Boer History1798 at the Cape of Good Hope: Post Office, Boundary, Macartney Leaves, and the Castle Fire
First Post Office — March 1798
Calendar 1798 opened from the gardens of 1652 with the colony already a British possession and with Earl Macartney still in office. The high posts were English and salaried; the burgher senate sat; Stellenbosch was quiet under Van der Riet; Swellendam had Faure; Frans Reinhard Bresler held Graaff Reinet after his return of the year before. In March 1798 the first post office in the colony was established. Until then letters for private persons had gone as a favour with government despatches, or had been given in charge of people on board ships. The office was at first intended only for an ocean mail; there was no thought yet of a post within the colony. The charge on letters was a shilling a sheet, and on books or newspaper packets four shillings a pound. John Holland was appointed postmaster-general, with an office in the castle. The revenue from this source was for some time about £200 a year. From the gardens of 1652 despatches had always gone with the fleets; what was new in March was that a private letter could be paid for at a posted rate, in an office with a name, inside the castle, instead of depending on a favour or a chance passenger. [3]
Graaff Reinet was not left long without a clergyman. In August 1797 the reverend Hendrik Willem Ballot, recently minister at Malacca, had arrived in a Danish ship from the East Indies and had been sent for a time to Roodezand while Vos went on a pastoral tour to the eastern frontier. In February 1798 he was appointed permanent minister of Graaff Reinet. The district of Swellendam was first provided with a clergyman in this year. The reverend Mr. Von Manger, who had retired from Graaff Reinet, had objected to return to his duty there, and his salary had been stopped at the end of June 1797. In May 1798 he was again taken into service and sent to Swellendam, where he commenced duty on the 18th of June. A church-building was erected in the village, and a consistory was formed in the usual manner. Swellendam had had a landdrost and heemraden for a generation; it had not had a resident clergyman until Von Manger began on the 18th of June. Graaff Reinet, which had lost him, now had Ballot in permanence. The two eastern drostdies thus closed 1798 each with a minister of their own. [3]
The harvest of 1797–8 was a tolerably good one, and food was again at a reasonable price. A contract for the supply of bread to the troops was taken at a penny a pound, and of meat at twopence and two-twenty-thirds of a penny a pound, payable in paper currency at the rate of four shillings for a rixdollar. The government permitted no provisions of any kind to be exported without special leave from the secretary’s office; and the prices of cattle and corn, meat and bread, were fixed just as in the olden times. There was an excellent market provided by the shipping, a garrison of five thousand soldiers, and a large naval establishment; and payment for supplies was promptly made by the government; but the farmers had no more liberty of buying and selling than they had under the East India Company. [3]
At this time, and until the close of 1802, the average imports of goods of all kinds were in value £253,927, and of slaves £44,950 a year. The average exports amounted only in value to £15,047. There was thus a balance of trade against the colony of £283,830 a year, which was met in coin that came into the country chiefly through the military and naval departments. The revenue rose rapidly after 1796. During the period 1797 to 1802 it was on an average £73,518 a year. The accounts were kept in rixdollars, and the figures here given are obtained by computing the rixdollar at its nominal value of four English shillings. Its real value, as determined by the rate of exchange, fluctuated so much that absolute accuracy in English money was not to be had. [3]
Between the date of the surrender of the colony to the British forces and the close of the eighteenth century seven hundred and forty-two vessels, exclusive of coasters, touched either at Table Bay or Simon’s Bay. Of these, four hundred and fifty-eight were English, one hundred and twenty-four were American, ninety-one were Danish, thirty-four were prizes to English men-of-war, and the remaining thirty-five belonged to various nations. The average number that touched yearly was one hundred and seventy-one. From the gardens of 1652 the Castle still watched Table Bay, but the roadstead’s traffic was now counted in English, American, and Danish flags, and the first Cape post office sat in the castle to take a shilling a sheet from the ocean mail. [3]
