Boer History1780 at the Cape of Good Hope: Gordon Commandant, Fish River Boundary, Cango Caverns, Lutherans, and Van Jaarsveld
Sixth Full Installed Year: Castle Continuity — 1780
Calendar 1780 opened as the sixth 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 still 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, detested as few men in South Africa have been, and still held to be the worse of the two chairs when a transaction with government had to be carried on. Hacker’s confirmation had already put Jacobus Johannes le Sueur into the wine stores. December 1778 had already put Olof Godlieb de Wet into Stellenbosch’s drostdy after Marthinus Adriaan Bergh retired at his own request. Calendar 1780 inherited that arrangement: two living Castle chairs, a grave, a Hague advocate in his sixth fiscal year, and a tour secretary still in the country chair. [3] [9]
In the country the same inherited chairs still sat. Abraham Faure still sat the secretaryship under De Wet. Swellendam remained under Daniel van Ryneveld. Christoffel Brand still sat the winter port. Damien Hugo Staring still sat the naval establishment, as brave a man as ever sailed the sea, but so deeply implicated in the prevailing peculations that the colonists greatly disliked him. Captain Robert Jacob Gordon opened the year still second in command of the military force under Lieutenant-Colonel Van Prehn, the post he had taken on the 1st of June 1777. Captain Carel Matthys Willem de Lille had been in the colony since December 1778 and sat next after Gordon. 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]
The pulpits of the sixth full installed year were those December 1778 had left, minus one grave. The Cape church, which had continued to be ministered to by three clergymen until Kroonenburg’s pension, now sat two: the Rev. Johannes Frederik Bode and the Rev. Johannes Petrus Serrurier of Hanau. Kroonenburg had died in June 1779. Stellenbosch sat the Rev. Philip Kuys. 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. Combined consistories had already ceased in 1759. No Lutheran clergyman had yet been tolerated when the year opened. Drakenstein’s Huguenot correspondence still ran: a letter of the 15th of August 1780 went to C. L. Neethling. [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. The September 1778 conference at Willem Prinsloo’s Boschberg farm had already tried to make that Fish paper a line both Europeans and Xhosa would keep. The names of the men who stood on the Xhosa side of that talk were not kept. The agreement had not been officially recorded. Prinsloo still sat the Little Fish. Adriaan van Jaarsveld still sat Bruintjes Hoogte as a farmer among neighbours, 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; on the frontiers the first chair had usually taken three young bullocks instead of the £4 16s. The 1779 enlargement still sat: civil cases under £10 were summarily decided in the courts of landdrost and heemraden, because distant parts could not easily be brought to Cape Town. Khoikhoi who still held together in compact bodies retained their own government, with chiefs practically appointed by the Dutch authorities. San marauders still disturbed the Nieuwveld, the Sneeuwberg, and the Winterberg. The struggle along the northern border had become almost incessant. The two races could not live side by side. [3] [4]
The nine produce years 1772–1780 framed the roadstead. Calendar 1780 sat as the ninth and last of those averages before the war with England cut the ordinary traffic. During those nine 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. Small quantities of brandy, rye, barley, vegetable wax, oxhides, sheepskins, coarse wool, skins of wild animals, and leather also went to Europe, neither regularly nor of sufficient value to need further notice. 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. The increase of exports did not cause increased prosperity. 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. 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. [3]
Foreign shipping had not fallen off. In 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 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. All of them needed fresh provisions. Some of the French vessels were sent from Mauritius expressly to obtain cargoes of grain, meat, and wine; 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. The average production of wine was 8,244 leggers. 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. The first years on the surface did not show the later explosion; foreign shipping had greatly increased; Company prices were so low it was hardly worthwhile to toil; officials traded for their own account. [3] [9]
The four Cape names already heard in East-India House on the 16th of October 1779 still sat in Holland. Jacobus van Reenen, Barend Jacob Artois, Tieleman Roos, and Nicholas Godfried Heyns had put the memorial of thirty-seven clauses, signed by four hundred and four, on the table of the Seventeen. In the following week the whole of the papers had been referred to a committee of the chambers of Amsterdam and Zeeland to examine, collect evidence, and report upon. A copy of the memorial and its annexures was sent to the Cape for the various officers concerned to reply to. The directors at the same time wrote expressing their great regret that there should be an ill feeling between the colonists and the officials, and hoping that tranquillity would be speedily restored. They commanded that everything that was possible should be done to allay strife. They would be greatly displeased, they said, if any resentment were shown, directly or indirectly, towards those who had signed the memorial. Calendar 1780 therefore opened with that letter already on the water or already on the Castle table, and with four Cape men still waiting in Amsterdam. One account has Van Reenen putting his head on the pillow the night of the 16th of October without foreseeing that some fifteen hundred more nights would pass before he saw the Colony again. The sixth full installed year sat inside those nights. The answers of the first chair and of the fiscal were not yet on a homeward ship. [3] [9]
