Boer History1822 at the Cape of Good Hope: Somerset West, English Official, and Albany in Blight
The Second Blight, Rice, and Bengal Wheat — January–May 1822
The wheat blighted a second time. That is why 1822 opened on rice rather than on a harvest. Lord Charles Henry Somerset was back in the oaths from the evening of the 30th of November 1821, after Major-General Sir Rufane Shawe Donkin had held the acting post since the 13th of January 1820. What hung on the second rust was whether the British families 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 two failed crops. Those who had means saw no other prospect than losing what they still possessed. Those who had nothing saw starvation close. [3] [4]
To all without property the colonial government had issued full rations to the 30th of September 1821, and half rations after that date. That could not go on. The accounts showed that the cost 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 who drew the rations. 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 second and third instalments of the deposit money to meet this were Rds. 96080, about 7206 pounds, leaving a deficit of about 11627 pounds 10 shillings. The revenue could not bear that charge. Owing to the blight, grain was being imported even into the western districts. Somerset would not let the loss to the public treasury grow. He stopped the free issues and would send only starvation quantities of rice and seed corn for another attempt at a crop. The most that could be done was to send rice to Albany to avert actual starvation. The stoppage mattered because the locations had been kept on the ground by those issues; without them people had to move or starve. [3] [4]
There was a kind of wheat solid in the stem, called Bengal wheat, believed to withstand the rust. A large quantity imported from India lay in the government stores at Capetown. It was decided to issue this to the settlers in the hope of a better harvest in 1822. 500 muids were sent to Algoa Bay in February. The grain was unpromising. Indian wheat seemed always to arrive in bad condition for want of care and storage on board. Robert Hart of the Somerset farm was asked to inspect the shipment on its arrival at Port Elizabeth. Operating on 4672 lb., he removed 343 lb. of foreign matter — seeds, stones, straw, clay, and weevil dust — and reported that a quarter of the remainder would be useless on account of the weevil. It looked more like the sweepings of stores than wheat selected for seed. On that material the hopes for bread in the coming season were founded. [4]
By this time the settlers as a whole were the worse for their sojourn. Those who had brought capital were poorer: they had spent much and seen no return. Those of smaller means had lost all, and saw in the stoppage of rations reason for the gravest anxiety. The free supply itself had hurt the labouring classes: compelled to remain on the locations and sure of food whether they worked or not, they had drifted into idle habits. Harsh as it seemed, and great as the distress was in many cases, the governor’s action had a salutary effect. With the stoppage he seems to have relaxed the rule that bound people to the location. The result was a general stampede to other parts of the colony of those who saw a better chance of earning a living elsewhere. Those who had bound themselves to the soil by outlay on buildings and improvements, and those who had to remain for other reasons, found 1822 a time of great suffering. Meat was fairly easily obtained, but bread became extremely scarce, and tea and sugar almost out of reach. Clothes brought from England were worn out; others had to be fashioned from sheepskins. A common reed called the paliniet proved serviceable for hats. [4]
In April the Salem party — industrious and united, and still an example among the locations — were compelled by two failed harvests and a long drought to petition the governor for a renewal of the support afforded up to 1821. Want of food was forcing them to slaughter their cattle, their last resource. The only consolation was his answer of the 9th of May: sympathy for their distress, and nothing more than rice. One settler wrote that wheat which two months earlier had been the most promising he had ever seen in any country was now cut down and in heaps for burning; not a grain had been saved. Barley, from drought and a grub that attacked the blade just under the surface, produced little more than had been sown. Indian corn was injured by the caterpillar; cabbages destroyed by lice; the beans scorched by the hot winds. The cows were dry from want of grass; as far as the eye could reach there was no verdure — one great wilderness of faded grass. While watching by the sick bed of a child bitten by a snake, the same man was startled by the cry of wild dogs: about 30 of those animals killed 20 of a flock of 27. The letter mattered because it was the harvest as the locations actually saw it, not as a store in Capetown described it. [4]
Rivers, Bathurst, and the 8 February Proclamation
Harry Rivers, Somerset’s nominee, had been appointed on the 7th of December 1821 — about a week after the governor’s return — and arriving in Grahamstown on the 21st of January took over the government buildings and drostdy documents. He was the man who would sit as landdrost of Albany, the new eastern district created on the 13th of October 1820 from Uitenhage east of the Bushman’s, with its seat of magistracy intended for Bathurst. Donkin’s special heemraden — Captain Campbell, Major Pigot and Miles Bowker — were already off the board. The Cape corps parties Donkin had posted with Mahony, Brown and Scott along the Fish, and with Pringle on the Baviaans’, and the military at Fredericksburg, were off the ground from December. What this year added was the office itself sitting at Grahamstown as a published rule. [4]
