb Rudolph Opperman had reported five hundred and three San killed and two hundred and thirty-nine taken, without the deterrent effect that had been hoped. Year after year it was necessary to call out commandos against them. Surveyor Hieronymus Leiste was still out on the occupied-country map when January opened. He had been sent in October 1777; he would come back in January with only a slight acquaintance with the interior. [3] [4] [7]
The nine produce years 1772–1780 still framed the roadstead. During those years the average exportation to Europe 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. 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. The prices paid by the Company remained ruinously low: wheat to India 8s. 9¾d. a muid, wheat to Europe 5s. 11½d. after government dues; butter 6d. to 8d., tallow about 2d. a pound. Foreign shipping had not fallen off. During the same nine years 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; or, on an average, 52 Dutch ships and 65 under various other flags touched yearly at the two ports. The fiscal still took control of the grain trade and permitted nothing to be sold to strangers without his leave. The burghers still protested against that infringement of their rights, but to no purpose. [3]
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. 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 1778 sat inside those averages as the seventh produce year, with a Hague advocate in his fourth fiscal year, an eastern paper that July 1775 had already renamed, a drought year of 1777 already behind, and a surveyor still out on a map. [3] [9]
Leiste Returns; Frontier Petition — January–March 1778
In January 1778 surveyor Hieronymus Leiste returned from the inspection begun in October. He had been sent to inspect the country as far as it was occupied by Europeans, and to frame a map. He came back having made but slight acquaintance with the interior. The council had wanted a drawing of what Europeans already sat—the Fish, the Bushman’s, the Sneeuwberg, the Hantam, the runs of five or six thousand acres—not a discovery of unforded water. Gordon’s October road had already shown how little the occupied paper covered: a Great river near the twenty-sixth meridian, a day along the southern bank without a ford, two streams joining to the east as seen from a hill. Leiste’s January return did not close that gap. It told the Castle that a map of occupation was still only a slight acquaintance. [3] [9]
In March 1778 a petition was sent to the council by Jan Kruger, Jan Adriaan Venter, Adriaan van Jaarsveld, Jan Oosthuizen, and thirty other heads of families living near the eastern frontier, praying for the establishment of a landdrost’s court and a church in that part of the country. Thirty-four names asked for two institutions that Stellenbosch and Swellendam could not give them at a month’s journey. By 1778 the roving white population had become in a measure permanently established in the present Eastern Province. In consequence of the great distances to the nearest magistracies—journeys seldom performed in less than a month—and of the danger and difficulties of travelling, a landdrost’s court with the concomitants of church and school had become necessary. At the seat of government in the west, little was accurately known as to the conditions of life in the east, and only the vaguest ideas were entertained of even the direction and distance of the frontier regions, which were indiscriminately denominated the “interior.” [3] [4] [9]
This petition, together with Leiste’s report and the numerous accounts of depredations by the San, caused the governor to resolve upon visiting the eastern border and ascertaining for himself the condition of affairs there. To gain authentic information on these matters, as well as to investigate the native troubles and to judge of the expediency of granting what the farmers had petitioned for, he would make an extended and costly tour eastwards at the latter end of the year. Four months before he intended to set out, orders were issued to the landdrosts of Stellenbosch and Swellendam to have burgher escorts and cattle ready to forward him on his journey. Those orders therefore went out about May, to Bergh at Stellenbosch and to Van Ryneveld at Swellendam, while the Castle still sat three Cape clergymen, a secunde confirmed from the wine stores, and a fiscal who still took leave of every muid sold to a stranger. [3] [4]
The farmers of the more distant districts, in particular, were already 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 administration and Tulbagh’s always went in favour of the latter. The petition of March was not a revolt. It was a request for a court and a pulpit on ground that placaats had once forbidden and that July 1775 had already renamed Fish and Bushman’s. Van Jaarsveld’s name on the paper joined the Sneeuwberg commandant who had moved east in 1776 to the thirty-three other heads of families who could not reach Stellenbosch in time to keep their stock, or their children, under a magistrate and a minister. [3] [9]