Mentor Lost — 5 January 1780
On the 5th of January 1780 the Company’s homeward-bound ship Mentor went down in a great gale off the southern coast. The wreck sat among the shipping disasters of this period on that coast: the Jonge Thomas in Table Bay on the 1st of June 1773, the Nieuw Rhoon on a reef at Robben Island on the 31st of January 1776, the French Ceres near Salt River on the 15th of October 1776, the English Colebrooke on a concealed reef entering False Bay on the 25th of August 1778, and the Venus, which had left Batavia in January 1778 and been found in Delagoa Bay with forty-five living men out of one hundred and twenty-nine. Calendar 1780 opened on water, not on a Castle minute. [3]
On the 9th of January two of her crew were picked up by the French ship Salomon. They had been drifting about on a fragment of the poop, and were the only ones saved. The rest of the homeward company went down with the ship. The sixth full installed year therefore opened with a Company’s return hull gone, two men on a French deck, and the southern coast still a grave for Indiamen that missed the bays. [3]
The roadstead still needed those return cargoes. The nine produce years had been built on wheat, wine, tallow, and aloes going home, and on wheat, wine, butter, and ivory going to India. A homeward-bound hull lost off the southern coast was not only a crew: it was a year’s produce that would not sit an Amsterdam quay. The fiscal still took control of what left the stores. The burghers still could not sell to strangers without his leave. January put that contradiction on the water: a Company ship gone, a French ship saving two, and the ninth produce year still priced at 5s. 11½d. a muid for wheat that foreigners would have paid at more than double. [3]
Gordon Commandant of the Garrison — February 1780
In February 1780 Captain Gordon succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel Van Prehn as commandant of the garrison. He was a man of unblemished character, an enthusiast in the study of natural history, and an ardent explorer, but with no special qualifications as a leader in war. He had been an officer in the Scotch regiment under Colonel Dundas in the service of the United Provinces, had recently been engaged by the East India Company, and had arrived at the Cape on the 1st of June 1777. At that time he had sat second under Van Prehn. October 1777 had already put him on the Sneeuwberg road to the Great river with Lieutenant William Paterson. The 17th of August 1779 had already put a Dutch flag on a staff in his boat at that river’s mouth, and the name Orange on the stream. February 1780 put him over the whole military force proper. Next to him in rank sat Captain De Lille, in the colony since December 1778. The seamen and mechanics remained under the old skipper Staring. [3]
The force he inherited was thin on the books and thinner in the ranks. There were five hundred and thirty soldiers of all arms on the books, but to save expense more than one-fourth of these had been allowed to take service with farmers, and it was pretty certain that many would never return to their colours. There were further some six hundred and fifty individuals in the Company’s pay, including the civil servants, the mechanics at the workshops, the boating establishment, and convalescent sailors. Next there was a corps of free blacks, which had been in existence for many years, and which was usually drilled for a few days in the month of October. From these sources combined about eleven hundred combatants could be counted upon, of whom only one half were well drilled. The colony’s revenue was between £15,000 and £16,000 a year. For a long time the balance of expenditure over revenue had averaged £25,000 a year, and the Company, which was declining in wealth and power, could not afford to maintain a large garrison. [3]
The Company relied chiefly upon the burghers to protect the country, but the South African militia, though nearly three thousand strong on paper, could not furnish a fourth of that number of men for the defence of Cape Town. These three thousand burghers were scattered over an immense area, covering not less than ninety or a hundred thousand square miles. Along the frontier, east and north, they were constantly in arms to hold their own against Xhosa and San, to whom their flocks and herds presented an irresistible temptation to plunder. The struggle between the farmers along the northern border and the San had become almost incessant. Occasionally white men, obliged to defend themselves without aid of soldiers or police, committed acts almost equalling in cruelty those of their opponents. Yet without violence the country could not be held. February therefore put an explorer over a garrison that could not fill Cape Town, and over a militia that could not leave the Fish and the Sneeuwberg. [3]
