Boer History1815 at the Cape of Good Hope: the Arniston, Slachter’s Nek, and Jan Bezuidenhout
Somerset Farm and Groote Post — 1815
Lord Charles Henry Somerset governed the Cape from the 6th of April 1814. He was 46 when he took the oaths, allied by blood or marriage with the great tory families, and not a man to sit as a mere patron. A few months after taking office he founded a large agricultural establishment at the other end of the colony, partly to supply the troops on the eastern frontier with meal and oat-hay, and partly to try tobacco as an export. The site was the tract at the Boschberg taken in Van Plettenberg’s time by Willem Prinsloo, lately two loan places of Triegard and Bester. The leases were cancelled. Triegard received 2200 rixdollars for buildings and crops, Bester 1400; Bester’s place was taken for the spring that watered both. The farm mattered because the posts on the Fish still had to be fed, and because Somerset wanted an export that would come from a government establishment under his own name. [3] [4]
On the 1st of January Dr Mackrill with his family and dependants, 20 souls in all, took possession. He found 6000 tobacco plants already in the ground, two kitchen gardens, and about 30 waggon-loads of pumpkins; two low mud-houses of 40 feet and a small mill on Bester’s were the whole of the standing work. A barrack 50 feet by 14 was run up for the men of the Cape Regiment; the Europeans took one of the mud-houses, which had also to serve as a carpenter’s shop; the other became a store. Mackrill built a house for himself and family, four more for workmen, and another small mill. Tannery, candle-works, and soap-works were talked of for later. He spent what he had on cattle and then asked the public funds to carry the rest — “the land will bear it” — and the place was subsidised. Labour was harder: he asked for some of the men on Robben Island and for small Khoikhoi children from Bethelsdorp; neither expedient was adopted. On his suggestion that the land merited the governor’s name, the establishment was called the Somerset farm. [3] [4]
In June the first consignment of produce reached Capetown: 250 pounds of leaf tobacco and three small casks of twisted tobacco for chewing. How much was Mackrill’s work and how much Triegard’s leftover planting was not clear; the sample did not come up to the doctor’s hopes. He asked that it not be sent to London, where it would scarcely earn the farm the respect its potentialities merited, but be disposed of in Capetown and chewed there. After that the tobacco trial went quiet, and the farm’s real business became meal, oat-hay, and the purchase of grain and cattle from the surrounding farmers to feed the eastern posts. What hung on the June sample was not a new export but a commissariat: the Boschberg would feed the line, not London. [3] [4]
At the same time the experimental farm at Groote Post was still under a board of the leading agriculturists and several of the principal civil servants. It had been usual to ask the governor to sit as president, an office little more than honorary. Somerset thanked the members, then went out to Groote Post and issued instructions how the work was to be carried on. Some of the directors tried to give their opinions; they stopped attending when they found him resolved to enforce his own views. In March he dissolved the board and took the farm into his own hands. He was fond of the raceground and had the name of an excellent judge of a horse. He meant South Africa to produce strong well-formed horses in numbers enough for the army in India. Public funds would not buy as many high-class stallions as he wanted, so he imported many at his own expense. Opponents later said he traded in horses and granted land to those who paid him extortionate prices; what can be said of 1815 is that the blood stock was coming in, and that a few years would show an export to Mauritius and India. [3]
The paper rixdollar sank this year to about 2 shillings and 2 pence halfpenny. Officers whose salaries had been fixed in sterling in England — the governor 10000 pounds, the colonial secretary 3500, and the rest of that short list — were paid at the rate of exchange and did not feel the fall. They absorbed more than a third of the whole salary bill. Every other civil servant was paid in rixdollars and received the same number whether the exchange was high or low; when the paper sank they lived close to distress. Even the chief justice still drew only 6000 rixdollars, the other judges 3250. Peace in Europe after the Napoleonic wars did not ease the colony’s books: war demand fell away, and the rixdollar of 1811–1815 averaged about 2 shillings and 6 pence against 3 shillings and 6 pence in the first years after Blaauwberg. [3] [4]
