Boer History1818 at the Cape of Good Hope: Fraser’s Commando, Amalinde, and Brereton
Fraser’s Commando — January 1818
Major G. S. Fraser was deputy landdrost at Grahamstown, the British village that had grown around the eastern headquarters since 1812. The order he still held when this year opened was dated the 5th of December 1817. Lord Charles Henry Somerset, governor since the 6th of April 1814, issued it after Commandant Nel, with 16 burghers, found 9 colonial horses in the kraal of Ndlambe and was refused them. Ndlambe was the uncle and rival of Gaika, the man the castle treated as paramount after the Kat River conference of 2 April 1817. That conference had laid down a spoor-law: stolen colonial cattle might be followed to any kraal, and compensation taken there. Nel’s nine horses were the test of whether the law bound anyone but Gaika. Fraser was to collect a force, visit Ndlambe, demand the colonial property in his possession, or, if he refused, seize Xhosa cattle equal to the colonial cattle seen in the kraals. Kraals and gardens were not to be destroyed. If he resisted, his person was to be secured without undue severity and kept until Gaika could again restrain his followers. Gaika was told that the movement was against Ndlambe only. Faith in that promise was thin on both sides. A party of burghers under Andries Stockenstrom was therefore posted on the Baviaans’ River, lest Gaika use Fraser’s absence to cross. [4]
Khoikhoi from beyond the Fish reached Van Aardt’s post on the 5th of January and Roode Waal on the 6th. Gaika, they said, was out with 400 of his people and meant, once the commando entered, to cross and kill whatever lay in his way. On the 6th nine Xhosa women were found lurking round Roode Waal, taken for spies, and held until the column started. They put Gaika within 6 hours of the post, on a hunt. On the 8th of January the commando — mounted burghers and men of the Cape Corps — left Grahamstown, crossed the flats east of the village, and went over the Fish at Trompetter’s Drift. Ndlambe was then living near the coast in the country later called Peddie. He had been warned. At his kraal not a single head of cattle was found. He himself was there and offered no resistance, so Fraser did not seize him. The order of 5 December had assumed a kraal full of colonial stock and a chief who would either give it up or fight. Ndlambe gave Fraser neither. [4]
The column then turned north between the Keiskamma and the Kat. On the 17th of January it came on the kraals of Habana, Kratta, Botman, Kassa, Nqeno, Pangella, Dyta, Coetzie, Bolanie, Kubash and others, and found hundreds of colonial cattle. Four divisions collected the beasts: 2060 driven into the colony, of which 603 were recognised and reclaimed by their owners and 1457 given as part compensation to other losers. Fraser was back in Grahamstown on the 8th of February. A letter from Joseph Williams, written at Gaika’s request, was waiting: why was his place destroyed, his people shot, his children left without food? He claimed the petty chiefs as his, not Ndlambe’s, and demanded restitution. Allegiance among those captains shifted with convenience. Habana, Kratta and Kassa had fought for Ndlambe in 1811; Kratta and Kassa had been concerned in the murder of the elder Stockenstrom. Gaika, when cattle had been traced to those kraals, had said they were not his people. Friendship with him still had to be kept, because the Kat River treaty made him the only chief the colony would treat as responsible. At the end of February more presents went to him, with an assurance that some cattle would be restored. In October 122 head were bought from the district chests of Uitenhage and Graaff-Reinet for that purpose. [4]
The same month that Fraser crossed at Trompetter’s Drift, the northern missions beyond the line were pulled in. On the 27th of January Erasmus Smith and Corner received orders to retire within the colony. Toornberg, on the site of the later town of Colesberg, and Hephzibah a few miles south, had been opened after 1814 for San people beyond the boundary, where colonial law did not run. Griquatown’s disorder raised the question of any station beyond the last farms. The argument used in January was that there was more work inside the colony than the missionaries then engaged could do, and that collecting a large number of uncivilised people under no efficient control could not but be dangerous. Toornberg and Hephzibah came to an end on that order. Fraser’s 2060 and the closed San stations were two faces of the same year: the castle would police cattle east of the Fish, and it would not leave a mission beyond the northern farms where it could not police the guns. [4]