The paper rixdollar at four shillings was the unit in which bread and meat contracts were paid; the coin that closed the trade gap came in with the troops and the ships. Five thousand soldiers and a large naval establishment made a market the Company had never kept at that scale, and payment was prompt. What the farmers did not get was liberty: cattle and corn prices remained fixed, and no provisions left without leave from the secretary’s office. Calendar 1798 therefore opened on a refreshment station that sold more, and chose less, than in the last years of the Dutch East India Company. [3]
Van Jaarsveld Summoned — March 1798
Some years previously the old commandant Adriaan van Jaarsveld had borrowed a sum of money from the Orphan Chamber on mortgage of his property and had fallen in arrears in payment of the interest. Visiting Capetown in 1794, he paid the interest up to the 31st of December 1791 and received the regular receipt. The debt stood at £733, for which he had given a bond upon the premises on his farm Vrede. As he became more and more involved, a summons was issued against him on the 30th of March 1798, demanding not only the overdue interest but also the capital. [3] [4]
When the summons was delivered Van Jaarsveld complained of being charged more interest than was due, and at the same time produced the receipt, which apparently showed that he had paid up to the 31st of December 1794. On careful examination it became evident that the 1 of the 1791 had been changed to 4 with fraudulent intention. This was further proved by reference to the books in Capetown. He was then summoned by the high court of justice to appear on the 29th of November to answer to the charge of falsifying the receipt. [3] [4]
The Orphan Chamber’s books in Capetown and the receipt in Van Jaarsveld’s hand could not both be true. Three years of interest — 1792, 1793, and 1794 — stood on the altered paper and not in the chamber’s account. A summons for capital and overdue interest had become, once the figure was examined, a charge of falsifying a public receipt. The high court of justice named the 29th of November for his appearance in Capetown; the frontier named him still as old commandant. [3] [4]
He did not obey. The fiscal issued instructions to Landdrost Bresler to cause him to be apprehended and sent to Capetown. Van Jaarsveld was a prominent man among the burghers of the east; a summons that mixed overdue interest with a charge of changing a figure on a receipt was read on the frontier as more than a debt. The stern and unsympathetic rule of Macartney had affected Graaff Reinet to the extent of repressing all outward signs of disaffection to British rule. In the secluded glens of Bruintjes Hoogte, Boschberg and Camdeboo, however, the fomenters of discontent were still at work. Noiseless grumblings, informal meetings and a revival of the old patriotism were combining to increase the tension. Idle rumours concerning the reduction of the naval and military force of the colony ran with the talk. In 1798 the matter of Van Jaarsveld still stood as a summons of the 30th of March, a warrant of the high court for the 29th of November, and an order to the landdrost after he failed to appear. [3] [4]
From the gardens of 1652 the Orphan Chamber still collected what the frontier owed. A commandant who had once led burghers against their neighbours was now called, in the third year of British possession, to make good a bond and to answer for a figure on a receipt. The high court sat in Capetown; the landdrost sat at Graaff Reinet; the glens talked. Calendar 1798 closed on that summons unobeyed. [3] [4]
Northern Boundary — 14 July 1798
The Xhosa in the Zuurveld had no intention of leaving it. All the conferences and messages of the year before had been useless. In February 1798 the landdrosts of Swellendam and Graaff Reinet were instructed to renew the attempts to induce them to retire, and to warn them that if they did not leave of their own accord they would be expelled by force; but the warning was as unheeded as the requests. [3]
The northern boundary of the colony had never been defined by the East India Company. On the 14th of July 1798 Macartney issued a proclamation which added to the district of Graaff Reinet a small piece of territory beyond the Tarka river, and declared the following to be the boundaries: the Fish river from its mouth up to Esterhuis’s Poort at the end of the Kaga mountain, the Kaga mountain to the Tarka mountain, the Tarka mountain to the Bamboes mountain, the Bamboes mountain to the Zuur mountain, the Zuur mountain to Plettenberg’s beacon on the Zeekoe river, Plettenberg’s beacon to Great Table mountain, thence to the Nieuwveld mountains, along the Nieuwveld mountains to the source of the Riet river, the Riet and Fish rivers behind the Roggeveld mountain, the Spioen mountain, the Kabiskow peak, the Long mountain, the northern point of the Kamiesberg, and the river Koussie or Buffalo to the Atlantic. [3]