The cost of the Khoikhoi regiment was a charge against the colonial revenue, and the burghers disliked it. Sir John Francis Cradock had raised the corps from 500 to 800 just before he sailed, meaning to relieve the burghers who still held the frontier posts. Regular troops were withdrawn instead, and the burghers had to remain until April, when Somerset, to let them go home, sent up every soldier that could be spared from guarding Capetown. He had no more liking for the regiment than the colonists had, and he urged the secretary of state to disband it and send a battalion of regulars; the imperial authorities consented, but it was not then convenient to send another body of troops. On the eastern line the year also marked the towns. In February Colonel Cuyler was stabbed in the breast at about eight in the evening by one of his Xhosa police, Cassie, who handed him a note and then used a dagger; the wound was dangerous but not fatal, and Cassie said he was tormented with too much work. The general plan of Grahamstown as Knobel had surveyed it was already approved; erven on both sides of the main street were to be sold on condition that a house not less than 30 feet by 13 by 8, of stone, brick, or mud, be built on the street line within 18 months. The public sale was held on the 8th of May. Prices ran far above the first intended figures: Pieter Retief paid 195 rixdollars for lot 20 and 50 for lot 31; Lieutenant-Colonel Prentice 300 for lot 23; Major Fraser 170 for lot 24. The town itself was still thin: the total number of buildings of all descriptions did not, in all probability, exceed 30, and those far between; the huts of June 1812 were still standing and in use, but had become so dilapidated as to be beyond repair. [3] [4]
On the 12th of May Andries Stockenstrom was promoted from Cradock to be full landdrost of Graaff-Reinet in place of Fischer, who went to Tulbagh; Jan Frederik van de Graaff succeeded at Cradock. Stockenstrom had a village whose drostdy house was already in disrepair, a prison little better than none, and a parsonage better than the drostdy at Uitenhage; Cradock Street’s 30 plots had been sold the year before for 23329 rixdollars, and the new landdrost set himself to the improvement of the place. Early in the year Coenraad Buys visited the mission people collected near the junction of the Vaal and Orange, and the minds of the people were filled with alarm by his reports; in this year he again fled from civilisation and took up his abode near Klaarwater — afterwards Griquatown — north of the Orange. Two mission stations among the people beyond the Orange were given permission to stand, after Fischer had brought the matter before government. The May promotions mattered because the man who would have to arrest Frederik Bezuidenhout in October was only then taking the full chair at Graaff-Reinet. [3] [4]
The Arniston — 30 May 1815
In 1815 a mail-packet service was established between England and the Cape. Fast-sailing vessels were employed by the imperial government to leave the Thames monthly, and to carry mails, passengers, and light cargo to the Cape Colony, Mauritius, and India. Postage on letters was fixed at 3 shillings and 6 pence the quarter ounce, on newspapers at 3 pence an ounce. Letters might still go by other conveyances through the post-office at 1 shilling and 2 pence from England and 8 pence from the Cape; the higher rates by the regular service were to be paid for regularity and speed. The first packet of that service, the Eclipse, Captain Burford, dropped down the Thames on the 20th of December. That sailing was still months off when the year’s worst wreck went onto the Agulhas beach. [3]
At noon on the 30th of May the English transport Arniston, Captain George Simpson, homeward from Ceylon, saw breakers through thick mist to leeward. Wind and current set her on; all attempts to get out to sea were fruitless. By four o’clock the position was so perilous that three anchors were dropped; two of the cables parted, and the captain resolved to run the ship ashore before nightfall as the only chance of saving those on board. She struck a long way from the water’s edge, about 25 miles north-east of Cape Agulhas. The wreck mattered because this coast still had no lighthouse, and because a homeward transport from Ceylon was as close as the Cape came that year to a single morning’s disaster. [3]
378 souls were on board, including 14 women and 14 children. Among the passengers were Major-General the viscount Molesworth and his lady; there were a good many invalided soldiers returning to England. When darkness set in not a single boat was ready. Before midnight the ship went to pieces, and of all on board only a carpenter and five sailors reached the land alive. They wandered the coast living on shellfish and food that washed ashore. [3]
On the 5th of June a young man named Daniel Swart, riding by chance to the beach from his father’s house a few miles distant, came across them and took them home, and made the disaster known to the government. A party of labourers was sent to search along the beach. No fewer than 340 bodies were found and buried; a considerable quantity of arrack in casks, ship’s furniture, and other articles that had drifted to land were secured. [3]
Lady Somerset and the Orphan House — September 1815