Kerguelen in Simon’s Bay; the Venus at Delagoa — May–July 1778
While Mr. 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. Lieutenant William Paterson had already turned back ill from Gordon’s October 1777 road. His later printed journeys would cover 1777 and 1778. The English explorer Captain Cook had touched at Table Bay with the Resolution and Adventure on his outward passage in November 1772, when returning homeward in March 1775, and again when outward bound on his last voyage with the Resolution and Discovery in October 1776. Those calls already sat in earlier years. Calendar 1778 added a French polar captain to the same winter port. [3]
The French explorer Captain Kerguelen when proceeding to visit the South Polar Sea put into Simon’s Bay with the Rolland and Oiseau in May 1778. Brand still sat the winter port that Kirsten had left in May 1774, with a stone pier, a hospital of 130 feet frontage completed in 1765, storehouses, a slaughter house, a bakery, and workshops. May therefore put two French polar ships into a roadstead already used to Dutch, English, French, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese and Austrian flags. The fiscal’s leave still governed what grain they might buy. The meat contractor still charged foreigners 2d. The farmer of the duty of £1 a legger on wine and spirits sold to foreigners for exportation could still afford to pay nearly £1,000 a year for it. Kerguelen’s call was a polar call, not a produce call; it sat inside the same nine-year shipping jump that had made Simon’s Bay a second table. [3]
In January 1778 the Company’s ship Venus left Batavia to return to Europe. In July she put into Delagoa Bay with her rudder loose, and only eighteen men able to work. Fifty-five sailors had died of scurvy. One English and two Austrian vessels were found in Delagoa Bay, and with these intelligence of the condition of the Venus was sent to Ceylon, whence it reached the Cape. The fourth full installed year therefore sat a Company homeward ship not in Table Bay and not in Simon’s Bay, but in a Portuguese roadstead to the north-east, with a loose rudder, eighteen men who could still work, and fifty-five already dead. The intelligence came by flags the nine-year tally already counted: English and Austrian. It reached the Cape from Ceylon, not from a Cape packet sent out in this calendar year. [3]
Colebrooke on a Reef — 25 August 1778
During this period shipping disasters continued on the South African coast. The dairyman Wolraad Woltemaade and the Jonge Thomas already sat in June 1773. The Company’s homeward-bound Nieuw Rhoon had been driven upon a reef at Robben Island on the 31st of January 1776 and beached by the jetty to save her cargo. The French Ceres, homeward-bound from Pondicherry, had gone ashore near the mouth of Salt River on the 15th of October 1776. Calendar 1778 added an English East Indiaman to that list, not in Table Bay, but in the winter port’s outer water. [3]
On the 25th of August 1778 the English East India Company’s outward-bound ship Colebrooke when entering False Bay ran on a concealed reef, and was so much damaged that it was necessary to beach her near Cape Hangklip to save the crew. She went to pieces almost at once, and all the cargo was lost; but the crew, with the exception of two men, were saved by boats sent from ships in Simon’s Bay. August therefore put an English outward hull on Hangklip sand, two men dead, a cargo gone, and Simon’s Bay boats pulling toward a wreck the winter port could see across False Bay. Brand’s station sent the boats. The concealed reef sat in the entrance, not on Robben Island and not beyond Salt River. [3]
The same August that beached the Colebrooke still sat Bergh at Stellenbosch, Van Ryneveld at Swellendam, three clergymen in Cape Town, and a governor four months past the escort orders, a week from leaving with two travelling and four baggage wagons. The English flag that the nine-year tally counted at sixty-five foreign ships a year had now left a name on Hangklip. False Bay had taken an Indiaman the way Table Bay had taken the Nieuw Rhoon and the Ceres. The difference was the beach: Hangklip, not the jetty, not Salt River. Two men were the exception; the rest came off in Simon’s Bay boats. [3]
The Governor’s Eastern Tour — 3 September 1778