In the proclamation, all persons were forbidden to settle or graze their stock beyond these limits, under penalty of banishment and confiscation of their cattle, or to hunt game or travel there without a pass from the governor, under penalty of corporal punishment. But, in point of fact, colonists were then living and paying rent for farms north of the Nieuwveld mountains, and they were not disturbed by the government. On that distant frontier, seldom or never visited by any official of higher rank than a fieldcornet, it was impossible to have everything in regular order. The wording of the proclamation shows how vague was the knowledge at the seat of government of the geographical features of the country. Thus both the Riet and Fish rivers behind the Roggeveld mountains are named as forming the boundary, which is an impossibility. [3]
On the same 14th of July the governor, in like manner, forbade all intercourse with the Xhosa, even the crossing of the Fish river, unless with special permission. The line on the map and the ban on the drift were one policy: the colony was to have a northern edge in writing, and the Fish was to remain the eastern stop. Neither the Zuurveld Xhosa nor the graziers already north of the Nieuwveld treated the paper as the ground. The Fish had been named as the eastern stop in former years; the July text now wrote a northern stop as well, from the Kaga to the Buffalo, and then forbade the very crossing that the Zuurveld occupation made a daily fact. [3] [4]
In July 1798 Macartney directed the fieldcornets Floris Visser and Jacob Gideon Louw to endeavour to make peace with the San on the basis of furnishing them with a supply of breeding cattle and making them periodical presents. The fieldcornets thereupon collected a large number of cows and sheep by means of free gifts from farmers, and they then got together as many San as they could and submitted the proposal to them. The wild people accepted the offer, and were provided with stock to commence cattle-breeding on their own account, with an assurance that they would not be molested if they would keep on the northern side of the boundary proclaimed by Macartney. In December 1798 this arrangement was reported to the government, and a request was made by Fieldcornet Visser for a supply of trinkets as presents. A quantity of beads, tinderboxes, rings, pocket mirrors, and knives was at once sent to him for that purpose. The San who made the agreement and received cattle were to keep on the northern side of the line written on the 14th of July. In December 1798 the government had a reported peace, a request for trinkets, and a box of beads and knives on the road to Visser. [3]
On the Orange a different northern trouble was already in motion. To his original clan the Namaqua captain Afrikaner now added a number of vagabonds attracted by the prospect of spoil, and in a short time he became a terror to the country far and wide. His stronghold was on an island in the Orange river, and from it bands of his followers made sudden swoops upon places as far distant as two hundred and fifty miles. A party of Khoikhoi and people of mixed descent under a captain named Cornelis Kok, sometimes roaming along the southern bank of the great river, at other times living on a reserve in the Kamiesberg secured to them many years previously when Adam Kok gathered them together, held a good many horned cattle and sheep and was therefore particularly exposed to Afrikaner’s attacks. Kok managed to hold his own until the spring of 1798, when he suffered heavy losses. In December of that year he repaired to Stellenbosch to confer with the landdrost and endeavour to obtain aid to bring the marauders to justice; but it was not possible to assist him then. Stellenbosch was far from an island in the Orange; the landdrost could hear Kok and could not reach Afrikaner. The northern proclamation of the 14th of July had named the Kamiesberg and the Koussie; it had not put a commando on the river. Spring losses and a December conference were the year’s northern account on that side. [3]
Eksteen’s “Citizen” Cards — August 1798
The slightest indication of French proclivities roused the ire of the governor. In August 1798 Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen, of Bergvliet, between Wynberg and Muizenberg, invited a number of his friends to be present at his daughter’s marriage, and was so imprudent as to issue the invitations on cards in the French style, substituting for Mr. the word Citizen. The cards were in the French style; the assembly was to be at Bergvliet, between Wynberg and Muizenberg, on the day of his daughter’s marriage. Under Macartney a printed Citizen was not a fashion. It was a proclivity. [3]