The governor had come out with his lady, two sons, and two daughters. The family circle was not long complete. Lady Somerset, a daughter of Viscount Courtenay, died suddenly on the 11th of September. Her remains were laid in a vault beneath the pavement of the Dutch reformed church, where the ground is so mixed with the ashes of the dead that it is like one great grave. The funeral, though the death notice in the Gazette said it was conducted with as much privacy as possible, was among the latest at the Cape attended by huilebalken, distinct from the tropsluiters who were paid 1 rixdollar each to lengthen the procession — because the nearer the corpse the greater the distinction, because a large train was a mark of respect, and because of the superstition that the last in the line would be the next to die. [3]
In Capetown there had long lived Margaretha Anna Heyning, widow of Hendrik Pieter Moller, blessed — as she wrote to a governor — with worldly goods, and believing it her Christian duty to use them for the poor. In September 1799 she put up a plan for an asylum for indigent aged women; a plot at the top of Long-street was granted; she named Jan Vlotman, Godlieb Willem Bruckner, Jan Bougard, and Gerhard Ewoud Overbeek as the first directors, and put 333 pounds into the fund herself. The building plan was later dropped for a monthly distribution to aged Christian women in want, without distinction of church or colour. A sum of 1200 pounds once given to Michiel Christiaan Vos of Tulbagh for a Roggeveld church came back when Vos resolved to leave after Amiens; she set it aside for the service of God, and in 1808 resolved to build an orphan asylum and endow it with that money. Caledon raised no objection to using the old foundation for an orphanage, and in July 1811 gave 5000 rixdollars from his private purse. Somerset approved, and in July 1814 directed the intestate-estates board to advance 8000 rixdollars on loan without interest, practically a grant. The opening in September 1815 was the year those gifts became a house. [3]
The building had been finished in October 1814, but it was only on the 26th of September that the South African orphan house was formally opened. The Reverend Serrurier, then bowed down with years, delivered his last public address on this occasion, and a collection of about 160 pounds sterling was made for the endowment fund. Management was vested in six directors, three Lutherans and three of the Dutch reformed church, the survivors to appoint a successor: George Willem Hoppe, Simon Stronk, Gabriel Jacobus Vos, Sebastiaan Leibbrandt, Frans de Necker, and Johan Wrensch, with Andries Richert as secretary. In her will and last codicil of the 6th of December 1814 Mrs Moller added a teacher’s residence and schoolroom in Hout-street facing Long-street, then leased to the Lutheran congregation, never to be used for other than religious purposes, and two slaves — one to be set free after 15 years, the other to be taught a trade and emancipated after 10 years on payment of 400 rixdollars. After bequests to relatives and 100 rixdollars to each of several charities, the residue was to be divided equally between the orphan house and the South African missionary society. Her contributions to the asylum came to about 6000 pounds; other donations to the date of establishment were about 1000. [3]
The same September that buried Lady Somerset and opened the orphan house, the secretary of state, looking at Napoleon on St Helena, directed Somerset to place a garrison on the principal island of Tristan da Cunha, which he stated had always been regarded as a dependency of the Cape government — a supposition the old Dutch examination of 1696 in the Geelvink did not bear out, for the islands had been left unoccupied as out of the track of commerce. An American named Lambert had settled on the principal island in December 1810 with two associates; Lambert and one companion drowned fishing in May 1812; Thomas Currie of Leghorn remained, later joined by John Tankard and John Talien. In 1815 it was reported at the Cape that these persons had abundance of vegetables, grain, and pigs, and expressed discontent only because they were without female companions. Before the secretary’s instruction reached Somerset, St Helena had already sent seamen to hoist the British flag; they found no one there except Currie. The Cape garrison itself was not yet at sea when the year closed. The order mattered because Napoleon on St Helena made every South Atlantic island a possible rescue base, and because the Cape was told the duty was already its own. [3]
Frederik Bezuidenhout — October 1815
In 1815 the bitter feeling caused by the prosecutions of the black circuit had not died out, and the discontent created by increased taxation was general, while many on the frontier held that the Khoikhoi regiment was stationed there more to rule them with a strong hand than to prevent an inroad of the Xhosa. The black circuit of 1812–1813 had been the special court sent through the country districts to try charges of ill-treatment of Khoikhoi servants; its summonses and sentences left a standing grievance among the eastern farmers. Matters were in this state when a charge of ill-treatment of a coloured servant was laid before the deputy landdrost of Graaff-Reinet against Frederik Cornelius Bezuidenhout, who lived in the valley of the Baviaans’ River on a farm adjoining ground that would later take another name. The servant was a Khoikhoi named Booy. The dispute had run for years: contracts, cattle, goods left behind, words in the yard. Booy had gone to Grahamstown and enlisted in the Cape Corps; he had come back and gone again. Bezuidenhout would not appear before the deputy landdrost. The charge mattered because a summons that a Baviaans’ River farmer would not obey was about to pull Khoikhoi soldiers onto a white man’s farm. [3] [4] [7]