Gordon’s February chair did not yet know a European war. The ninth produce year still sat 52 Dutch ships and 65 foreign flags on the two bays’ average. English, French, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, and Austrian hulls still took meat at 2d. above the Company’s contract. The fiscal still took his leave on grain. The four delegates still sat in Holland. The first chair still permitted his subordinates to do almost as they chose. February put a naturalist over five hundred and thirty names, and left Van Prehn’s rank behind. Calendar 1780’s military year opened on that succession, not on a proclamation of the Fish. [3]
Lutherans Obtain a Pulpit — November–December 1780
Before 1780 no other public worship than that of the Dutch Reformed church was tolerated in the colony. The Lutherans, who were numerous in Cape Town, now obtained permission to have a resident clergyman of their own denomination. They had been striving for this privilege during more than half a century. It was at last granted by the directors, on condition that they should pay the minister’s salary and all other expenses, without assistance from the Company. The Lutheran church in Amsterdam was requested to select a clergyman, with the sole reservation that he should be a Netherlander by birth. The choice fell upon the Rev. Andreas Kolver. [3]
Kolver arrived in South Africa on the 22nd of November 1780, and on the 10th of December held service here for the first time. The church in Strand Street had previously been erected and presented to the congregation by a wealthy burgher named Martin Melk. The sixth full installed year therefore closed its Cape pulpits on a new denomination in a burgher-built nave, paid by the congregation, without a stiver from the Company’s chest. Bode and Serrurier still sat the Dutch Reformed Cape church as two. Philip Kuys still sat Stellenbosch. Johannes Abraham Kuys still sat Waveren. Goldbach still sat Zwartland. Van der Spuy still sat Drakenstein inside the Theron controversy. Combined consistories still did not sit. What sat new was a Lutheran service on the 10th of December in Melk’s church. [3]
The directors’ condition was the point. A Lutheran pulpit was tolerated only as a congregation’s own cost. The Company would not pay the minister, would not keep the building, would not add a third chair beside Bode and Serrurier from its own chest. The reservation that the clergyman be a Netherlander by birth kept the new pulpit inside the Republic’s language even as it left the Reformed consistory. Melk’s gift put stone and timber on Strand Street before Kolver’s ship. November put the man. December put the first service. Calendar 1780 therefore did what no previous Cape year had done: it let a second public worship sit inside the town. [3]
The Cape church’s third Reformed chair remained empty. It had been understood that upon the first death or retirement a successor would not be appointed; the directors later annulled that former decision, but the man they would send was not yet in the colony when Kolver landed. Calendar 1780’s Reformed Cape still sat two. Its Lutheran Cape sat one, on a burgher’s gift, from the 10th of December. The half-century of Lutheran striving closed on that December service, not on a Company stipend. [3]
Cango Caverns Found — 1780
In 1780 the Cango caverns, in the later district of Oudtshoorn, were accidentally discovered by a farmer named Van Zyl, who was out hunting. They are of great size, passages having been explored for at least a mile into the mountain, without the end being reached, while on each side openings of unknown depth occur at short intervals. The stalactites in some of the chambers present a very grand appearance when seen by the light of numerous torches. Being saturated with water, they are semi-transparent and of dazzling brightness, while they present innumerable varieties of fanciful and grotesque forms. [3]
One of the chambers is eight hundred feet in length, another six hundred feet in length, one hundred in breadth, and sixty to seventy in height. The find sat far from the Fish and far from Strand Street: a Swellendam hinterland, under Van Ryneveld’s drostdy, on the inland side of the mountain range that the combined landdrosts and heemraden had already fixed as the boundary between the new portions of Stellenbosch and Swellendam. A hunter’s accident put a mile of wet stone on the year’s paper beside a Lutheran pulpit and a Fish proclamation. The Company did not garrison the caverns. It did not farm them. It recorded that a farmer had found them. [3]
Calendar 1780 therefore carried an inland wonder that no placaat had ordered. Van Zyl was out hunting. The passages did not end in a mile. The chambers ran hundreds of feet, bright with wet stone. The later village of Oudtshoorn was not yet a drostdy. Swellendam’s paper still ran to the Bushman’s river. The Cango find sat inside that district’s mountains, not on the Zuurveld. The sixth full installed year put it on the same leaf as the Fish’s lower course, because both were written in 1780, not because a hunter’s cave was a boundary. [3]
Winter Recross; Van Jaarsveld Commandant — 24 October 1780
