Boer History1821 at the Cape of Good Hope: Graham Dies, Donkin’s Second Visit, Somerset Returns
The Failed Harvest and Nearly 5000 — January–May 1821
The wheat on the Albany locations failed. That is why 1821 opened on rations rather than on a harvest. Major-General Sir Rufane Shawe Donkin still held the oaths as acting governor, the post he had taken on the 13th of January 1820 when Lord Charles Henry Somerset left for England in the Sappho. Somerset had governed since the 6th of April 1814; he would not be back until November. What hung on the failed crop was whether the British families already on the Zuurveld — the empty tract east of the Sundays that the 1819 war had left to be filled — could stay on the ground after rust. [3] [4]
Enthusiasm among those who had honestly turned the soil damped. Those whose callings lay elsewhere were driven farther from the lands. For a colonial government already on slender finance, the calamity meant anxiety in devising ways to keep thousands from starvation. Hope revived under Albany’s blue sky. Lands were ploughed and sown again. The chance would have been surer had the seed been freshly imported, not colonial wheat brought from Capetown after rust had run through the country. Major George Pigot of Blue Krantz wrote to the secretary of state on the 1st of January that from everything he had seen within a twenty-mile ride there could not be a doubt the new settlement would succeed, notwithstanding the failure of the wheat. On the 6th of May he still wrote that he continued as much pleased with the country as ever. Similar testimony came from Thomas Pringle on the Baviaans’, from T. Price Adams, and from Miles Bowker. [4]
During December 1820 and January 1821 a man at Somerset — the government farm on the Baviaans’, a sore point with the Dutch farmers because it used public money, soldiers, and Khoikhoi labour — bought up on his own account most of the available corn. He intercepted what was being taken to market on its way to Grahamstown. In that way he became possessed of 222 muids of flour and 84 muids of wheat, paying on an average 16 rixdollars a muid and selling to those settlers who could pay at 30. Captain Henry Somerset brought the matter to government. Nothing could be done: the transactions were legitimate. The point was not the legality. It was that, in a rust year, the people on the locations were paying nearly double for bread they could not grow. [4]
Anxiety for the immediate future was allayed by a general intimation that rations would continue. On the 21st of December 1820 a circular had told heads of parties that their accounts with government were closed and that from about that date they were hoped to provide for themselves. The lost harvest made total withdrawal impossible. The second and third instalments of the deposit money were exhausted; the settlers were in debt for additional supplies; most had nothing that could stand as security. The burden fell on the public treasury. Only those actually on the locations and responsible to the head of a party were to draw, at a soldier’s ration — value 7 pence — for a man, two-thirds for a woman, one-half for a child, on the understanding that payment would be made when circumstances permitted. Receipts were to stand as mortgages on the buildings and lands that would become theirs after three years’ residence. The total advance on this account to the end of 1821 was Rds. 210470 1sk. 3st. — about 15364 pounds. That figure mattered because it was the price of keeping the settlement on the ground until a crop, or a governor, decided otherwise. [4]
Upon the withdrawal of the large Highland party under Captain Grant, the emigration commissioners had selected other families sufficient to absorb the balance of the parliamentary grant of 50000 pounds voted in July 1819. Four of seven later transports arrived toward the close of 1820; two came early in 1821; one was lost by fire at sea. All the families who reached South Africa in those vessels were located in Albany. A few came without aid, on the assurance that they would receive larger grants if they paid their own passages. Altogether, nearly 5000 individuals of British birth settled in the colony between March 1820 and May 1821. Additional land was wanted that year both for those who took the place of Grant’s people and for men of capital who had paid their own way. Donkin, from what he had seen in the district, acceded to the memorials for larger grants and left further adjustments to the land-surveyor Mr Knobel. [3] [4]
