Boer History1816 at the Cape of Good Hope: the Hanging at Slachter’s Nek, the Eclipse, and Williams on the Kat
Sentences — 22 January 1816
Lord Charles Henry Somerset governed the Cape from the 6th of April 1814. He was a tory lieutenant-general, not a man to sit as a mere patron, and the eastern rising of 1815 was still on his table when this year opened. Frederik Bezuidenhout had been shot at the Baviaans’ River in October; the band had sworn on 18 November at Slachter’s Nek; Jan Bezuidenhout had died at the Winterberg on the 29th of November. The prisoners — 39 — sat in the Uitenhage tronk. What hung on January was not another landing in Table Bay but whether a special court would hang the leaders, and whether the governor would let the rope stand. [3]
A special commission of the high court of justice had been sitting at Uitenhage since the 16th of December. The judges were W. Hiddingh and P. Diemel; G. Beelaerts van Blokland was secretary, and landdrost Jacob Glen Cuyler was prosecutor. They had arrived on the 14th of December under a warrant of the 27th of November to try the prisoners charged with the late rising. The ordinary circuit of F. R. Bressler and W. D. Jennings had been on the spot when most of the Slachter’s Nek people were taken, and had begun a preliminary examination, then been sent on to George so that the public service should not wait. The conduct of 47 persons was thought necessary to investigate. Some had joined by order of the fieldcornet and had separated as soon as they saw what the rising was; others had been pulled in by deceit and compulsion. Those were let out of the tronk, but forbidden to leave Uitenhage until the whole investigation was complete. [3] [4]
Stephanus Botma — the scribe whose talent for writing had, in 1800, taken him toward the place of execution at Capetown with a paper bearing the word Forger — escaped from prison during the trials and fled to the farther side of the Fish. A patrol from Van Aardt’s was soon on his track and recaptured him. The prisoners admitted the facts; the evidence taken on oath was conclusive. The special commission sat nearly 6 weeks. On the 22nd of January judgment was delivered. The two judges who pronounced the sentences on these Dutchmen were themselves Dutchmen, and the whole procedure followed Roman-Dutch law — the law of the colony. That mattered because the rope, if it stood, would not be an English court-martial’s work but a Cape sentence sent up to an English governor for his fiat. [3] [4]
All except Martha Faber, widow of Jan Bezuidenhout, were to be taken to the place on Van Aardt’s farm where Willem Krugel had taken the oath in the name of the men under his command, and there Hendrik Prinsloo, Cornelis Faber, Stephanus Botma, Abraham Botma, Theunis de Klerk, and Willem Krugel were to suffer death by hanging. The remaining 32, after witnessing the execution, were to undergo punishments ranging from banishment for life to imprisonment for one month or a fine of 50 rixdollars. Frans Marais, once a soldier of the Batavian Republic, was to be fastened to the gallows with a rope round his neck during the execution of the others, and then banished from the colony for life. The bodies of the first five were to be buried under the gallows; Krugel’s body, if the sentence stood, might be placed in a coffin and removed by his friends. 8, among whom was P. R. Erasmus, who had rendered good service at the Winterberg, were acquitted. The place of hanging was not Capetown: it was the oath-ground itself, so that the ridge where the band had sworn would also be the ridge where the law answered. [3] [4] [7]
The sentences followed the letter of the law; but it was generally supposed that the governor would use his power of mitigation to prevent death, as no blood had actually been shed by any of the prisoners. Banishment would have been equally effective as a warning, and it seemed to most people that something was due to the burghers who had aided the government, and who were afterwards horrified at the thought that they had helped to pursue their deluded countrymen to death. Of those sentenced to death, Krugel’s case seemed particularly harsh. He had been tricked into his position, and there was abundant evidence that his actions arose from want of resolution and means to withstand designing men. As soon as the sentence was passed, Cuyler wrote to the governor and interceded: from his former knowledge of this man, who had faithfully discharged the toilsome duties of the late Xhosa commando, and who was formerly one of Cuyler’s people, his character was that of a good and mild man, but of that easy temper too liable to be influenced. When the sentences of the Dutch judges came before the English governor for his fiat, they were in many cases modified. Krugel’s death was commuted, first to transportation for life, then to a prohibition to live in George, Uitenhage, or Graaff-Reinet. The banishment of Adriaan Engelbrecht and Andries Meyer and the imprisonments of N. B. Prinsloo, David Malan, and P. W. Prinsloo on Robben Island were changed to the same prohibition. 16 were to witness the execution, though not to be exposed in a disgracing manner, and then to be remitted all further punishment. The governor’s fiat stood on the other five. What hung on that fiat was the difference between a warning and five graves on the Fish. [3] [4] [7]