The settlers’ sense that the governor regarded them with disfavour was confirmed by a proclamation on the 8th of February. After recalling Donkin’s notice of the 13th of October 1820 that a seat of magistracy would be established at Bathurst, Somerset stated that it had been found highly expensive and greatly inconvenient to remove the establishments from Grahamstown and to erect the buildings of a drostdy. The judges’ circuit courts would no longer assemble at the intended town of Bathurst. The landdrost would continue to reside at Grahamstown, as he had since Albany was separated from Uitenhage, and the courts would be held there. Except in intention, Bathurst never was a seat of magistracy. Colonel Graham, whom Donkin had appointed, had died without taking up the duty. The judges on circuit had held court in Bathurst in October 1821 — the only occasion they did so — but as 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 used by Captain Trappes. The proclamation mattered because Bathurst’s sixteen months of work, trade, and hope of a market hung on the drostdy sitting there; Grahamstown was the military town, not the settlers’ village. [4]
The older Dutch inhabitants of the district had protested against removing the drostdy from Grahamstown to Bathurst, in a petition signed by Van Aardt and 112 others, sent to Somerset in January. It was met by a largely signed counter petition from the settlers. Both bore dates before the governor’s proclamation. It was not so much the change itself that gave offence as the manner of it. For about 16 months the site had been a scene of bustle: artificers and tradesmen from the locations found work, unskilled labour found an outlet, the pachter did a good business, and the agriculturist looked forward to a convenient market. All this was altered on the 8th of February. Those who had put up buildings in Bathurst were the especial sufferers. In August the petitioners were told that redress might go as far as cancelling the sums owing on the plots if the purchasers surrendered all claim to them — and that, as compensation for lost time, the government was willing to lend sums equal to half the value of buildings on mortgage of those buildings and two collateral securities, at the usual interest, to be refunded in five years in half-yearly instalments. The offer did not prove alluring: up to the 24th of November not one of the aggrieved had accepted it. [4]
In January Rivers sent to government a report on the prison then in use and asked for an entirely new and more commodious structure. It consisted of two front rooms, 12 feet square; a hall used as a kitchen; and a back room occupied by the constables. One of the front rooms was used by the under sheriff; in the other were at present 20 prisoners. No distinction could be made between the nature of the crime, the description of persons, or the untried and the convicted. The prison stood in the best part of High Street, with a pound attached that was a constant source of dirt and annoyance. On the 19th of March he suggested that a drostdy house should be built upon the plot at the end of the town appropriated for that purpose. A formal contract was signed on the 6th of July wherein Pieter Retief undertook to erect the building for Rds. 23000 — about 1875 pounds — and to have it finished in 14 months from that date. The contract mattered because Grahamstown, once the drostdy was confirmed there, needed a house and a gaol that matched the office, not a twelve-foot room on High Street. [4]
While Rivers was developing the civil establishment, Colonel Scott was trying to gain better barrack accommodation for the European troops. Until this time they, as well as the Khoikhoi soldiers, were quartered in the East Barracks, about a mile and a half from the village. Scott considered it expedient that military headquarters should be in the village itself. Retief offered to sell his house, a somewhat pretentious building, together with the erf, and to build the necessary additions to a plan drawn by Scott, for Rds. 40000 — about 3000 pounds — the whole to provide accommodation for 6 officers, 180 rank and file, 12 horses, a powder magazine, ordnance buildings and commissariat stores for 200 men. On Scott’s recommendation Somerset accepted, and on the 7th of May a contract was signed, Robert Hart, P. J. Cloete and F. Korsten binding themselves as securities. The work, afterwards known as Scott’s Barracks, commenced forthwith. Before the governor had signed, Retief seems to have found the price too low and tried to withdraw; Scott would not permit it, but promised a supply of military labour. In June the barracks began; a few weeks later, the drostdy house. In August Retief was appointed field commandant of all the Albany burghers and had to take the field against Magomo. While he was absent, his workmen proved how much they needed strict supervision. [4]
Clay Pits, Magomo, and Fort Beaufort — 1822