On the 3rd of September 1778 the governor left Cape Town with two travelling and four baggage wagons, taking with him the junior merchant Olof Godlieb de Wet as secretary, the surgeon Johan Michiel Seyd as medical attendant, and the captain Christiaan Philip van Heyden as purveyor and conductor of the train. Six wagons, a junior merchant, a surgeon, and a captain: that was the Castle’s moving paper. The journal of this important expedition is unfortunately missing from the Cape archives, and it is only from statements in other documents of the time that the chief events can be gathered. Although the simple-living farmers must have grinned a great deal at the baron’s impressive entourage and luxurious camping equipment, they admired the indefatigable energy with which he hoisted his portly frame upon a horse to visit left, right and centre. The governor was on the road for nearly three months. [3] [9]
One account of the road has him travelling by way of the Berg river valley, through the Roodezand kloof, down the valley of the Breede river, past Swellendam, and onward to the Little Fish river, somewhere near the later village of Somerset East. Another has him travelling by way of the Tulbagh basin and the Karoo, making his headquarters for a time at the foot of the Sneeuwberg mountains, near the later town of Graaff Reinet, then pushing farther north to the Seacow river—a tributary of the great river—before visiting Willem Prinsloo in the Boschberg and proceeding due south to Algoa Bay, to return by a coast route. A third has him trekking through the Hex River kloof to the Karoo, listening patiently to the complaints of the farmers near the Sneeuwberg who, during the winter, often had to travel several weeks to listen to a clergyman in Stellenbosch, and whose homesteads and cattle were for ever threatened by marauding San, then plodding still farther north to the later site of Colesberg, and only thereafter to the Little Fish where Prinsloo farmed. The three roads agree on the far points: Sneeuwberg or Karoo complaints, a northern river with a beacon, Prinsloo on the Little Fish, and a named bay on the return. They disagree on whether Swellendam sat on the outward road, and whether Algoa Bay sat on the homeward one. [3] [4] [9]
The governor met the frontier farmers who had petitioned for a landdrost and a clergyman, and made himself acquainted with their condition. They represented that owing to the unbridged rivers it was often a journey of a month to the village of Stellenbosch, so that practically they were cut off from a court of justice. It was also a matter of great hardship to them to attend the militia exercises in that village, as during their absence from home their stock was subject to depredations by San. For the same reason they were unable to attend the church services, and their children were growing up without proper instruction. They were willing to contribute liberally towards the expense of erecting the necessary buildings. The families of the farmers were exposed to the utmost danger from San while the male inhabitants were drawn off periodically to attend the customary parades and business in the west. The distress of the outlying district was aggravated by the presence of a number of worthless Europeans of different nationalities whose wandering and lawless life was a constant menace to all peaceful pursuits. It was only too evident that for all religious and civil purposes the drostdies of Stellenbosch and Swellendam were too far distant. [3] [4]
The governor admitted that their request was reasonable, and promised to recommend it favourably to the directors, a promise which was fulfilled upon his return to Cape Town, though it was not immediately attended to in Holland. He approved of the desired formation of a seat of magistracy, but was not empowered to establish it without reference to the authorities in Holland. Quite different from a predecessor who had answered distant farmers with delay, he never replied “we shall see,” but promised to plead their case with the Lords Seventeen. He did so on his return. The tour did not itself create a drostdy. It put a first-chair recommendation on a March petition, and left the buildings still unbuilt. Nothing of a new court was accomplished on the road. The historical interest of the expedition is that the head of the government for the first time travelled to the far east and treated as a fact on the ground an occupation which placaats had strictly prohibited only a few years before. [3] [4] [9]
An officer whose name was to be closely connected with South Africa during the next eighteen years was on the frontier at the same time as the governor. This was Captain Robert Jacob Gordon, previously an officer in the Scotch regiment under Colonel Dundas in the service of the United Provinces, recently engaged by the East India Company, arrived on the 1st of June 1777, and at this time second in command under Lieutenant-Colonel Van Prehn. One account of the northern camp calls him the garrison commander. The Castle’s paper still named Van Prehn first and Gordon second. The October 1777 road to the Great river had already shown Gordon a stream he could not ford. The September 1778 tour put the first chair on a related northern water, with a beacon, while the second military chair was also out. [3] [9]