The lost transport was the Abeona, which had left the Clyde in September 1820 with the remainder of the Scotch party after Grant’s people stayed at home. She burned and sank. Though the passengers of that Clyde ship escaped with their lives, only 2 out of 30 families ever reached South Africa. Those who did arrive in 1821 took ground already too small for the numbers placed on it. Less than a year’s residence had impressed on the newcomers what the older inhabitants already knew: the allotted lands were miserably inadequate. Petitions for increased grants poured into the colonial secretary’s office through the year. The extra people and the extra paper mattered because Albany was being asked to feed a larger British population on the same blighted acres. [3] [4]
Graham Dies; Jones at Albany — March–June 1821
Lieutenant-Colonel John Graham had been named landdrost of Albany on the 13th of October 1820 and directed to establish his office in the village of Bathurst. Bathurst was the new seat Donkin had laid out on the Kowie in 1820 and named for the secretary of state; Grahamstown, which Graham himself had founded as a military camp, was to lose the magistracy. He never took up those duties. He was already on a bed of sickness at Wynberg. He died there on the 17th of March, at the age of 43. Captain Henry Somerset, who had been acting as deputy landdrost of Grahamstown in Graham’s place, left the frontier in February. On the 25th of May Major James Jones was appointed to the vacant place. To assist him, Captain Duncan Campbell and Miles Bowker were named heemraden. The appointment mattered because Albany was still a new district, created only in October, and the man who was to sit at Bathurst had never reached it. [3] [4]
This rendered Captain Charles Trappes’s provisional tenure no longer necessary. On the 4th of June Donkin intimated as much to him in words of the warmest appreciation. Trappes shortly afterwards became landdrost of Tulbagh. Jones was, in the highest degree, acceptable to the settlers. His geniality and his untiring consideration of their troubles made him popular where Trappes had failed. Donkin told Earl Bathurst in a despatch dated the 5th of June that it was absolutely necessary for the well-being of the settlers that civil and military authority on the frontier should be united in one individual. Bathurst would not sanction the appointment. He contended that Jones was disqualified by the short time he had been in the colony. What hung on that refusal was the chair at Bathurst itself: the settlers had a landdrost they liked, and London would not confirm him. [4]
Bathurst village itself was still being built into a seat of magistracy that Graham had never occupied. Building of the drostdy house had been undertaken by John Mandy, one of the heads of parties. Before the roof was commenced he had spent or incurred liabilities of Rds. 12046 against an authorised 12000. Dissatisfaction was expressed, more for delay than for the overspend. On the 12th of April the work was taken from him and given to T. Mahony, who undertook to finish and complete the magistrate’s house in a respectable manner for Rds. 10000. Labour and skilled workmen were still scarce in the east: some artisan settlers had already gone to more profitable regions; others stayed on the locations to protect families and property. The work would linger for years; in 1821 it was only begun. [4]
Besides the drostdy, the incipient life of Bathurst in 1821 showed in a demand for building plots and small cottages. In June a number of erven were put up to public auction and realised on an average 50 pounds per acre. Steps were taken for a tronk: Mahony contracted for an adequate prison at Rds. 10000. By June there were 20 houses finished and in occupation, others in course of construction, and a commencement of barrack buildings. When the inhabitants of Grahamstown petitioned for the circuit court of justice to sit in that town instead of Bathurst, a counter-petition went up signed by 174 heads of parties and other leading men, protesting against the move as tending to obstruct the prosperity of Bathurst. The judges on circuit did hold court in Bathurst in October — the only occasion they did so. There were then no houses except small ones of wattle and daub; the proceedings must have taken place in the open air or in the large marquee Trappes had used. Except in intention, Bathurst never was a seat of magistracy. That is why the October sitting mattered: it was the one time the law sat where Donkin had meant the district to be governed. [4]