Van Aardt’s Farm — 9 March 1816
The date fixed for the execution — Saturday the 9th of March — drew near. There had as yet been no mitigation of the five death sentences. Large numbers of colonists still hoped that the authorities would grant a reprieve. That hope was banished when the governor’s fiat was made public. On the spot in the open and undulating country where Jan Bezuidenhout had compelled Krugel and others to take the oath, a gallows was erected. At that place on Saturday morning a large concourse of people assembled. 300 soldiers stood by; Cuyler in command; Andries Stockenstrom, landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, the officers from Van Aardt’s, and all the fieldcornets and inhabitants of the adjacent parts who had been ordered present. The executioner, who lived at George, had brought the fatal implements of his office. They must have been inadequate for the present purpose. The hanging was set on the oath-ground so that the ridge would answer the oath in public, with the eastern landdrosts watching and a line of soldiers to keep the crowd. [3] [4] [7]
The Reverend Herold of George attended them in their last moments. After he had prayed for them at the place of execution, they asked to sing a hymn jointly with their late companions and friends; permission being granted, their voices were clear and firm, and the singing extremely impressive. After this Stephanus Botma — whose ancestor of the same name was the first burgher in South Africa — addressed those present, advising them to be cautious in their behaviour and take warning from his fate. To outward appearance they were all perfectly resigned to die. Hendrik Prinsloo, Cornelis Faber, Stephanus Botma, Abraham Botma, and Theunis de Klerk advanced. Around the scaffold stood their friends and relatives; ranged in a separate small circle, the 32 sentenced to witness; tied to the gallows-pole by a rope round his throat, Frans Marais. The governor had declined to mitigate that part of Marais’s sentence, and it was carried out. [3] [4] [7]
When the drop fell, four of the ropes snapped — notwithstanding a precaution of having the rope doubled — and the condemned men rose from the ground unharmed. They all four got up; one attempted to leave the spot and rush toward the place where the collegie of landdrost and heemraden were; they all four spoke. The great crowd standing round, regarding this as an intervention of God, raised a cry for mercy. Some of the spectators ran to Cuyler, soliciting pardon, fancying that it was in his power to grant it. He was powerless to grant it. He could not describe the distressed countenances of the inhabitants sentenced to witness the execution. The executioner had come with rope for only one. Cuyler was put to his shift to get cord, but none was to be bought; he was obliged to use some that was in the government store, which although of sound appearance proved rotten. 300 soldiers guarded the scaffold and prevented confusion until all was over. The scaffold was set up again, and the five were hanged. The prisoners one and all died fully resigned to their fate. What hung on the snapped ropes was not a reprieve: Cuyler had no power to stop a fiat already posted, and the law was carried out on the same ground before the same crowd. [3] [4] [7]
Friends and relatives asked for the bodies, that they might have honourable and Christian burial. The sentence had been that the bodies should hang at the scaffold and then be buried at the place of execution. This was done. The place where the scaffold stood was part of the farm of an old man named Van Aardt. After the execution he asked Cuyler to let the gallows be removed from the ground; Cuyler refused. Early the following morning Van Aardt’s sons proceeded to cut down the scaffold and remove it. When they came to the grave in the grey dawn of that March morning, they found a hand and arm projecting from the ground and raised toward the sky. It was the hand of Theunis de Klerk. A very thin layer of loose soil only had been used to cover this arm; when rigor mortis set in, the muscles had stiffened and contracted. [4] [7]