Retaliation on the Line — January–April 1818
A demonstration beyond the Fish had seemed necessary after Nel’s nine horses. The visit made the line worse. To the greed for farmers’ cattle was now added a thirst for vengeance. Some of the petty chiefs, once Fraser had gone, resolved to attack the colony, murder the men, retake the cattle, and seize guns, then wait to see what the castle would do. The plan was laid before Gaika. He advised delay until it was known what would be done with the cattle Fraser had taken. They did not wait. On the 15th of January a soldier was murdered at Upper Drift. On the 27th three brothers, sons of D. Geere, and a slave woman living near the Baviaans’ River were killed and 40 cattle taken. The Kat River spoor-law had been meant to stop theft by making a kraal pay. Fraser’s column showed that a kraal could be made to pay even when Ndlambe’s own cattle were gone. The answer from those kraals was not a lawsuit. [4]
On the 3rd of March three slaves tending 42 oxen were speared — one with 19 assegai wounds — and the cattle driven. On the 5th two soldiers and one Khoikhoi were murdered and 70 head taken. Appeals went up. Nothing that could hold the line was sent. On the 28th of March the two heemraden Barend de Klerck and F. J. van Aardt wrote to Fraser from Grahamstown. Daily anxiety of attack obliged them to ask protection for houses, families and property: alone they could not defend one another. The slave Africa had declared that the Xhosa were resolved to destroy all if their cattle were not restored. The frontier was thinly inhabited. They prayed for burghers from parts less exposed. The government gave as much military help as it could, but when cattle were stolen from several places at once the men were all wanted on the tracks, and during their absence hardly any protection was left this side of the boundary. From 1816 to this year there had been nominally peace, yet commandos were frequently in the field to recover stolen cattle, and the Zuurveld was almost uninhabited by white colonists. [4] [7]
The east was still carrying the Royal African corps, whose crimes in Grahamstown had been such that part of the 72nd had been employed to protect the place against the 60th, and Somerset had told Bathurst that the employment of that description of soldier had caused more discontent than any act the British government could commit toward the colony. In April the 60th was removed and about 750 rank and file of the 38th took its place. The Royal African corps remained, and after a time sobered into a force that would stand a year later at Grahamstown. The cavalry already gone from the east, depredations grew more daring. The April relief mattered because it swapped one convict regiment for a line regiment without putting dragoons back on the drifts. What the heemraden asked for on the 28th of March was burghers from safer districts. What arrived in April was 750 of the 38th and the same thin posts. [4]
Gaika, for his part, seemed for a season to keep the Kat River promises. In May he sent Nootka to Grahamstown with 53 horses, and invited farmers to come into his country and pick out colonial cattle. The help was not free of a bill. On the 2nd of August Williams wrote from the Kat, at Gaika’s request, for a present: from the governor a gun; from Cuyler one horse and from Fraser two; between Cuyler and Fraser, sheep and goats, a suit of clothes, a great-coat, shoes, hat, knives. The castle still treated him as paramount because the April 1817 treaty had no other addressee: Ndlambe made no pretence of wishing to conciliate, and the petty captains who had lost cattle in January were not going to restore them through Gaika’s kraal. [4]
Dushane, Makana, and Ndlambe — Early 1818
Years before, when Ndlambe had been regent during Gaika’s minority, his half-brother Cebo, right-hand son of Rarabe, died without issue. Custom required someone to represent the dead chief so that his name might not perish. One of Ndlambe’s minor sons, Dushane, was chosen through his father’s influence. From that moment he was obeyed by Cebo’s people. When Ndlambe and Gaika split the AmaRarabe, Dushane’s clan stayed out of the great-house quarrel: it was the right-hand branch, and the disputants were of the great house. He ruled it wisely; it grew under his own name, the Imidushane, instead of Cebo’s. Without taking up arms for Gaika he had favoured that party because of his father’s neglect and ill-treatment of his mother. Early in 1818 Ndlambe’s old councillors reconciled father and son. Henceforth their clans acted in alliance, though they remained distinct. That reconciliation is why Ndlambe, who in January had sat in an empty kraal near Peddie, was by winter the stronger of the two houses west of the Kei. [3]