During the summer of 1779–80 two commandos had taken the field for the purpose of expelling the intruders. One, composed of the farmers from both sides of Bruintjes Hoogte, had been under command of Josua Joubert. The refugees from the Zuurveld and their friends west of the Bushman’s river had formed the other, which Pieter Hendrik Ferreira commanded. The Imidange were attacked and defeated on several occasions, when a considerable number of their cattle were taken; but they were not entirely driven to their own side of the Fish river. Many cattle, indeed, were recaptured, but the Xhosa managed to elude their pursuers and only a portion were driven back to their own country. These soon returned, bringing with them hundreds more, so that the trouble became worse than ever. One account begins that first war in September 1779, on the same month as field corporal Jan Hermanus Potgieter’s report that the farmers of the Zuurveld, together with those along the right bank of the Bushman’s river, had been obliged to withdraw. Calendar 1780 inherited that unfinished summer. [3] [4] [7]
During the winter those who had been apparently subdued crossed again into the colony, accompanied by many others, and it became evident that a grand effort must be made to expel them. The Imidange under the chief Mahuta, the Amambala under the chief Langa, and other clans of less note had already spread themselves over the later districts of Somerset East and Albany. The Amagwali under the chief Titi and the Amantinde under the chief Cika sat among those who would later decline to move. Toward the end of 1779 the farmers had had to abandon their holdings in the Zuurveld and Bushman’s river district. Depredations had begun, and with them all the fears and anxieties which, at an earlier date, had been the result of proximity to the San. Rarabe had sent a message to the nearest European outpost that the clans committing the depredations were rebels, and that he would be glad to receive assistance against them. The colonists, as yet without experience of that duplicity, believed Rarabe’s statement, though some of his immediate followers were among the plunderers. Winter 1780 put the same clans back across the Fish with hundreds more. [3] [4] [7]
On the 24th of October 1780 the council of policy, at the request of the district courts, appointed Adriaan van Jaarsveld field commandant of the eastern frontier, and gave him military authority over the whole of the border farmers. There was no man in the country better qualified for the post than he. Accustomed from his earliest boyhood to warfare with San, compelled to be ever ready to defend his family and his flocks from marauders, he knew exactly how to act in an emergency of this kind. He had retired to Bruintjes Hoogte from the Sneeuwberg in 1776 to be free of San depredations, and he was resolved not to move again if he could by any means hold his own. He was a prominent burgher, held in high regard by all. From his earliest years the hardships of the isolated farmer together with the dangers arising from San warfare had been his constant experience. Supported by sufficient authority he was just the man to do all that could be done under the distressing circumstances then existing. One account has a field commander appointed in October 1780 to counter the attacks, and names that officer, able Adriaan van Jaarsveld, a month afterwards receiving instructions to remind the Xhosa of the existence of a frontier in a more forceful manner. [3] [4] [7] [9]
According to the instructions which were issued to him, he was to endeavour to remove all cause of offence to both San and Xhosa and to use every available means of establishing peace. The Xhosa were to be reminded of their promise to the governor to observe the Fish river as the boundary of their territories, and in the event of their breaking faith he was authorised to assemble a “respectable” commando and to enforce compliance. The field-commandant was to refuse curtly if asked to take any part in the native feuds, and to leave the chiefs to fight out the matters of dispute among themselves. No permanent peace could be expected with the roaming San, who were to be attacked and overpowered in their caves and hiding places if they would not surrender. October put that paper in Van Jaarsveld’s hand. It did not yet put ninety-two burghers and forty Khoikhoi in the field. It put a Bruintjes Hoogte farmer over the whole eastern border, pending the decision of the authorities respecting the appointment of a landdrost. The third drostdy still did not sit. Stellenbosch and Swellendam were still too far. [4] [9]
Van Jaarsveld still sat Bruintjes Hoogte as his own ground. October did not move him west. It gave him military authority over the border farmers who had already withdrawn from the Zuurveld and the right bank of the Bushman’s, and over those who still sat both sides of Bruintjes Hoogte. Joubert’s summer commando and Ferreira’s summer commando had been district gatherings. The October appointment was a Castle commission. The first chair, who could not keep his fiscal in check nor other members who traded for their own account, could still name a frontier commandant when the district courts asked. Calendar 1780’s October therefore put a Sneeuwberg veteran over an emptied Zuurveld, with a Fish line still only spoken, and with four Cape names still waiting in Holland. [3] [9]
Fish River Written as Boundary — November–December 1780