On the 18th of March a messenger of justice came again. Having received the message, Bezuidenhout flew into a temper, shook his fist, and cursed: what did the landdrost think? what did Stockenstrom think? he did not care for his life just as much as for nothing. The messenger said he came not to quarrel, only to summon him, only tell whether he would appear or not. “I cannot appear.” On the 12th of September he was summoned once more; his answer was that it was impossible, because his bodily constitution did not permit it. The case came before the judges of circuit, W. D. Jennings and F. R. Bresler, on the 5th of October. Bezuidenhout was absent. The court noted the obstinate non-appearance and instructed the landdrost to cause him to be apprehended. Stockenstrom had only been full landdrost since May; he directed the messenger to apply to the fieldcornet of Baviaans’ River ward for assistance, and gave him a letter to Lieutenant Rousseau at the nearest post, requesting aid if required. [3] [4]
The messenger went to the fieldcornet, Philip Opperman, who declined to render any service: he knew Bezuidenhout was prepared to resist, and advised that the letter to the military officer be delivered. Rousseau, on receipt of the letter, furnished a party of Khoikhoi soldiers, who accompanied the messenger to the farm. As they approached the dwelling, Bezuidenhout fired at them, and then with two servants retired to a cave in a great rock overhanging the river, where he had previously stored a quantity of ammunition. The mouth of the cave could only be approached by one man at a time, but from the top of the rock the inmates could be heard and spoken to. He was repeatedly summoned to surrender, and persistently refused, and declared that he would never be seized alive. He was in the act of taking aim at a Khoikhoi soldier when he exposed the upper part of his body, and was shot dead by one of the party who had come to arrest him. [3] [4] [7]
The two companions gave themselves up. They were sent to Graaff-Reinet and tried on the 21st of October for resisting the officer of the court in the execution of his duty, and were acquitted on the ground that they were not free agents. Gerrit Bezuidenhout, brother of the dead man, with his four sons and a Khoikhoi, having heard the firing and thinking there was an attack by Xhosa or a like alarm, came in on horseback while the business was still on the rock. The dead body was brought out of the cave. [3] [4]
On the following day the relatives and friends assembled at the funeral. At the grave side Jan Bezuidenhout declared that he would never rest until the Khoikhoi corps was driven from the frontier and those who had brought the calamity upon his family were punished. Stockenstrom, Opperman, and Rousseau were named as specially deserving of vengeance. The others present expressed the warmest sympathy, and before the party dispersed an insurrection was planned. From the ravines and the forests the call went out that Khoikhoi soldiery, acting under orders from the British authorities, had killed a white man. The small group of mourners knew that resistance against the government by force of arms was a hopeless task; they saw before them the result of England’s Khoikhoi soldiers, and Jan, standing by that grave, gave expression to the anguish of his soul. [3] [4] [7]
A little later a meeting took place on another farm, when it was resolved that a deputation should proceed to Gaika’s kraal and endeavour to get assistance from him. Cornelis Faber, whose sister was Jan’s wife, with three or four others — among them, in one account, Frans Marais — immediately left on this mission. Shortly after they had gone, their object was made known to Opperman by one who was present at their discussions. The fieldcornet set out for Graaff-Reinet to inform Stockenstrom, but on the way learned that he, the landdrost, and Rousseau were held responsible for what had occurred. In consequence Opperman did not venture to return, but addressed a letter to Willem Krugel requesting him to act as fieldcornet. Toward the end of October Hendrik Prinsloo was already moving among the farms. What hung on Faber’s ride was whether a Xhosa chief would arm a white rising against the Cape Regiment. [3] [4] [7]
Slachter’s Nek — 18 November 1815