Of even greater weight was the friendship of Makana, son of Balala, not born to high rank. His mother was held a wise woman, skilled in plants and in divining. He added to that knowledge what he took from white people, especially from Vanderkemp, one of whose addresses on the resurrection, heard at Bethelsdorp, left a lifelong mark. He admitted a Supreme God when told of such a Being, but he never embraced Christianity. He announced that he was in communication with the spirit world, and many believed him, though the proof he once offered to doubters failed. To those doubters he named a hollow rock on the beach near the Buffalo mouth, where the waves make a great noise at high water — Gompo, as the Xhosa call it — and said that at a certain time they would see their dead living again. They went as directed. He appeared at the time appointed; the dead did not rise; his prestige was not affected. On many occasions he announced events that would shortly take place, and thousands of his countrymen believed those announcements always proved correct. [3]
Before his time the corpses of common people were not buried. The dying were carried to a forest edge or a lonely glen; if death took place in a hut the body was dragged out with a thong and the hut burnt. Makana gave instruction that the dead should be put in the ground, and said the spirit world would visit displeasure on those who disobeyed. His adherents complied; their example was followed by others; within 20 years the practice of interment became general. Several habits his followers abandoned at his bidding were later taken up again by their descendants. For superstitious reasons many would not pronounce his name and called him Nxele, the left-handed one. In talk with colonists they used the Dutch equivalent Linksch, which English officials on the frontier corrupted into Lynx, the name in the colonial records. In 1816 he had been so powerful that the London missionaries had doubted whether a station at his kraal might not be more useful than one at Gaika’s. When a consolidation of the western Xhosa proved impracticable he declared for Ndlambe. Nearly all the little bands that had given the colony so much trouble followed him, and the balance between the rival descendants of Rarabe turned. [3]
Gaika’s residence was then by the head waters of the Tyumie, in one of the most beautiful valleys of the country, under the Amatola, the highest dome of which still bears his name. In the planting season the hillsides and the low lands along the river were one cornfield. There was a dense population in the valley, renowned for fertility. The stream that springs in cascades from the forests in the deep kloofs of the Amatola was called the river of sweet waters. Early in this year Makana’s adhesion and Dushane’s reconciliation left Ndlambe the stronger of the two houses west of the Kei. Hintsa beyond the Kei stood ready to assist him. The castle still treated Gaika as the sole chief in alliance with the colony. What hung on that pretence, once Ndlambe, Dushane, Makana and Hintsa stood together, was whether an ally on the Tyumie could still be treated as paramount after a battle on the flats. [3]
Amalinde — Winter 1818
Makana formed a plan to draw Gaika east from his kraals into an ambush. A large party went out by night, seized the cattle of a subordinate chieftain, and fell back eastward. Gaika called his ordinary councillors and asked prominent men of the clan for advice. One of them told him not to cross the Keiskamma under any circumstances, for fear of a trap. That man was Ntsikana, composer of the hymn that still bears his name, a son of Gaba, one of the hereditary councillors. A stigma attached to him: it was believed that his mother’s father, Bindi, had kept a fabulous bird through which he had bewitched people. Nonabe, his mother, had been driven away; he had been brought up among the children of Noyiki, another of Gaba’s wives. From Williams he had learned the leading doctrines of Christianity, and being convinced of their truth, in 1818 he began to instruct some of his countrymen who assembled under the trees on the banks of the Mankazana. Portions of what he taught were not what Europeans would have called orthodox; the feuds of his clan also found expression in invectives against Makana and Makana’s followers. The warning mattered because the ambush was already laid east of the Keiskamma, and because Ntsikana, not yet the influence he later became, was the one man in the council who named the trap. [3]