Fish River, Zeekoe Beacon, Plettenberg’s Bay — September–November 1778
Thereafter the party proceeded to the Little Fish river where Willem Prinsloo farmed, on the Boschberg, the ground of the later town of Somerset East. It was there and then that Van Plettenberg made the acquaintance of the Xhosa. In 1778, when the governor was making a tour of inspection in the frontier districts, he stopped at the Boschberg, at Willem Prinsloo’s farm on the Klein Fish river. Here the various Xhosa chiefs were invited to meet him, in order to agree on a boundary line between the colony and Xhosa country. He had a conference with several chiefs, and arranged with them that the Fish river should be a boundary between the Europeans and the Bantu. Whether these chiefs were men of high position in their tribe it is impossible to say, as their names cannot be recovered. The Great Fish river was made the dividing line. [3] [4] [7] [9]
Various Xhosa tribes were found living in a somewhat unsettled state in the country as far west as the Sunday’s River. Attempts were made to persuade them to retire to the territories east of the Fish river from which they had migrated only shortly before, and to regard that river as the boundary of the colony, but these were attended with no conspicuous success. The so-called treaty, wherein the Xhosa are said to have agreed to recognise that river as the boundary, was so obviously ineffectual that it could have inspired but little confidence at the time. An agreement—and that only verbal—made with a few petty chiefs of a single tribe could not bind all the others. The regions as far east as the Great Fish river became officially recognised as forming part of the Cape settlement, though the lower course of that river was not yet a proclaimed colonial boundary along its whole length. The 11 July 1775 paper had already named the Fish as Stellenbosch’s eastern limit. The September conference tried to make that paper a line both Europeans and Xhosa would keep. The names of the men who stood on the Xhosa side of the talk were not kept. [3] [4] [7]
He proceeded northward to the Zeekoe river, and on the bank of this stream he caused a beacon to be erected to mark the termination of his tour and the north-eastern limit of the colony. Pushing farther to the north to the Seacow river, a tributary of the great river, he caused a beacon to be erected to mark the northernmost limit of the Colony. The expedition plodded still farther north, reaching, at last, the spot where Colesberg is now situated. There, by a little river, a stone was set with the Company’s monogram, with the name Joachim Ammema Baron van Plettenberg and the year 1778. As an exciting detail, the gentlemen killed no less than twenty hippopotami in one day. This happened while they were camping on the bank of a tributary of that mighty river. The Zeekoe, the Seacow, and the Colesberg stream are one northern water in three names: a hippopotamus river, a beacon, and a year cut into Company stone. [3] [4] [9]
On the 3rd of November the governor was at the bay into which the Keurboom river falls. To this bay he gave his own name, and caused a landmark with the Company’s arms upon it to be erected as a sign of possession. The stone is still standing where it was set up. It would take too much space to follow the governor’s movements in detail between the northern beacon and that beach. The familiar stone pillar was piled into the beach of that bay, appropriately named Plettenberg Bay. November therefore put two Company marks on the fourth full installed year: a 1778 monogram on a northern tributary, and the Company’s arms on a Keurboom beach. The first was a limit. The second was a possession. [3] [9]
On the 26th of November the party arrived in Cape Town again, having been absent nearly three months. September, October, and most of November had taken the first chair off the Parade and put it on unbridged rivers, a verbal Fish line, a Zeekoe beacon, twenty hippopotami, and a named bay. De Wet had sat the secretary’s wagon for those months. Seyd had sat the medical chest. Van Heyden had sat the train. Gordon had been out on the same frontier. The missing journal left the Castle to recover the road from other papers: a March petition, a January map that had been only a slight acquaintance, landdrosts’ escort orders, and the stones themselves. [3] [9]
Bergh Retires; De Wet Landdrost; Kroonenburg’s Pension — December 1778