On the 14th of November 1780 the council of policy resolved that the Fish river along the whole of its lower course should be the colonial boundary, thus adding to the Company’s possessions the tract of country then usually known as the Zuurveld, now the districts of Albany and Bathurst. The same day the council resolved that as the Xhosa had not kept their agreement with the governor to respect the Fish river as the boundary, the commandant should be authorised to expel them by force. The regions as far east as the Great Fish had already become officially recognised — though not lawfully proclaimed until that 14th of November — as forming part of the Cape Settlement. Various Xhosa clans had been found living in a somewhat unsettled state in the country as far west as the Sunday’s River. Attempts in 1778 to persuade them to retire to the territories east of the Fish, and to regard that river as the boundary, had been attended with no conspicuous success. November 1780 put the spoken line into a resolution of the council of policy. [3] [4]
The 11th of July 1775 had already extended Stellenbosch eastward to the Fish and Swellendam to the Bushman’s, in order to secure the land rents of men who had followed Prinsloo beyond the 18 February 1770 prohibition. The September 1778 talk at Boschberg had already tried to make that Fish a line neither Europeans nor Xhosa would cross. That agreement had not been officially recorded. The so-called treaty, made with a few petty chiefs of a single tribe, had been so obviously ineffectual that it could have inspired but little confidence at the time. In 1779 the Imidange and Amambala had poured into the Zuurveld. November 1780 did what 1775 and 1778 had not done: it declared the Fish along the whole of its lower course the colonial boundary, and it added the Zuurveld — the later Albany and Bathurst — to the Company’s possessions on paper. The farmers who had withdrawn in September 1779 were not thereby returned to their runs. The clans who had recrossed in winter were not thereby back across the river. A resolution at the Castle did not move kraals. [3] [4] [7]
On the 5th of December instructions were issued for Van Jaarsveld’s guidance, in which he was directed to endeavour to come to an amicable arrangement with the intruders, on the basis of their retirement across the Fish river and a mutual restoration of all cattle captured. If they would consent to this proposal, the commandant was to take care that no European molested them or thereafter entered their country for any purpose, and he was not to interfere in the feuds between the clans. But if they declined, he was to assemble an armed force and drive them over the river. One account has the first chair, obviously startled by his own sabre-rattling, softening Van Jaarsveld’s orders by telling him to offer a friendly settlement, provided that they were prepared to take their cattle and cooking pots and withdraw to their side of the river. The problem was that the Xhosa had many chiefs. October had named a commandant. November had authorised force and written the Fish. December put the amicable offer first, and force second. [3] [4] [9]
Early in the summer the old chief Langa, brother of Rarabe and head of the Amambala clan, moved to the west bank of the Bushman’s river. As a peace offering he sent to the nearest European camp a small herd of cattle and a few horses taken from farmers in the Zuurveld, with a message that he wished to remain for a short time where he was. He was still there when the year closed. Of all the chiefs who had invaded the colony he would prove the only one willing to retreat; the several divisions of the Imidange, the Amagwali under Titi, the Amantinde under Cika, and a number of other clans of less note declined to move. Calendar 1780 did not yet put a commando of ninety-two burghers and forty Khoikhoi into the field. It put Langa’s peace offering on the Bushman’s west bank, Van Jaarsveld’s December paper in his pocket, and the Fish’s lower course in the council’s book. The Zuurveld was Company’s paper. It was not yet a cleared run. [3]
In Europe, on the 20th of December 1780, Great Britain declared war with the United Provinces. The English forced war on the Dutch. The Cape did not yet hear it. The ninth produce year still sat 52 Dutch ships and 65 foreign flags on the two bays’ average. English hulls still took meat at 2d. above the Company’s contract. The fiscal still took his leave on grain. Gordon still sat five hundred and thirty names, more than a fourth of them with farmers. The four delegates still sat in Holland, inside the fifteen hundred nights. Bode and Serrurier still sat the Reformed Cape; Kolver had sat Melk’s nave since the 10th of December. Van Zyl’s caverns still sat a mile of wet stone under Swellendam’s mountains. Van Jaarsveld still sat Bruintjes Hoogte with a Castle commission and a December instruction to offer cattle for cattle before he assembled force. The sixth full installed year ended on those facts, without a third drostdy, without a cleared Fish, without a Cape answer yet written to the thirty-seven clauses, and without war news yet in Table Bay. [3] [9]
The eight-and-ninth produce years still framed the roadstead at ruinously low Company prices. The Cape pulpit still sat Bode and Serrurier, and from December a Lutheran service in Strand Street. Stellenbosch still sat De Wet and Philip Kuys. Swellendam still sat Van Ryneveld. Simon’s Town still sat Brand. Staring still sat the naval establishment. Hacker still sat the second chair. Boers still sat the fiscal’s office. Plettenberg still sat the first. Gordon sat the garrison from February. Van Jaarsveld sat the eastern command from October. The Fish sat in the books from November. Calendar 1780 put those names in that order, and stopped before the commando rode. [3]