The remaining prisoners were admitted to mercy. 7 of them — Willem Krugel, Adriaan Engelbrecht, Andries Meyer, Nicholas Prinsloo son of Marthinus, David Malan, Pieter Prinsloo son of Nicholas, and Martha Faber — were banished for life from the districts of Graaff-Reinet, Uitenhage, and George. 5 — Andries van Dyk, Christoffel and Abraham Botha, Pieter Delport, and Theunis Mulder — had the choice of 4 months or 200 rixdollars. 1 — Hendrik Liebenberg — had the choice of 2 months or 100 rixdollars. 4 — Adriaan and Leendert Labuschagne, Barend de Lange, and Gerrit Bezuidenhout — had the choice of 1 month or 50 rixdollars. 16 — Andries, Hendrik, and Jacobus Klopper, Hendrik and Cornelis van der Nest, Philip and Jan Botha, Willem Prinsloo son of Nicholas, Jan Prinsloo son of Marthinus, Joachim and Nicholas Prinsloo nephews of Marthinus, Jan Bronkhorst, Thomas Dreyer, Pieter Erasmus, Adriaan Nel, and Frans van Dyk — were released without other punishment than witnessing the execution of those who were hanged. About 3 months after, those who had escaped to the woods and mountains in the earlier stages, among whom were the unwilling accomplices Zacharias Prinsloo and Volkert Delport, came from their hiding and surrendered. They were sent to Capetown for trial and after a short examination were pardoned. Those set free from further punishment beyond having to leave the eastern districts migrated toward the northern parts of the then district of Tulbagh, to the tract named the Gouph under the Nieuwveld mountains, where they were soon joined by many of their relatives and old associates. [3] [4]
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. Nevertheless the governor directed that the lease of his farm Naude’s River, adjoining the Somerset estate at the Boschberg, should be cancelled, and that he should remove to either of the districts Swellendam or Tulbagh. He was paid 3000 rixdollars for the buildings, and as the farm was well supplied with water it was added to the ground under Dr Mackrill’s charge. It was first decided to establish a military post there; some buildings were constructed and a company of the 83rd was, for a time, spoken of. No injustice, in the government’s accounting, was done to him: the opstal was valued and the money paid. What the cancellation did was to take a Prinsloo name off the Boschberg and fold the water into the governor’s farm. [3] [4]
The Eclipse and the Slave Register — April 1816
In 1815 a mail packet service had been established between England and the Cape. Fast-sailing vessels were employed by the imperial government to leave the Thames monthly, and to convey mails, passengers, and light cargo to the Cape Colony, Mauritius, and India. The postage on letters was fixed at 3 shillings and 6 pence for every quarter of an ounce, and on newspapers at 3 pence an ounce. People were not prevented from sending letters through the post-office from England to the Cape by other conveyances, though the charge was only 1 shilling and 2 pence, and from the Cape to England only 8 pence the quarter ounce. The higher rates by the regular service were to be paid for regularity and speed. The first mail packet that sailed from London was the Eclipse, Captain Burford, which dropped down the Thames on the 20th of December, and after touching at Madeira and Rio de Janeiro arrived in Table Bay on the 13th of April — 114 days. Her passage was not encouraging to those who looked for rapid communication between England and South Africa. What it did do was to put a monthly line on the books where news from Europe had, since the refreshment station, come as the fleets came. [3]
The paper rixdollar, which from 1806 to 1810 had averaged 3 shillings and 6 pence, and from 1811 to 1815 2 shillings and 6 pence, stood in the years now opening at about 1 shilling and 10 pence. 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. Every other civil servant was paid in rixdollars and received the same number whether the exchange was high or low. Peace in Europe after the Napoleonic wars did not ease the colony’s books: war demand fell away, and the paper that had to buy imported goods bought less. The sinking note mattered on the eastern frontier, whose currency was almost entirely paper, because a fine of 50 rixdollars and a salary posted in rixdollars were no longer the same silver they had been in 1806. [4]
On the 26th of April a proclamation enforced a complete system of registration of all slaves. Every proprietor was bound to give accurate information as to names, sexes, ages, occupations, births and deaths, and all details respecting sales, transfers, and inheritances. No person unless thus registered could be regarded as a slave, and any failure to comply was regarded as manumission. A registry office, with an officer called the Protector of Slaves, was opened in each district, with a head office in Capetown. The object was that it should be impossible for the number to be increased except by births, for those who had been manumitted to be re-enslaved, or prize negroes to lapse into a state of slavery, and that there should be no doubt as to who were slaves and who not. In this year 35 slaves were manumitted in the colony. Emancipation had long been known at the Cape: some owners liberated from kindness; in many other cases slaves were allowed to accumulate property by industry and good behaviour and then to purchase their freedom. It was not always a boon, as at times it was convenient to get rid of an old slave no longer useful; hence regulations compelling the master to guarantee that a slave on being liberated should not become destitute or a burden to the public. What 1816 put on the books was not abolition but a register: a name, a sex, an age, and a district office that could say whether a person was property or not. [4]