Opinion was openly expressed that it was a mistake to appoint military men to rule civil communities, as was then the case in all the eastern districts. Cautious steps were taken toward a public meeting. Instead of assembling avowedly for politics, it was proposed to form a Cultural Society for mutual improvement and the discussion of culture in all its branches. The first and only meeting was held at Bathurst on the evening of the 15th of January, in the marquee of John Bailie, then acting as clerk to Trappes. After half an hour of culture, 14 of them, under Thomas Phillips the special heemraad and Mr Barker, repaired to the canteen to take a chop. After the glass had circulated, Phillips passed round a paper: a petition asking that the chief magistrate of the district should be a man of character, penetration and general knowledge — a civilian qualified by British education — and remarking that ill-judged decisions had caused the greatest trouble among the settlers. Donkin discountenanced the public meeting in accordance with colonial law; the contents of the petition were another matter. He was already contemplating the union of civil and military authority that Jones would shortly embody. The meeting mattered because it showed that, within a year of landing, the settlers were already testing how far they might speak as a civil community under a soldier-governor. [4]
Donkin on the Frontier — June 1821
In June Donkin visited the eastern frontier again. He found the settlers in fairly good spirits, and making much greater progress in cultivating the ground than could have been expected from the previous occupations of most of them. Some had purchased a few working and breeding cattle, and had large gardens, with plenty of vegetables, pigs, and poultry. Throughout South Africa the growing wheat had been attacked by blight in 1820 and had completely failed; but in the west there was abundance of grain left from the exceptionally good crop of 1819, and rations were still supplied to all the settlers that needed them. The health of the emigrants was remarkably good: there was hardly one who was not more robust and hearty than in England. The deaths had not exceeded 12, and the births had been over 100. Little cottages of unburnt brick or wattled walls and thatched roofs had been built, and provided tolerable shelter from sun and storm. The settlers themselves presented him with an address while he was on the frontier. The visit mattered because it was the acting governor’s second look at the people he had received, and the report he took back to Capetown was that they could hold — if bread and cattle held. [3] [4]
He took that opportunity of inspecting the Kowie for himself, crossing and recrossing the bar in the small-boat. The Kowie was the river at whose mouth Bathurst stood; if a coaster could enter it, Albany would not have to haul every bag from Algoa Bay. Mr Dyason had been granted facilities after Captain Trappes forwarded representations on the 11th of December 1820, and had been at the work for several months. Depth of water on the bar at the extremes of tides varied from 2 feet 8 inches to 9 feet 8 inches; the passage was smooth; vessels of light draft could easily enter. Dyason suggested stopping the western channel so as to throw the whole of the water into the eastern, scouring that one and clearing the bar. Donkin thought he saw the chance of witnessing the first vessel enter. A small schooner, the Locust, happened to be at Algoa Bay; he sent two messengers in a hurry with instructions to the captain to take her round and attempt the bar. The weather became tempestuous; the attempt could not be made before he had to return to Capetown. [4]
On his arrival in Capetown he issued orders for the building of a schooner of light draft to ply between Algoa Bay and the Kowie and be capable of entering the river. As a commencement of a port establishment he instructed Trappes to appoint a pilot for the Kowie and to build him a small house at government charge. A flagstaff, to communicate with ships at sea, was to be erected on the high hill on the left bank facing the sea. A boat’s crew hired at 30 rixdollars a month and a soldier’s ration completed the infant establishment of Port Kowie. No time was lost: in September the schooner was finished and launched, and — perhaps in honour of the memory of his late wife — named the Elizabeth. She made a safe voyage from Capetown to Algoa Bay and on the 11th of October set sail for the Kowie, with Robert Hughes, the Algoa pilot, in charge. At four in the afternoon of the 13th she arrived about six miles from the mouth; signals from the new flagstaff said the bar was practicable at high water. After tacking she got farther away. On the 14th it fell calm until noon; a south-east breeze then brought her near the Fountain rocks about six in the evening, but the bar was signalled dangerous. She drifted east, lost her way, and after several days got back to Algoa Bay with provisions exhausted and sails blown to pieces. Thus ended the first attempt to enter the Kowie. [4]