Ever since the accession of Mr. Van Plettenberg to power there had been a feeling of discontent throughout the colony. There was no sympathy between the governor and the people. If his proclamations be compared with those of his predecessor, and judgment be formed by them alone, the administration of Tulbagh would be pronounced the harsher of the two. Yet in reality not only was the reverse the case, but a period of misrule had succeeded a period of tranquillity. Governor Tulbagh had kept a watchful eye upon every official, and allowed no one to overstep the directions concerning farming and trading, or to take a fee that he was not entitled to. Governor Van Plettenberg permitted his subordinates to do almost as they chose. The result was a condition of affairs in which no transaction with government could be carried on without bribery, in which many of the officials farmed and traded openly, and the colonists generally became discontented. He allowed them to do what they wanted, and did not put a stop to practices that showed a complete disregard for the interests of the private burghers. [3] [9]
From the earliest days of the settlement the government had claimed and exercised the right of sending out of the country persons of bad character, especially those of idle and dissolute habits. During the forty years from 1738 to 1778 thirty-three individuals were thus deported, without a trial before a court of justice. In some instances the burgher councillors or the heemraden requested that a vagabond of some kind should be removed; in other instances notorious offenders were thus summarily disposed of. Governor Tulbagh, during the twenty years that he was head of the colony, had sent away ten. Governor Van Plettenberg in less than eight years sent away eighteen. The fiscal was detested as few men in South Africa have been, and instead of being a check upon the governor, he was held to be the worse of the two. His control of trade with foreigners opened a door to extensive bribery. In the course of his activities as fiscal he deported eighteen residents which, compared with the administration of Tulbagh and his council, was an inexcusable increase. The American revolution had commenced, and tidings came over the sea of other colonists resisting rulers who oppressed them. [3] [9]
In distant farmhouses and in dwellings in Cape Town the question of rights and liberties was discussed as it had never been before. Party feeling began to run very high. The junior officials were mostly either colonists by birth or married into colonial families, so that the existing system had its defenders. There was a large party loyal to the Netherlands, but desirous of a change from a bad to a good government, and there was a small party ready to plunge into anarchy, without understanding what they were advocating. [3] [9]
In the staff of officers in the country districts the following change closed the year. In December 1778 Marthinus Adriaan Bergh retired at his own request as landdrost of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. His term of office had been marked by violent altercations with the burghers, and it had become impossible for him to hold the situation longer. He had sat that chair since October 1773, after Faber’s death in August 1773 and Faure’s acting months. He was succeeded by Olof Godlieb de Wet, the junior merchant who had just sat the secretary’s wagon from the 3rd of September to the 26th of November. December therefore put the tour’s secretary into Stellenbosch’s drostdy, and took a landdrost whose altercations with the burghers had already made the chair impossible. Abraham Faure still sat the secretaryship of the district. Swellendam still sat Van Ryneveld. The Castle still sat Hacker and Boers. [3]
In December 1778 the church in Cape Town, which had continued to be ministered to by three clergymen, lost one of them. The Rev. Hendrik Kroonenburg retired on pension, owing to age and ill health. It had been understood that upon the first death or retirement a successor would not be appointed. December therefore reduced the Cape pulpit from three to two: Bode and Serrurier remaining, Kroonenburg gone on a pension. Philip Kuys still sat Stellenbosch. Johannes Abraham Kuys still sat Waveren. Goldbach still sat Zwartland. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein inside the Theron strife. The fourth full installed year closed on a first chair back from a missing journal, a Stellenbosch landdrost who had just come off the tour, a Cape pulpit reduced by one pension, a Fish line spoken but not yet a whole-course proclamation, a 1778 stone on the Zeekoe, a named bay at the Keurboom, an English Indiaman in pieces off Hangklip, a French polar captain already gone from Simon’s Bay, and a Company ship with a loose rudder whose news had come from Delagoa by way of Ceylon. [3] [8] [9]