He had not yet the influence he later possessed. Many of his sayings were kept verbatim, among them the words he sent to Gaika by the messenger Ntsadu: listen, son of Umlawu, to the words of the servant of God, and do not cross the Keiskamma; I see the Gaikas scattered on the mountains, I see their heads devoured by ants; the enemy is watching there, and defeat awaits your plumed ones. Gaika was disposed to be guided. Mankoyi, a warrior of note, was urgent for revenge. The councillors supported a raid upon Ndlambe’s people. The line of march was settled and was at once made known to Makana by his spies. The raid was therefore not a surprise to the men who had stolen the cattle in the night. It was the answer they wanted. [3]
The warriors left the Tyumie before sunrise of a winter morning and marched east until they reached the pass named Debe Nek, under the peak Intaba-ka-Ndoda. In the plain below they saw the Amandlambe arrayed for battle, covering the ground in patches like strips of red carpet. Europeans call that plain the Kommetje flats, from the saucer-like cavities in its surface; the Xhosa call those depressions amalinde, and from them the battle of that day is still named. Gaika’s men thought they saw the whole force of their enemies. When Mankoyi shouted, “Huku, to-day we have them,” it was with difficulty that more prudent men restrained a rush. In reality the larger portion of Ndlambe’s army was concealed, and a strong division of Gcalekas, intended as a reserve, was posted 3 or 4 miles farther east, close to the Green river. Hintsa’s people were that reserve: the Gcaleka house beyond the Kei had come west to finish the work Dushane’s reconciliation and Makana’s adhesion had begun. [3]
Xhosa warriors were then still divided into two classes: veterans whose heads were adorned with feathers of the blue crane, supposed to attack only those with the same marks, and young men who went by the name of round heads. At the start of an action, if the plumed ones met round heads, they would only cover themselves with their shields without using their assegais; in the heat of battle the distinction was forgotten. As soon as the Gaikas halted, Ndlambe sent his round heads up. They were easily driven, and their opponents rushed down after them, yelling defiance. That was what was wanted. The plumed ones sprang to their feet; large parties hitherto concealed appeared; the fight began in earnest. Maqoma, Gaika’s right-hand son, was the hero of his father’s side in this, the first battle in which he was ever engaged. He led his band into the centre and charged again and again at the thickest mass of the foe. At length he was severely wounded and had to retire, narrowly escaping being made a prisoner. The later frontier would have to deal with that son; this winter he learned, in the phrase used of him, to tie and milk a kicking cow. [3] [4]
It was not long past midday when the battle began, and all the afternoon it lasted, till about sunset the Gaikas were driven from the field with dreadful slaughter. As long as they could see, Ndlambe’s people pursued them. When darkness closed in the victors returned to the scene of carnage and kindled great fires, by whose light they sought their wounded enemies and put them to death. The night was bitterly cold; many hundreds who crawled to a distance were found next morning dead and dying. From the time Rarabe had crossed the Kei, no such combat had been known among the Xhosa. Gaika fled west to the Winterberg and sent to the nearest military post, urgently requesting aid. Ndlambe’s adherents took his corn pits and burned his kraals, but could not secure the whole of his cattle, the herds having been hastily driven away. At first not much credit was attached to the story told by Hendrik Nutka, who related that in numerous families there was not a male member left alive, and that no such wailing of the women had ever before been heard; shortly so many accounts reached the government that all doubt disappeared. The Kat River ally was now a refugee in the Winterberg. The castle’s choice of Gaika as paramount was no longer a diplomatic convenience: it was a military debt. [3]
The Castle, the Library Tax, and Beaufort — 1818