On the day of the ceremony the governor ordered a party of dragoons to proceed to the “festive assembly of Citizens,” and to remain there “to prevent any irregularity that might be apprehended from disaffected or suspected persons.” Eksteen was required without delay to retract and redress in the most public manner this wanton and petulant conduct, and to provide sufficient security for his good behaviour and dutiful deportment towards government in future, or to repair to that country where in the midst of confusion and medley his invitations would be better relished. [3]
This order, conveyed in writing, brought the offender to government house, protesting that he had not meant to cause the slightest annoyance; but his apology was not accepted until he produced a bond for a thousand pounds, signed by two substantial persons, as security that he would not in future be guilty of similar or any other offences against the government. The dragoons were then recalled. Quartering dragoons upon offenders holding jacobin principles remained the ordinary method of bringing them to reason. There was a scale of diet, according to which the dragoons could insist upon being provided, if they were not supplied with food to their liking. A wedding card was enough, in 1798, to put that method on the road to Bergvliet. Allowance must be made for the circumstances of the time: England and France being then engaged in a desperate struggle, and men of the tory party, such as Macartney, regarding republican principles with something like horror. The word Citizen on a card at Wynberg was read as a French proclivity; the bond of a thousand pounds was the price of not being sent where such invitations would be better relished. [3]
Buys Outlawed — 1798
Associated with the ringleaders in the colony, there was beyond the Fish at this time one of their number who exercised a powerful influence among both Europeans and the Xhosa. Coenraad de Buys had been a burgher in the Swellendam district. His republican enthusiasm, combined with a superior eloquence and energetic mind, gained for him a popularity and prominence among those who sought to establish their own government in the East. He was violently opposed to the admission of British rule into South Africa; but, being powerless to prevent it, yet unwilling to submit, he withdrew from the colony at the time of the capitulation and settled among the people who, after the tribal disturbance and consequent division in 1796, became the AmaNgqika or Gaikas. [4]
He used his influence and power in favour of the young chief Gaika against the usurper Ndlambe. The victory of the former in the fight which ensued gave Buys an additional status in the tribe, and this was further increased by his marrying the young chief’s mother. The exiled burgher of Swellendam thus became in fact, though not perhaps in name, a powerful Xhosa chief, whose proximity to the colony could not be viewed with indifference. Macartney ordered him back in 1798. He refused, and was therefore declared to be an outlaw. A traveller who later met him recorded an uncommon height, for he measured nearly seven feet, with strength yet admirable proportions, excellent courage, a firm countenance, a high forehead, and a certain dignity in his movements. He was a man of great bodily vigour, and was by no means wanting in intellect; among his female companions was the mother of Gaika, and this connection was the chief source of his influence in the colony as well as beyond the Fish, for it caused the colonists to believe that his power was considerable. Seven feet of outlaw on Gaika’s side of the Fish was not a fact the Castle could ignore, and not a man the Castle could fetch. [3] [4]
Buys was in intimate league with the leaders of discontent on the colonial side of the Fish. He was present at most of their secret meetings, and, actuated by his hatred of the British, urged on the others. In 1798 that league still sat beyond the boundary the proclamation of the 14th of July had just named. The outlawry was the government’s answer to a burgher who would not come home. [4]
Macartney Leaves — 20–21 November 1798
Macartney was over sixty years of age, and was subject to severe attacks of gout and other diseases. Before leaving England he had stipulated that if he should find it necessary for his health, he might at any time return without waiting for a successor. Major-General Francis Dundas held a commission as lieutenant-governor, and was empowered to carry on the administration whenever the governor was absent. The first summer of Macartney’s residence had tried him severely, and as another hot season drew nigh he made up his mind to leave South Africa. There certainly never was a period in the history of the Cape Colony when there was less freedom of speech than during his administration. Unsympathetic, ignorant of the adverse conditions under which the frontier people had so long suffered, and arrived at an age when gout and other burdens of life bore heavily upon him, he was too prone to be vindictive against all whom he suspected of wanting proper regard for the British government. [3] [4]