In Capetown and other towns a society collected funds among the colonists as well as in Europe, and with those funds purchased the freedom of young girls. The slow working of such methods did not satisfy those in England who were preparing, year after year, further measures. The register of the 26th of April and the 35 manumissions of the year were Cape work, posted while the Eclipse’s bags were still being sorted on the jetty. [4] [7]
Williams on the Kat — June 1816
In June a mission station was formed on the Kat river, about 2 miles above the later village of Fort Beaufort and about 15 miles from where Gaika was then living, by a party of people from Bethelsdorp. The Reverend Read, after visiting various chiefs, selected the site, which was then occupied by an evangelist named Joseph Williams, with his wife and child, Jan Tshatshu, son of the Amantinde captain, with his wife, and 6 Khoikhoi families. Williams was an illiterate, but well-meaning and zealous man. On the 11th of June frontier orders authorised him to communicate with the colony through the officer commanding at Van Aardt’s post and to give passes to Xhosa who should go to the colony for provisions or other legitimate purposes. The station stood in Xhosa country, not in the colony; its people would have to live by Gaika’s protection and by whatever the passes from Van Aardt’s would bear. That mattered because a missionary on the Kat was also a post beyond the Fish, in the country of the chief the government treated as its interlocutor. [3] [4]
On the return of Read’s expedition to the colony, two of the Khoikhoi gave information to Major Fraser on matters which seemed wholly to have escaped Read’s observation. They stated that at the kraals of Gaika, Kassa, Kratta, Foonah, Habana, Nqeno, and Makana they had seen many stolen cattle and horses. At Kratta’s place they saw two guns which had been taken from two soldiers murdered by Xhosa shortly before at De Bruin’s Drift. At this same place they witnessed a quarrel between David Stuurman and Antonie, one of Kratta’s headmen. They heard Stuurman say to Antonie: if I had murdered Stockenstrom as you have done, and carried his buttons as you do — alluding to the buttons on Antonie’s kaross — I should be as great a man as you and have it in my power to order silence or otherwise as well as you. There was little wonder that they had seen such a wholesale distribution of colonial cattle and horses. The depredation returns for the last quarter of 1815 showed that 676 cattle and 54 horses had been driven off and one farmer killed; by the end of the first quarter of 1816 still more cattle, to the number of 278, had been stolen. [4]
About this time too there were unmistakable indications that Xhosa were attempting, very cautiously, to encroach again upon the Zuurveld. Many kraals were formed near the banks of the Fish on their own side. From these they crossed the river, and aided by the thick and tangled bush, almost impenetrable to any except themselves, they sallied forth and pounced upon stock as opportunity offered. One party managed to get as far west as the Bushman’s River and captured 91 head of cattle; they were immediately followed by a patrol, when 83 were recaptured and two of the thieves shot. These attempts again became common along the whole length of the frontier. Gaika’s chief interpreter, a man named Nootka (or Nooka), frequently visited Grahamstown and other military posts on business from Gaika, perhaps bringing with him a few cattle or horses which Gaika had obtained from the thieves and sent back as testimony of his good faith. It was noticed, however, that after these visits cattle and horses very soon disappeared from the places he had visited or passed through. Suspicion arose that Nootka’s, and perhaps also Gaika’s, chief object in these expeditions was observation. From this year, although there was nominally peace, commandos were frequently in the field to recover stolen cattle. All the Zuurveld was now almost entirely uninhabited by white colonists, whose stock were not safe in this region. [4] [7]
In this year Makana, son of Balala, was so powerful that the missionaries of the London society were for a time doubtful whether it would not be more advantageous to treat with him than with the chiefs of the great house. He was not born to high rank. His mother was held in repute as a wise woman, acquainted with mystical uses of plants; her son inherited her ability, and to the knowledge possessed by his countrymen added a good deal acquired from white people, especially from Dr Vanderkemp, one of whose addresses upon the resurrection of the dead, heard at Bethelsdorp, left a lifelong impression. He announced that he was in communication with the spirit world. Before his time the corpses of common people were not buried by the Xhosa; those seen to be dying were usually