The limited food supply and the convict-like existence on the locations, together with increasing acquaintance with pay in other parts of the colony, led, in spite of proclamations and threats of arrest, to increased numbers leaving the district. Employment of slave labour by the settlers was strictly prohibited. A government notice issued at Bathurst on the 10th of June recorded that indiscriminate issue of rations had kept the price of labour in Albany to an exorbitant amount: many artificers and handicraftsmen had demanded and obtained as much as 5, 6 and 7 rixdollars a day, and many settlers had refused to be employed as day labourers, alleging that while they had rations they would not work. Regulations from the acting governor were to be in force from that date. Donkin also contemplated closing the Somerset farm, which underbid those who tendered to the commissariat with government funds, soldiers as workmen, and Khoikhoi labour. He granted Robert Hart a large tract as compensation; that was as far as the scheme went. Crop failure prevented him from carrying the abolition into effect. The notice mattered because rations, meant to keep people from starving, were also keeping wages too high for the settlement to hire its own hands. [4]
On the 22nd of August Donkin issued a proclamation for establishing regularity in the administration and uniformity in the execution of the orders on the liquor pachts. A pacht was a farmed monopoly: the contractor paid the government for the exclusive right to sell drink in a district. In Albany nobody except the contractor was at liberty to sell, lend or give as a present Cape or foreign liquors within the established limit by a smaller quantity than half a half-aum — 19 gallons. The pachter was bound to sell only good liquors and in proper measure, though he might charge what he liked. He was not permitted to sell to soldiers or their wives, to constables, or to Khoikhoi under contracts of service or in the missionary institutions. No gaming with cards or dice was allowed in the canteens, and no liquor during hours of divine service. The monopolies worked extremely unsatisfactorily; high prices and enmity led to smuggling. [4]
Far from the Fish, the northern line was also on the table. In September 1820 Landdrost Stockenstrom of Graaff-Reinet had recommended that the Orange as far down as the junction of the Seacow, and thence the desert country extending to the Atlantic, should be declared the northern boundary, and that a commission should inspect that line and prepare a map. On the 25th of April a reply was sent. On the 20th of June Donkin put a memorandum on record: the proposed line should be adopted, but it ought to be carefully inspected by the landdrost and an engineer officer before a proclamation was issued. The inspection itself would wait until 1822. The memorandum mattered because, without any formal proclamation, farmers were already taking land beyond the old line, and the government was following them — as in the Company days — rather than drawing the map first. On the 21st of September a proclamation abolished the Supreme Medical Council, set up in 1807 to license physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, and put a Colonial Medical Inspector in its place. There was still no properly qualified practitioner in the whole of the eastern province. [3] [4]
Fredericksburg and Fort Willshire — June 1821
There was at this time an intention on the part of the military authorities to disband the Royal African corps. Donkin thought he could utilise it as an advanced guard of the colony, by forming a settlement with it in the lower portion of the vacant country east of the Fish. That vacant tract — between the Fish and the Keiskama — had been declared at the Gwanga on the 15th of October 1819 after the war of that year. Somerset’s intention had been to keep it unoccupied except by soldiers, to have it patrolled, and thus to prevent depredations by the Xhosa and illegal intercourse between the two races. That design was now set aside. Donkin believed that a much greater number of soldiers would be required to patrol it properly than the imperial government would provide, and that if not frequently traversed it would become a mere lurking-place for robbers. He therefore resolved to fill it with European colonists. Aware that it had been ceded on the understanding that it was to remain unoccupied, he obtained an interview with Gaika, and after a short and friendly discussion that chief consented. Gaika had no objection, provided colonists were not placed in detached families as the Boers had been in the Zuurveld, for his people would be sure to plunder them and he himself had no power to restrain them. He approved the military nature of the proposed settlement and added that henceforth the waters of the Keiskama, the Beka, the Fish and several others would roll into the great flood in peace and unstained with blood. The consent mattered because the tract had been emptied as a buffer; filling it was a reversal of Somerset’s frontier, done while Somerset was still in England. [3] [4]