After a rule of about eighteen months, ill-health compelled him to return to England. He left the colony in November of 1798. During his term of office his salary and allowances amounted to £12,000 a year — the £10,000 from colonial revenue named from the date of his appointment, the 1st of August 1796, together with a table allowance of £2,000 — and on his retirement he was allowed a pension of £2,000 a year. As the British treasury was to be put to as little expense as possible on account of the Cape, all this came out of the colonial revenue. Thereafter until 1803 he drew that pension from the revenue of the Cape Colony. [3] [4]
On the 20th of November 1798 he embarked in the ship-of-war Stately, and the following morning sailed for England. On the 21st of November, at eleven o’clock in the morning, the principal civil and military officers assembled at government house in the garden, when General Dundas caused his commission to be read, and formally assumed the administration as lieutenant and acting governor. The garden that had heard Macartney’s oaths on the morning of the 5th of May 1797 now heard Dundas’s commission. The civil and military officers stood; the Stately was already at sea. The acting governor took a colony with a post office, a northern line, an unobeyed summons at Graaff Reinet, and a thatch of dragoon stables that had one more night to stand. [3] [4]
In the Netherlands, in this same year, the insolvent Dutch East India Company was taken over by the government. The Cape had already passed from that Company’s hands in 1795; calendar 1798 closed the Company’s estate at home while a British lieutenant-governor sat in the garden. Open disaffection at Graaff Reinet had been damped; in the glens of Bruintjes Hoogte, Boschberg and Camdeboo the old talk went on. The fear produced by the strong body of troops kept at the Cape still held the frontier quieter than it wished to be. [3] [4] [9]
From the gardens of 1652 the commission was read once more, this time for Dundas. Macartney’s eighteen months had given the colony a post office, a northern line on paper, a clergyman at Swellendam and another made permanent at Graaff Reinet, and a method of dragoons for jacobin cards. He went home gouty, salaried still from Cape revenue, without waiting for a successor. [3]
Dragoon Stables Fire — 22 November 1798
Shortly after the direction of affairs was assumed by Major-General Dundas, that fear on the frontier was to some extent removed. During the night of the 22nd of November 1798 a fire broke out in the dragoon stables in Capetown, which were roofed with thatch. A violent south-east wind caused the flames to spread to the adjoining buildings, notwithstanding vigorous efforts were made to stop them. [3]
The fire was at length got under by destroying a row of houses in advance of it, and saturating the ruins and buildings beyond with water; but there was great destruction of government property. The coal sheds, the timber yard, the commissariat magazines, and the victuallers’ warehouses were consumed with their contents. Seventy-two dragoon horses were burned to death. All the naval and military stores in the colony, except a very small quantity in Simonstown, were destroyed. The thatch, the south-easter, and a row of houses pulled down in advance of the flame were the night’s facts; the magazines and the seventy-two horses were the loss. What remained for the army and the fleet, except the little at Simonstown, was gone. [3]
This disaster was magnified by rumour, and the farmers on the frontier believed that the army was made almost powerless by it. The fear produced by the strong body of troops kept at the Cape was now to some extent removed. From the gardens of 1652 the Castle still stood, but the thatch of the dragoon stables had taken the magazines with it, and the south-easter had done in a night what no proclamation of the 14th of July could undo. Simonstown still held a little; Capetown held the rumour. [3]
Calendar 1798 therefore closed on a lieutenant-governor in the garden, a post office in the castle, a northern line that named two rivers behind the Roggeveld at once, a commandant summoned and not in appearance, an outlaw beyond the Fish, a thousand-pound bond on a wedding card, and seventy-two horses burned in the wind. The harvest had been tolerable; the ocean mail took a shilling a sheet; Von Manger had begun at Swellendam on the 18th of June; Cornelis Kok had gone to Stellenbosch in December and had been told that aid was not then possible. The year ended where the fire stopped: a row of houses pulled down, the ruins soaked, and the frontier listening to rumour. [3]