removed to the border of a forest or a lonely glen. Makana gave instructions that the dead should be buried in the ground, and announced that the displeasure of the spirit world would be visited upon those who disobeyed. His adherents complied; their example was followed by others. For superstitious reasons many persons did not like to pronounce his name, and among such persons he was called Nxele, the left-handed one; in intercourse with colonists they used the Dutch equivalent Linksch, which English officials on the frontier corrupted into Lynx, and by this name he is known in the colonial records. Williams’s station on the Kat thus opened in a year when a prophet stood between the chiefs and the spirit world, and when stolen cattle were as visible at the kraals as the 6 Khoikhoi families were on the river. [3]
Grahamstown and Uitenhage — 1816
The public sale of erven on both sides of Grahamstown’s main street — now High Street — had been held on the 8th of May 1815. The chief condition was that a good house should be built on the proper line for the street within 18 months: not less than 30 feet long, 13 feet deep, and 8 feet high, walls of stone, brick, or mud, the purchaser failing to forfeit all right. The prices realised had been far in advance of those first intended. Lot 10, Carel Giese, 80 rixdollars; 20, Pieter Retief, 195; 21, E. Enslin, 181; 22, Lieutenant Ledingham, 195; 23, Lieutenant-Colonel Prentice, 300; 24, Major Fraser, 170; 26, Ensign van der Riet, 120; 27, Prentice again, 100; 28, Gert Brockhuisen, 95; 29, Fred. Mocke, 61; 31, Piet Retief, 50. The title-deeds to these were issued on the 7th of June of this year. The numbers of the erven were those still adopted on the municipal plan: on the right-hand side of High Street, looking toward the Drostdy Gate, and beginning at the Cathedral end, odd numbers from 15 to 33; on the left, even numbers from 14 to 32. The few small houses erected in fulfilment of the conditions gave some semblance of a street. The titles mattered because the 18 months from the May sale ran in this calendar, and a lot without a house on the line was forfeit. [4]
All progress with the public buildings entirely ceased. Buchenroder had also obtained the contract for the public buildings in Uitenhage and was devoting all his time and attention to these. Grahamstown was therefore neglected. In April Major Fraser reported that the tronk and messenger’s house were still not beyond the outer walls. The military huts of June 1812, put up with a view to only a year’s occupation, had in 1815 still been standing and in use, but had become so dilapidated as to be beyond repair. It had been decided to remove the camp and to erect more permanent quarters about 1.5 miles from the old one; upon that spot substantial brick and mortar barracks were built, afterwards known as Fort England Barracks. The commonage of Grahamstown was fixed at 2000 morgen. What this year had at Grahamstown was unfinished walls, a street of small houses, and a new camp a mile and a half off. [4]
The village of Uitenhage was more fortunate. The prison, the building which seems to have been considered the first necessity in these eastern towns, had been completed in October 1812. Tenders for the public offices — the court house and houses for the secretary and messengers — had been called for at the same time as those for Grahamstown. Buchenroder’s offer was accepted: the court house 8000 rixdollars, the secretary’s house 6000, the messenger’s house 5000, a total of 21000 — about 1570 pounds. This sum was part of 500000 rixdollars allotted by the British government for the erection of public buildings throughout the colony, and was issued through the Lombard Bank. To raise the money for payment of the interest on the portion granted to Uitenhage, a tax of 1 shilling per muid was put upon the salt taken from the natural salt-pan near Bethelsdorp, and also 1 rixdollar on every waggon-load of wood cut in the district. Buchenroder, perhaps on account of the larger sum at stake, devoted all the energies of himself and of the few available workmen to the Uitenhage buildings, and completed them satisfactorily in the specified time, namely by October of this year. [4]
An area of 3000 morgen, measured in the form of a square and containing the public buildings, was to be considered the commonage of Uitenhage. None of it, except small building plots near the drostdy, was to be granted to individuals applying for it. It was hoped thereby to establish more places and to incite the inhabitants to actual cultivation within a reasonable circuit around the drostdy. On the outskirts of the commonage, grants of land were to be made on as reduced a scale as possible. Cradock, in fixing these quantities, had said that the extent of these commonages might appear too large, but it was really necessary for the sustenance of the oxen and various other cattle that might be brought to rendezvous at these places; without such accommodation, and were the ground to be disposed of, all the desired communication and resort would be frustrated. The inhabitants of Uitenhage had long felt the want of a church and resident clergyman. They had voluntarily subscribed 4000 rixdollars and erected a building which was to answer as a temporary church until government could provide something more adequate; this building functioned as a church and also as a schoolroom. So the year that hanged five men at Van Aardt’s also put title-deeds into Grahamstown hands on the 7th of June and finished Uitenhage’s offices in October — one village with a street of small houses and unfinished walls, the other with a court house paid from salt and wood. [4]