On the 9th of November the principal conspirators met at the house of Diederik Mulder. Besides Jan Bezuidenhout and Cornelis Faber there were Hendrik Prinsloo, son of old Marthinus the former leader of the nationals, Theunis de Klerk, Stephanus Botma, and Andries Meyer. There a letter was drawn up, addressed to an elderly farmer of influence named Jacobus Kruger, informing him of their plans and inviting him to join. It was written by Botma from Jan’s dictation and signed by Prinsloo, and given to Jan Mulder to take to Kruger. By the advice of his brother, at whose house the meeting was held though he did not take part in it, Mulder rode instead to Stephanus van Wyk, fieldcornet of the Tarka, and gave him the document. Van Wyk hastened with it to the deputy landdrost at Cradock, who forwarded copies to Major Fraser at Grahamstown and to Captain Andrews on the Fish; the original went to Stockenstrom at Graaff-Reinet. Van de Graaff also directed an order to Opperman to call out a commando to assist in preventing an inroad of the Xhosa; that order, because Opperman remained at Graaff-Reinet, came into Krugel’s hands. The letter mattered because a paper meant for Kruger became, within hours, a warrant in three offices. [3] [4]
The authorities, thus acquainted with the design, took prompt measures. A patrol went out from Captain Andrews’s post, and Hendrik Prinsloo was surprised, arrested, and conveyed a prisoner to the post on Willem van Aardt’s farm, while his associates were still unsuspicious of danger. The intelligence of his arrest, instead of spreading dismay, caused them to push on with greater vigour. Gaika had declined to assist when first requested; Faber now returned to the kraal and offered the whole of the Zuurveld in exchange for the valley of the Kat river and aid against the Khoikhoi soldiers. Gaika was too wary to consent, and replied that he must see how the wind blew before he placed himself by a fire. [3] [4] [7]
Notwithstanding the failure, on the 12th of November Abraham Botma, by order of Jan Bezuidenhout, sent an intimation from house to house in the Tarka that Gaika had promised help, inviting the burghers to join and threatening those who declined with being left unprotected to the mercy of the Xhosa. Theunis de Klerk was particularly busy. Meantime Krugel, acting for Opperman, in accordance with Van de Graaff’s order, called a number of farmers together at the homestead of Daniel Erasmus to resist a Xhosa invasion. When they assembled, to a man they declared themselves on the side of the government; but on the following evening Theunis de Klerk, Jan Bezuidenhout, and Nicholas Prinsloo appeared among them and persuaded them to assist in obtaining the release of Hendrik Prinsloo from the custody of Khoikhoi soldiers. [3] [4]
On the 14th of November Krugel’s commando with the original conspirators — in all about 50 men — marched under Jan’s command to Captain Andrews’s post, and when close to it sent a Khoikhoi to ask that Hendrik Prinsloo be surrendered. At daybreak that morning the post had been reinforced by burghers under Willem Nel, and Major Fraser had arrived and assumed command. He sent the messenger back to say that he wished a burgher to come and speak to him, his object being to induce the infatuated men to proceed no further. Nicholas Prinsloo therefore went to the post, but instead of discussing calmly, in threatening language demanded the release of his brother. Fraser refused. Jan thought Nel might be induced to change sides and solicited an interview; Nel visited the insurgents, was desired to call out the whole of the burghers of Uitenhage and be guided by their opinion, declined, and did his utmost to persuade them to abandon the project. It was with difficulty that he got away; some of the party wished to detain him by force. When Nel left, Jan formed the insurgents into a ring and required Krugel, in the name of his commando, to take an oath of fidelity to their cause. The oath was taken, some of Krugel’s men raising their hats, others repeating the word yes, some doing neither. A letter was then forwarded to Fraser directing him not to send Prinsloo away, and informing him that they would return within four days. After this the band retired, and some proceeded to different parts of the frontier to try to obtain assistance. [3] [4]
On the 17th of November the band marched to Slachter’s Nek, near the junction of the Baviaans’ and Fish rivers, which had been agreed upon as the place where those who had gone for aid should bring any recruits they could engage. During the preceding night Cuyler, landdrost of Uitenhage and military commandant of the frontier, had reached Andrews’s post, and he now opened communication with the object of inducing the men to surrender. Nel again went to them and urged them to desist, in vain. The heemraad Barend de Klerk, a man of exemplary character, went to his brother Theunis and conjured him by their mother, who was then on her deathbed, to abandon the insurgent cause, but to no effect. [3] [4] [7]