Nothing further was done until May, when the officers drew up a definite scheme and presented it to Donkin on his second visit. The position chosen was a fertile region along the right bank of the Beka, a few miles south-east of where Peddie later stood. On the 13th of June the acting governor offered to each of the officers of the Royal African corps — Captains M. J. Sparks and R. Birch, Lieutenants A. Heddle, W. Cartwright, C. McCombie and J. P. Sparks, Ensigns A. Matthewson, A. Chisholm and C. Mackenzie, and Assistant-Surgeon R. Turnbull — 2000 morgen of land between the Beka and Fish rivers, on condition that they should engage among them at least 60 men of the corps and occupy the ground personally. The soldiers were to be provided with rations for nine months, and after three years’ service each was to receive a free grant of at least 100 acres. On the same conditions Benjamin Moodie, who had brought out the Scotch mechanics in 1817 and was then residing at Grootvadersbosch near the confluence of the Breede and Buffeljagts, was offered grants in the same territory for himself and his two brothers, Donald and John Dunbar Moodie, retired lieutenants of the navy and army who had recently arrived. The officers and the Moodies accepted and took possession with more than the number of men required. A village was laid out, which Donkin named Fredericksburg in honour of the duke of York. A military post was formed close by and occupied by a detachment of the Cape corps. Instead of commencing the proposed fort near the Gwanga, that project was abandoned in view of the protection Fredericksburg was expected to afford. [3] [4]
Earlier in the year it had been Donkin’s intention to locate the large party of Scotch emigrants in the valleys at the sources of the Kat, and the ground there was surveyed for their reception, but most of them changed their minds and remained in Scotland. The Abeona, in which the others left the Clyde in September 1820, was lost by fire. In another matter Donkin disturbed Somerset’s plans east of the Fish in a way most offensive to military pride. He found on the right bank of the Keiskama a fort with five bastions partly built, named Fort Willshire. Construction of the original fort had been caused to continue from the 20th of May 1820. He stopped the work, giving as a reason that the structure was much too expensive for a frontier post; and in its stead he caused a square stone barrack to be put up close to the stream. The square barrack reversed Somerset’s design. That is why the stoppage would rankle when the governor came back: it was not only cheaper stone, it was a junior officer altering a senior’s fort. [3] [4]
Another measure he initiated was a periodical fair on the Keiskama, to transform a thieving traffic into a commercial one and to secure a friendly intercourse between the Xhosa and the settlers. To that end Jones visited Gaika on the 23rd of June. The chief welcomed the idea. On the 20th of July Donkin issued a long proclamation announcing the intention and containing regulations to ensure safety to the colonists and fairness in dealing. In 1821 an annual fair was established at Fort Willshire, at which, under supervision of government officials, the Xhosa could obtain anything they wanted except spirituous liquors and munitions of war. Licensed traders repaired to the ground adjoining the fort with waggons laden with goods. In the morning of the day appointed the Xhosa were permitted to cross the Keiskama in parties under their chiefs, with their women carrying ivory, hides, and gum. The traders then made presents to the chiefs, and between them they fixed the relative value of everything to be bartered, before the common people were allowed to have any dealings. When those preliminaries were concluded, trade commenced, the chiefs keeping order and taking usually as a sort of tax about half of what each one purchased. The fair itself stood after Donkin left; his own development of the measure did not. [3] [4]
Second Rust, Cattle, and the Clay Pits — 1821