Somerset Farm — 1816
At the Boschberg the establishment founded the year before and named the Somerset farm had given up the tobacco trial. Mackrill’s attention was devoted entirely to the supply of provisions for the troops stationed on the frontier. All the supplies required could not be, or rather were not, produced upon the farm itself; hence recourse was had to purchase from the farmers in both districts. These purchases were made so as to admit of a profit to the farm. The government farm, in fact, became a middleman between the producer, the farmer, and the consumer, the military. This very soon created considerable dissatisfaction among the farmers, who, seeing no reason why they should not supply the troops direct, as heretofore, at the better prices, refused to sell to the farm. In consequence of this, it was announced on the 3rd of October that the government had taken upon itself the supply of the troops on the frontier districts from its own farm, as far as its resources would allow, and declared that His Excellency was determined to visit with the severest penalties any person who should presume to throw obstacles in the way of the government agent in furnishing the supplies, or who should not be found ready to lend the most effectual aid to a measure of such importance to the troops and the colony. The order mattered because a farm under the governor’s name was now not only a commissariat depot but a forced buyer, and a farmer who would not sell to it faced the severest penalties. [3] [4]
Mackrill was not long in discovering that the magnificent schemes of his visions were not in the least likely to be realised, and further that he himself was less competent to carry the governor’s views to a successful issue than a man of more ordinary ability and reasonable aspirations. He was entirely unable to manage or exercise any personal influence over the heterogeneous collection of people which formed his working community. Discord, leading to open mutiny, soon arose and threatened to kill the enterprise almost at its birth. The blacksmith, a discontented and turbulent fellow, was the leading spirit. He very soon became dissatisfied, refused to work, and openly defied the doctor. The baker, sympathising with the blacksmith and believing himself also to be badly treated, refused to bake. Shortage of bread reacted upon the Khoikhoi soldiers. Their sergeant, probably arguing that no bread meant no work, told his men to take no orders from Mackrill and to do no work. The doctor reported these men to Captain Andrews at Van Aardt’s post, but received for answer that Andrews could not punish men for misconduct in a civil capacity, and that the men had been detached to Somerset not for the purpose of being employed as farm labourers, but for its protection. [4]
This mutinous conduct gradually spread to all, until, as Mackrill said in his report to government: all the influence I formerly possessed over the soldiery is totally vanished and every man does as he pleases, well knowing they have no punishment to fear. By April the accumulation of troubles had well-nigh overwhelmed him. In that month he wrote to Lord Charles Somerset: I am, my Lord, growing old very fast and do not possess that activity which is so indispensable for the promotion of Your Excellency’s views. He asked to be relieved of his charge and recommended Robert Hart as a fit and proper person to succeed him. The request was noted; the farm remained Mackrill’s through the rest of this calendar, with Naude’s River’s water now added to the ground under his charge, and with the October proclamation hanging over any farmer who would not sell to the middleman. What hung on the mutiny was the commissariat of the Fish posts: a government farm that could not bake its own bread still claimed the right to buy, at its own profit, whatever the neighbouring farmers produced. [4]
Tristan da Cunha and Griquatown — 1816
On the 19th of January, three days before the sentences at Uitenhage, the two sons of Pieter Brits, a farmer living near the Baviaans’ River, were murdered by Xhosa, and shortly afterwards a Khoikhoi woman with her baby on her back was wantonly speared to death. The increasing number of these outrages, and the general disquietude so usual in the districts of Uitenhage and Graaff-Reinet, combined with a desire to investigate the causes as well as the reasons of the antecedent failures in maintaining order, determined the governor to visit the East — a journey that belongs to the next calendar. Other parts of the border did not afford much more security for cattle. Large numbers of farms were either unoccupied or in possession of Xhosa invaders. What this year had on the Fish, besides the hanging and the Kat station, was a line of posts that still could not keep a woman and a child alive on the Baviaans’. [4] [7]