While the Tyumie was still Gaika’s, the castle turned to money. In March Somerset imposed a tax of 1 rixdollar upon every cask of wine and spirits entering Capetown, as a fee for gauging, and announced that the proceeds would go to a public library. As the money came in it was deposited in the bank to the credit of a committee of the colonial secretary, the chief justice, the fiscal, and the senior ministers of the Dutch reformed, Lutheran, and English episcopal churches. The committee purchased books and made the necessary arrangements. Further taxation was already said to be impossible; the colonists were loud that the only remedy was retrenchment in the salaries of the principal officials. Until this year even the chief justice received only 6000 rixdollars, and the other judges 3250; in 1818 Earl Bathurst directed that the chief justice should be paid 1000 pounds and the four senior judges each 500 pounds a year. They all held other appointments, and some drew salaries for three or four situations. The wine-cask tax and the sterling salaries sat on the same ledger: a library funded from every cask that entered town, and judges lifted off the sinking paper rixdollar. [3]
In the same calendar a hospital was opened in Capetown. For about 2 years Dr. Bailey conducted it on his own account; when his resources proved insufficient the burgher senate took the building and paid him 4500 pounds for his interest. The place has since been known as the old Somerset hospital. 52 slaves were manumitted in this year, against 87 in the last and 35 in 1816. The colony returned about 32034 slaves and 41392 Europeans. Paper money was renewed three times, as in most years of the occupation: damaged notes burnt in the castle courtyard under the fiscal, the deputy commissary-general, two members of the court of justice and two of the burgher senate. [3] [4] [4]
A Portuguese brig put that slave return to a test in Table Bay. The Paquet Real, bound from Mozambique to San Salvador with 171 slaves, arrived after a passage of 71 days, dilapidated, water and provisions exhausted. The master, Joze M. Gomes, had no money; bills on the owners were not accepted. She lay from the 14th of April until the 18th of May, when a violent storm drove her ashore. Detachments of the 60th and 72nd saved 140 of the slaves, who were cared for in the general hospital. Gomes claimed them. Somerset refused. The Lords of the Treasury later held that coming into port with prohibited goods was cause of seizure and confiscation. They became prize negroes: not restored, not imported as ordinary slaves, held as a colonial class under the Act of 1807. The wreck mattered because it showed that a slave ship in distress still could not land her cargo as cargo, even when 140 lives had been pulled off the beach. [4]
In May, upon the death of Henry Alexander, Somerset recommended Lieutenant-Colonel Bird for colonial secretary. The appointment carried a salary of 3500 pounds and a perquisite of 300 a year. He merely moved to a higher grade in the same department; no new oath was thought necessary. Somerset himself this year requested leave of absence to arrange family matters in England. The secretary of state granted it, and an arrangement was made for carrying on the government during his absence: the office of lieutenant-governor having been abolished when the garrison was cut in 1816, an officer of position would have to be attached to the staff to act. He did not sail in this calendar. In 1818 the Catholics in Capetown arranged among themselves to get a priest: the Rev. P. Hurst Scully, then on his way to Mauritius, was prevailed upon to remain and take charge of a flock that had had no chaplain since Landsinck and Nelessen left with the Dutch garrison in 1806. About a third of the soldiers usually professed that faith. [3] [4]
On the 26th of June a proclamation dealt with servants who absconded from employers and with those who harboured men indentured to others, an amplification of an older order of 30 June 1803, meant to protect such enterprises as Benjamin Moodie’s mechanics at Grootvader’s Bosch, whose passage had cost 20 pounds a man. In the same year two other Scotch gentlemen, Peter Tait and James Gosling, tried the same experiment on a smaller scale. Applications for facilities to proceed to South Africa as were granted to those going to America began to reach Bathurst. What the castle wanted on the Fish was a denser white population; what it could actually put there in this calendar was still a thin line of posts and a farm at the Boschberg that had been a commissariat depot since Hart took it in January 1817. [4]