For the first months after the landing the newcomers in the Zuurveld had been objects of small concern to the Xhosa, possessing so few cattle. At the beginning of 1821 that quietness ended. The locations of Mahony and Brown lay on the extreme east of the district, nearest the Xhosa country; on Mahony’s were deposits of red clay prized for personal adornment. What may be regarded as the first contact between the Xhosa and the settlers took place on the 7th of January, when that small community was thrown into consternation by the approach of a large concourse estimated at 600 men and 2000 women. The visit was peaceable. Two military officers, Lieutenant Hope and Lieutenant Petingal, happened to be near. By them it was ascertained that these people had received permission from Colonel Willshire to pass through the Neutral Territory to the clay pits. The colonel had omitted to inform the frontier authorities. Having obtained the supplies they desired, they returned to their own country. Very shortly after, Mahony was again visited; this time, besides red clay, the visitors took 14 of his cattle, and in the following April a further 9 cows and 4 oxen. From that time the settlers began to realise that the possession of cattle was very precarious. The clay pits mattered because they sat on a settler location, and the path to them ran through the vacant tract Donkin was about to fill. [4]
Loss of cattle was not the worst. An English boy employed by David Hobson of W. Smith’s party, about 14 miles from Grahamstown, was murdered in September. When Lieutenant-Colonel Scott stood to arms in the rain and had the covers pulled from the guns, Gaika, through the interpreter Adams, said he would order the man to be executed immediately. The man was led to the bottom of the Chumie village; a cord was put round his neck; in a few seconds he was dead. The news spread far and wide. Taking place as it did on a settler location, it created a general feeling of loneliness and danger. Toward the end of the year visits became more frequent. Mahony and Williams, on two separate occasions, were chased while at some distance from their homes and, to escape being killed, fled to and spent the night in the Kap River bush, to the painful anxiety of their wives and families. Brown, alarmed at his isolation, abandoned his location for a time and sought refuge in Grahamstown. On the Baviaans’ Pringle often saw Xhosa lurking on his location, though they do not seem to have molested him. The Boers in the same district were not so fortunate. In addition, San were again invading those parts and doing much damage. [4]
After the disappointment at the end of 1820 and the renewed sowing, signs of the blighting rust in the wheat again made their appearance. It seemed as if circumstances conspired to make the settlement a failure: the Xhosa on the one hand forbade the possession of cattle, while the earth on the other refused to supply bread. As soon as the report of this threat of a second failure reached Donkin, he promptly despatched, on the 15th of November, the brig Alacrity to Algoa Bay, laden with rice. It would have been futile to consider repayment; the rice was to be issued gratis, the expense borne by the colonial treasury. The landdrost of Albany was authorised to supply only those who, upon due inquiry, were found to have been industrious and likely to become distressed through no fault of their own, at half a pound a day for each adult and a quarter of a pound for each child. To all who were without property the colonial government distributed full rations to the 30th of September, and half rations after that date. The wheat crop in 1821 was again destroyed by blight. The rice mattered because the west’s leftover 1819 grain was no longer enough, and the treasury was already feeding people whose deposit money was gone. [3] [4]
Far to the east of the Fish, in the years 1819, 1820 and 1821, the armies of Chaka overran Natal. There had previously been a dense population there. The tribes were destroyed and exterminated not by Chaka himself but by invading nations to the north of the Tugela, routed by the Zulu armies, whose fighting forces then swept over the country, slaughtering the inhabitants and driving those who survived beyond the mountain passes to the west and over the Umzimvubu to the south. It was the object of those devastating nations to place a desert between themselves and the legions of the Zulu conqueror. They slaughtered without mercy. The tribes escaping utter extermination were swept off before the invading hordes, which, after vanquishing all before them in Natal, poured through the Drakensberg passes and burst on the numerous other tribes then inhabiting the country which later was the Harrismith district, and on the head waters of the Caledon. Those refugee tribes from Natal who went southwards and crossed the Umzimvubu settled north-east of the Kei and became known as the Fingoes. When Chaka’s armies entered Natal, that land was already desolated. None of this yet reached the Zuurveld locations. It mattered on the Fish only as weather inland: a emptying of Natal that would, in later years, send people against the same frontier the settlers were trying to hold. [7]
Somerset Returns — 30 November 1821