North of the Orange, Griquatown stood as a public danger in the eyes of the colonial government. The freedom of the place from all government control, and the life so congenial to Khoikhoi and slaves, made it a centre of attraction, so that desertions from service were frequent in all parts of the colony and thus increased its population. The illicit traffic in guns and ammunition increased while the prospects of doing any good as a missionary station diminished. Anderson, writing to Stockenstrom in January, reported that many of his people were absenting themselves from the station, visiting the frontier and returning with guns, and he feared their intentions were bad. Complaints of the farmers at the loss of their servants were brought before Stockenstrom, and through him to the government. In reply Anderson acknowledged that he had lost every shadow of authority over the people and expressed his anxiety at their disorderly conduct. He said there were 1500 men capable of bearing arms, of whom 300 possessed guns. Instigated by Coenraad Buys, they had made attacks on distant tribes and returned with large herds of cattle. The place, as it was put, fell directly on the eye of every bad-intentioned person as a proper instrument to be used in a wicked design. That mattered because a station beyond the Orange, free of Cape control, was drawing servants and guns out of the colony while the Fish still counted stolen cattle by the hundred. [4]
Far from the Fish, the secretary of state had in September 1815 directed Somerset to place a garrison upon the principal island of Tristan da Cunha, which he stated had always been regarded as a dependency of the Cape government. That supposition was incorrect. In 1696 a little vessel named the Geelvink had been sent from Holland to examine the islands; she brought to the Cape a report that they were three in number, difficult of access and barren in appearance, though grass, trees, and vast numbers of seabirds so tame that they could be captured by hand were found upon them. They were out of the track of commerce, and therefore were not occupied by the Dutch. During the war of 1812–1814 between Great Britain and the United States, privateers cruising against British commerce off the Cape had refitted at Tristan, though this was not suspected until the conclusion of peace. In December 1810 an American named Lambert with two associates settled on the principal island; in May 1812 Lambert and one companion were drowned, leaving Thomas Currie. Before the instructions reached Somerset, the authorities at St Helena sent a party of seamen to hoist the British flag and occupy the island. This party found no one there except Currie. In October of this year Captain Josias Cloete, previously of the 21st light dragoons, with a company of infantry left the Cape for Tristan da Cunha. He took with him such articles as would be needed to form an establishment, and a stock of horses, horned cattle, and sheep, intended for breeding purposes. After a very stormy passage, during which he lost all his live stock, on the 28th of November he reached his destination. What 1816 posted was a Cape company on Tristan, sent so that the islands should not be used as a base for the rescue of Napoleon from St Helena. What the imperial government would later resolve about the islands is another year’s business. [3]
On the 16th of December the dual office by which the secretary of a drostdy had acted as the only notary public and as vendue master — responsible to government for the vendue taxes, deducting for himself 2 per cent on immovable and half a per cent on movable property — was abolished. The eastern districts, whose currency was almost entirely paper, felt both the sinking note and the change in how a sale was posted. The abolition mattered because a drostdy secretary had been the man who both wrote the deed and took the government’s cut on the auction; from this December those two functions no longer sat in one chair. [4]
In the Netherlands Jan Willem Janssens, who had laid down his last civil post the year before and taken the Grand Cross of the Military William Order, was in this year ennobled with the inclusion of all his descendants, and thus became Jonkheer Jan Willem Janssens. He was the last Dutch governor of the Cape: he had signed away the colony after Papendorp in 1806 and sailed in the Bellona on the 6th of March. The title of 1816 was a Netherlands honour, not a Cape event; it closed his public name in the same calendar in which a British governor at the Cape confirmed five deaths on the Fish and sent a company to Tristan. [9]