Williams, who had sat at the Kat River conference and had taught Ntsikana, died in August. Gaika, a refugee in the Winterberg after Amalinde, was further broken by that loss. Somerset then judged it more prudent that a missionary with Gaika should be the government’s own agent; John Brownlee would be appointed in December 1819 and would not occupy the post until June 1820. In the same month Stockenstrom visited Griquatown and found matters as bad as reported. In his report of the 27th of August he wrote that plausible and praiseworthy as the missionaries’ objects were, they had too little control, and that an institution established to propagate sacred doctrines had degenerated into a cradle for the most serious mischief. There had been, two years earlier, some 1500 men capable of bearing arms, of whom 300 possessed guns. Restrictions were placed on the traffic; the station itself continued. The January order that closed Toornberg and Hephzibah, and the August report on Griquatown, were one policy: no armed gathering beyond the last farms under a missionary who could not command it. [3] [4]
On the 27th of November the district of Beaufort was formed out of a tract beyond the Zak river and portions of Graaff-Reinet and Tulbagh. The northern boundary as defined by the Batavian administration was not respected; in practice the line was the last occupied farms. From that line Beaufort ran south to the Zwartebergen, and from the Pramberg and the Kareiga on the east to the Dwika on the west. It was divided into 10 fieldcornetcies. J. Baird was appointed head with the title of deputy landdrost, independent in most respects of Graaff-Reinet. A loan place in occupation of Abraham de Klerk, close to the Nieuwveld mountains, was chosen for the drostdy; the buildings were purchased, the lease cancelled, and the village of Beaufort West laid out. John Taylor, who had left the London society, entered the colonial service and was stationed there as a clergyman of the Dutch reformed church. The circuit judges were directed to visit the village, and a staff of minor officials was appointed. In November also Dr. George Thom left the London society’s service and was appointed clergyman of Caledon in succession to Vos, who retired on account of old age. The north thus received a drostdy in the same month that the east received a column. What hung on Beaufort was the same question Toornberg had raised in January: whether the last farms beyond the Zak would sit under a landdrost, or under a mission the law could not reach. [3]
Brereton — December 1818
After Amalinde the castle could not leave its ally in the Winterberg. The policy of the colonial government at that time was to support Gaika. Somerset directed Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton of the Royal African corps to march to the assistance of the colony’s ally with a small force of soldiers and mounted burghers. On the 4th of November Fraser, acting under Brereton’s instructions, wrote from Grahamstown to the landdrosts of Graaff-Reinet and Uitenhage, ordering them to call out 350 and 230 armed and mounted burghers respectively, to act against Ndlambe, Hintsa, and such other chiefs as had conspired against Gaika. Stockenstrom asked to see the paper that made the civil power subservient to the military command. He was landdrost of Graaff-Reinet, popular with the burghers and their usual leader on commando, and he held only a lieutenancy in the Cape Corps; the request for his men had come from a Royal African colonel through Fraser, not from the castle to the drostdy. All the same, on the day appointed, the 21st of November, he rode into Grahamstown at the head of 160 armed burghers. 60 more, delayed by the poor condition of their horses in a prolonged drought, followed as quickly as they could. A further 180 were in readiness, some already on a defensive line from the Tarka to the junction of the Fish rivers. [3] [4]
When the burghers of both districts had assembled and had been joined by a company of the Cape Corps, the whole force moved out of Grahamstown about the 1st of December and crossed the Fish. Ndlambe and the chiefs in league with him, warned, moved east into the woody fastnesses near the Keiskamma and abandoned their cattle as they were followed. In this way 23000 head were obtained. The commando was reinforced by Gaika’s people, whose thirst for vengeance after Debe Nek was not yet satiated. Ndlambe was put at about 18000 men. He would not stand in the open; he retired into thickets. Kraals were destroyed and movable property seized. The January column had taken 2060 because Ndlambe’s own kraal was empty and the petty captains still sat on colonial stock. The December column took 23000 because Ndlambe would not risk the open after Amalinde, and because Gaika’s people were with the guns. [3] [4] [7]