On the 18th of November Cuyler marched to Slachter’s Nek with 30 burghers under Nel and 40 dragoons under Fraser. When within rifle shot of the insurgent band the force was halted, and communications were again opened to prevent bloodshed, with the same result as before. Preparations for an advance were then made, but just at that moment several men were seen riding up from the opposite direction and joining Jan’s party. They were Faber and his associates from Gaika’s kraal, Abraham Botma from Zwagershoek, and Andries Klopper from Bruintjes Hoogte, all bringing intelligence of absolute failure. Five of Krugel’s men had already abandoned the cause and secretly returned to their homes. The others for the first time realised the utter hopelessness of resistance. Krugel, exclaiming “in God’s name let me go down and receive my punishment,” strode toward Nel’s commando. He was followed by 17 others — Nicholas and Jan Prinsloo, sons of old Marthinus and brothers of the prisoner at Andrews’s post; Willem Prinsloo, son of Nicholas; Joachim, Willem, and Nicholas Prinsloo, nephews of old Marthinus; Hendrik and Jacobus Klopper; Philip, Christoffel, and Jan Botha; Hendrik and Cornelis van der Nest; Pieter Erasmus; Jan Bronkhorst; Thomas Dreyer; and Adriaan Nel. These all laid down their arms and were made prisoners, except the second Willem Prinsloo, who was allowed to go free. The others fled in various directions, but 15 surrendered shortly afterwards, among them Theunis de Klerk. What hung on the 18th of November was not a battle but a collapse: Gaika had not come, the Tarka had not risen, and the ridge emptied itself into a drostdy gaol. [3] [4]
Winterberg — 29 November 1815
The most desperate, headed by Jan Bezuidenhout, fled toward Xhosa country. For some days the direction of their flight was not known; at length it was discovered, and they were pursued by Nel with 22 burghers and Fraser with 100 of the Cape corps. On the 29th of November at the Winterberg Abraham Botma was surprised and arrested, and Andries Meyer gave himself up. The others were a little farther in advance. A party of Khoikhoi soldiers under Lieutenant McInnes made a circuit and posted themselves some distance ahead. The pursuit mattered because the men who would not come down the nek were taking their families toward Gaika, and the Cape Regiment was sent to cut them off. [3]
Four waggons, containing the families of Jan Bezuidenhout, Cornelis Faber, Stephanus Botma, and Abraham Botma, approached the place where the soldiers were concealed and outspanned almost within musket shot. As soon as the oxen were loose, Faber, on horseback and armed, and Stephanus Botma, unarmed and on foot, went to a stream close by to get water. Just as they reached it, a band of Khoikhoi soldiers under Ensign McKay rose up from an ambush only 30 paces distant. Faber turned his horse and set off at full speed, but as the soldiers fired at him he returned their shot until he was wounded and disabled, when he was seized. Botma was run down and captured. [3]
The soldiers now approached the waggons and called to Jan Bezuidenhout to surrender. He was an illiterate frontier farmer, whose usual residence was a wattle-and-daub structure hardly deserving the name of a house, and who knew nothing of refinement after the English town pattern. His code contained at least one principle common to the noblest minds in the race to which he belonged: to die rather than do that which is degrading. For him it would have been unutterably degrading to have surrendered to the Khoikhoi soldiers. Instead of doing so he fired at them. His wife, Martha Faber, a true South African country woman, stepped to the side of her husband, saying “let us die together,” and as he discharged one gun loaded another for his use. His son, a boy only 14 years of age, took an active part in the skirmish. [3] [7]
One Khoikhoi soldier was killed. Then Jan received two severe wounds, from which he died in a few hours, and both his wife and his son were disabled and seized. 10 guns and about 40 pounds of powder were found in the waggons. The rising that had been sworn at Frederik’s grave was over as a force in the field. [3]
Trial Opens — 16 December 1815
The prisoners — 39 in number — were sent to Uitenhage for trial. On the 16th of December they were brought before a special commission of the high court of justice, consisting of the judges W. Hiddingh and P. Diemel. Beelaerts van Blokland was secretary of the court, and Landdrost Cuyler was prosecutor. The prisoners admitted the facts as here related, and the evidence taken was conclusive. Judgment itself was not delivered in this calendar; the year closed with the commission sitting on an admitted rising, and with the governor in Capetown still to receive whatever sentences the court would send up. What hung on the 16th of December was not the rope but the record: the facts were in, the sentences were not. [3]
Old Marthinus Prinsloo, who had taken a leading part in the national movement 16 years earlier, was still living. Though his sons, nephews, and grandsons were active in the disturbance, he was not implicated in it. The farm Naude’s River, adjoining the Somerset estate at the Boschberg, still stood in his name when the year closed; what the governor would do with that lease was not yet posted. Among the men in the Uitenhage tronk was Frans Marais, the Batavian deserter who had gone with Faber toward Gaika. Willem Krugel, who had taken the oath in the name of his commando and then walked down the nek, sat among the 39. Martha Faber, widow of Jan, was among them too. [3]