While these matters were progressing, the governor himself was upon the water, speeding in the ship-of-war Hyperion back to the shores from which he had been absent nearly two years. Just before he left England he married a daughter of Earl Poulett, a lady of very engaging manners and disposition, and she accompanied him. He landed in no friendly frame of mind toward Donkin, who had overturned his frontier policy, offended his military pride, and quarrelled with his son. In October 1819 Captain Henry Somerset had been appointed acting deputy landdrost of Uitenhage during the absence on leave of Major Fraser, and to a considerable extent the task of locating the British settlers in Albany and providing for their wants had been performed by him. The manner in which he carried out his duty won the regard of the immigrants, so that it was felt as a slight when the seat of magistracy was removed from Grahamstown to Bathurst and he was superseded. Some time afterwards an opportunity offered to insult the acting governor, and Captain Somerset took advantage of it. Though he was certainly to blame, his father supported him and participated in his resentment. That is why the return was not a handover of papers. It was a father coming back to a colony whose acting governor had moved the magistracy, filled the vacant tract, and stopped the five-bastion fort. [3] [4]
The Hyperion arrived in Table Bay on the evening of the 30th of November. As soon as she came to anchor Captain Henry Somerset, Dr Barry and Major Cloete, aide-de-camp to Donkin, went on board in order to welcome the governor. A long private conversation ensued between father and son. At the end of the interview the governor showed great irritation. He landed next morning in no improved state of temper. Donkin had sent a staff officer on board the evening she anchored, to acquaint him that dinner was prepared at government house, that carriages were in waiting, and to offer the courtesies usual on such occasions. To all this he received by the return of that officer no sort of reply — no communication private or official — but simply that Somerset had put off his landing till the morning. He landed accordingly, and entering government house at a very early hour by one door, as Donkin was going out at another to the beach to receive him, he sent a note. On the receipt of that note Donkin had only one course: immediately quitting government house, leaving his breakfast things on the table, and everything just as it stood, to be brought away as speedily as possible by his servants. In one instant he thus found himself in the street, without having even seen Somerset — and thus, in the face of the whole colony and of the army, a scene of discourtesy took place toward a person of his rank after holding one of His Majesty’s governments for two years. [3] [4]
Somerset declined to meet Donkin except in the colonial secretary’s office. Donkin returned to England without an interview, and was soon actively engaged in bringing the faults of the Cape government to notice. After his supersession he remained in the colony about a fortnight and then returned to England. The most sincere regret at his departure and unfeigned gratitude for his continual attention to their welfare was shown by all classes. When he was already out of office, addresses were presented to him by the chief justice in the name of the court of justice, by His Majesty’s fiscal, and by the president and members of the Burgher Senate; also by T. E. Cadogan on behalf of the merchants and commercial community, who marked his accessibility at all times, his extension of the coasting trade, the foundation laid of the first lighthouse anywhere on the South African shores, the establishment of Captain Marryat’s code of signals, and the commencement of a breakwater in Table Bay. Far more weighty was the approbation of His Majesty as expressed in a despatch from Bathurst dated the 28th of September: the king had been graciously pleased to express his approbation of the manner in which Donkin had, during Somerset’s absence, administered the government; the settlement of so large a body of settlers as that sent from the country in 1819 had imposed a new and difficult duty, and although the settlers themselves had given the most unequivocal testimony to the merit of his arrangements, His Majesty felt it due to express the sense which he entertained of them. The despatch mattered because it arrived as a royal verdict on an acting governor whom the returning governor would not meet except across a secretary’s table. [3] [4]