The British commander found it impossible to restrain Gaika’s people, mad with excitement and joy at being able to take revenge, and unwilling to show mercy when any of their enemies fell into their hands. Stockenstrom with a small force was detached north for the protection of his own district. On the 9th of December he wrote from the south side of the Winterberg, lamenting the imperfections of the plan of campaign: he could not even obtain news of the whereabouts of the commando. Brereton withdrew before accomplishing Ndlambe’s destruction, taking with him the 23000. Of these, 9000 were given to Gaika, some were distributed among farmers who had suffered from depredations, and the remainder were sold to defray the expenses of the expedition. On reaching Grahamstown the burghers were disbanded and permitted to return to their homes. Brereton, disgusted with the conduct of his allies, took it for granted that the war was over and that Ndlambe’s power was broken. There was then no more scouting, and the whereabouts of the enemy was not known. [3] [4] [7]
Ndlambe at once took the opportunity. Falling upon Gaika, he compelled that chief and his adherents to flee to the mountains near the junction of the Baviaans’ and Fish rivers, and then poured his warriors into the colony. The inhabitants of the district between the Fish and the Sundays, unless near a military post, were driven toward lagers and lost nearly all their movable property. What the column had not finished on the Keiskamma would have to be finished, if it could be finished, on the colonial side of the Fish. The fifth war, later dated to 1819, was already on the ground in December: Ndlambe would not stand in the open, Brereton would not stay in the thickets, and the burghers were home for Christmas. [3] [7]
Christmas on the Fish — December 1818
The line had already shown, before Brereton crossed, what a weakened garrison could not hold. In September the farm of Pieter Retief was singled out: 34 head taken and a Khoikhoi herd stabbed to death; then 16 more with a large number from other farmers; finally the remainder of his stock driven off and his house and kraals burnt. On the 26th of October Scheepers lost 23 cattle and 7 horses, and wrote that they were again plunged into the greatest misery, with no rest night or day. About that time two of the Cape Corps were murdered at Upper Drift. Fraser’s January column had taken 2060; Brereton’s December column had taken 23000; neither number had bought a quiet Christmas. Retief’s burnt house sat on the same line the heemraden had described on the 28th of March: thinly inhabited, and empty whenever the patrols were on a spoor. [4]
Before the end of the month depredation and murder again filled Albany with alarm. On Christmas Day three farms — those of P. Gousen senior, P. Gousen junior, and P. W. Nel — were attacked at once, and 61, 25 and 22 head of cattle taken from them. On the 30th Paul Bester lost 39. The year closed before his remaining 29 went, and before he abandoned the place. Albany was again filling with alarm on a line whose posts had been told, in the last calendar, to make do with a force cut from 4341 to 2744. The Gousen and Nel farms were not a new kind of raid. They were the first raids after the burghers had been sent home, and they showed that Ndlambe, not Brereton, would choose the next ground. [4]
The two sons of Lord Charles Somerset arrived in the colony in this calendar, and it became known that they were to receive captaincies in the Cape Corps over the heads of men who felt that their services had earned them promotion. Ill-feeling between the governor and Stockenstrom took a sharper edge from that news: parental concern on one side, wounded pride on the other. On the Fish that news did not restock a kraal or put dragoons back on the drifts. Arnoldus Bernardus Dietz built a house in Grahamstown this year, a few yards down from the prison that had been the first house in the village; Captain D. Page built, on erf 22, the house later known as the Old Deanery. High Street could add a roof while Albany lost herds. The next calendar would open with those herds still going, and with Ndlambe’s people, not Gaika’s, masters of the ground between the Fish and the Sundays. [4]