At this time the colony was in a state of great depression. After 1815 the island of St Helena had afforded an excellent market for Cape produce, as all the meat, flour, peas, beans, dried fruit, brandy, and common wine required for the large garrison and the ships of war maintained to guard the captive emperor Napoleon were procured here. Upon the death of Napoleon the naval and military establishment at St Helena was withdrawn, and that market disappeared. The paper money had sunk in value until only 1 shilling and 9 pence could be had in exchange for a carton rixdollar. From 1821 to 1825 the average was about 1 shilling and 6 pence halfpenny. The revenue was falling off, and there were new and peremptory demands upon it. The vanished market mattered because the same treasury that was feeding Albany had just lost the island that had bought Cape meat and wine. [3] [4]
Rivers, the Kowie, and Shaw’s Chapel — December 1821
The first acts of the governor caused some alarm among the British settlers. He dismissed Jones. On the 7th of December he appointed Harry Rivers, then wharf-master at Simon’s Town, landdrost of Albany, and moved the office from Bathurst back to Grahamstown. This was very unsatisfactory to all who had ground near Bathurst, though it was indisputable that Grahamstown was in every respect a better situation, especially as it was the headquarters of the troops on the frontier. The special heemraden appointed by Donkin — Captain Campbell, Major Pigot and Miles Bowker — were dismissed. The settlers who first felt the altered régime were those who, in consequence of their proximity to the Xhosa, had been afforded military protection: with the parties under Mahony, Brown and Scott along the Fish, and also Pringle’s on the Baviaans’, small contingents of the Cape corps had been posted. These the governor withdrew, and left the exposed parties to protect themselves as best they could. He also withdrew the military party stationed at Fredericksburg. That was all that was required to break up the establishment; the greater number of the men wandered back to the colony and found employment where they could, leaving their military service without the usual discharge. The withdrawals mattered because they undid, in a fortnight, the buffer Donkin had laid on the Beka in June. [3] [4]
As for Fort Willshire, the governor caused an examination to be made by a competent engineer officer, who sent in a report that Donkin’s barrack had cost more money than would have been required for the completion of the original structure, that the position of the barrack was bad in a military point of view, as it was commanded by rifles from high ground on the other side of the river, and that it was too low and confined for the health and comfort of the garrison. Undaunted by the October failure, another attempt was made on the Kowie as soon as the Elizabeth was again ready for sea. On the 9th of November the river was entered for the first time by a vessel — the little coasting schooner Elizabeth, belonging to Henry Nourse. Great hopes were entertained by the settlers that this port would quickly become a place of large trade. The entry mattered because Albany’s bags still came overland from Algoa Bay; a bar that a schooner could cross was the difference between a river mouth and a port. [3] [4]
On the 16th of October a plot of land was bought in Grahamstown, and upon it the foundation stone of a chapel and school was laid on the 5th of December. 500 pounds were required to complete the building. Of this 250 were raised in subscriptions, almost every settler contributing something, while the remainder was borrowed on interest. The work was that of William Shaw, who had not forgotten Salem while he took the spiritual care of Grahamstown. In November Mr Thomson arrived and began those labours as missionary, and afterwards minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, which would make him one of the most useful men on the frontier. Manumissions in the colony that year numbered 26 — against 24 in 1820. The chapel mattered because Grahamstown, not Bathurst, was where the people and the troops actually sat, and Shaw was building for that fact before Rivers moved the office back. [4] [4]
The accounts showed that the cost of supplies of food to the end of 1821 exceeded by 19950 pounds the money remaining with the emigration commissioners in England in the names of those to whom the rations were furnished. Incurred by the colonial government on account of rations up to the 31st of December was Rds. 264447 — about 19833 pounds 10 shillings — while the total of the second and third instalments of the deposit money to meet this was Rds. 96080, about 7206 pounds, leaving a deficit of about 11627 pounds 10 shillings. Somerset was unwilling to allow this loss to the public treasury to increase. Grain was being imported even into the western districts. The most that could be done was to send to Albany a quantity of rice to avert actual starvation. That deficit was the year’s bill for a settlement whose wheat had failed twice, and whose new governor had just moved the landdrost back to the military town. [3] [4]