Failure of crops and drought did not fill the settlers’ troubles. There was still the lifting of cattle across the Fish. During the first eighteen months of the settlement depredations had been rare; in 1822 they recommenced with all their former injury. The settlers were unacquainted with the methods of pursuit and recapture that had become second nature with the Dutch inhabitants. The line of locations nearest the Fish was the first to suffer. Nightly forays increased, and under the existing regulations the cattle were easily driven beyond recovery. Mahony’s location had a special attraction: the pits from which the coveted red clay for personal adornment was obtained. No prohibition or threat stopped visits there; and as the military protection had been withdrawn, this became serious not only for Mahony’s party but for the adjacent locations. Perhaps from inability to stop it, the authorities sanctioned visits at certain times under a military officer, and tried to derive profit by offering the clay in exchange for hides and ivory. The pits mattered because they drew Xhosa parties inside the colony, to a place ten minutes’ walk from a settler house, after the Cape corps had been taken off the ground. [4]
As an instance of these “fairs”: in July the chief Ngeno with 300 men and women arrived at the clay pits, remained four days, and took away a quantity of clay estimated as three waggon loads. They gave in return 40 skins of cattle, 2 tusks of ivory and 2 buffalo horns. The forty skins represented little sacrifice: many bore the brand-marks of colonial owners. In the official documents the affair is described as satisfactory. Encouraging such hordes to a place within the colony, so near the dwellings of defenceless people, was felt to be a dangerous policy and was met with protest. Many people, settlers as well as soldiers, were carrying on an illicit traffic in ivory and making far better bargains than the authorities. Major Taylor, in command at Fort Willshire in 1822, saw in February two waggons in charge of three artillerymen and a settler named Doherty, a tanner, proceeding to Grahamstown from the vicinity of the fort. Suspecting something wrong, he sent Corporal Critchley and eight men to search. One waggon was heavily laden with ivory. “I am of opinion,” said Taylor, “that the whole of the artillery here are concerned in this traffic and should be exchanged from this.” [4]
Mahony’s house was only about ten minutes’ walk from the clay pits, so he met with much annoyance from people visiting at odd times. He behaved aggressively toward them and thus placed his own life and those of his people in still greater danger. Shortly after the July clay fair, some had determined to be revenged on him. Signs of that disposition had been shown before: an attack upon his house, and a chase in which he narrowly escaped with his life. In the case now recorded, though no harm befell Mahony, two of his servants lost their lives and one was severely wounded. Mahony’s waggon, in charge of Richard Freemantle, his two sons Sam and John, and another settler, was returning from Bathurst. When about a mile from the house, passing through thicker bush, men rushed out and attacked them with assegais. Perhaps mistaking Richard Freemantle for Mahony, the first rush was directed at him. In a moment or two he was stabbed in several places and fell lifeless. The son John was pierced almost at the same time. The murders mattered because they were the price of an unsanctioned clay pit on an unguarded location, after the Cape corps had been withdrawn. [4]
A son of Gaika, Magomo, had come to the fore. Reckless of danger, crafty and a keen politician, he soon attained the pre-eminence among the tribes to which those qualities led. He made his debut — “he learnt to tie and milk a kicking cow” — at the battle of Amalinde in 1818. It was not until about this time that he began to engross the attention of the colonial government. Donkin’s occupation of the neutral territory, though with Gaika’s apparent permission, by the establishment of Fredericksburg, probably suggested to Magomo that he also had the right to occupy part of that forbidden land. In any case he did so. With a large number of followers he formed kraals on the lands at the sources of the Kat River, not far from the later town of Fort Beaufort, and although this was known to the colonial government no steps were taken to dislodge him. Ndhlambi had returned to his old haunts and had renewed a suspicious friendship with Gaika. This and other matters came to light from an affair early in 1822. A man residing at the Chumie mission station under Messrs W. R. Thomson and Brownlee paid a visit to Magomo’s new place and there recognised horses belonging to a farmer in whose service he had been employed. Unknown to Thomson, he took two of the horses and returned them to his former master. A large body, led by Magomo and some petty chiefs, descended upon the institution cattle kraals at milking time and a fierce fight ensued. The mission people, unprepared, were worsted; the invaders on retiring drove off 274 head of cattle. [4]
A sudden military descent produced on Gaika the desired result. Within about three weeks he sent back to the losers, though in driblets, cattle to the number required to complete the quantity stolen. Intimidation accounted in large measure for that promptness. There was another reason. He was anxious to stand well in government favour, for, perhaps encouraged by Magomo being allowed to reside unmolested in the ceded territory, he himself conceived the idea of doing likewise. He had approached Thomson and Brownlee several times to get them to intercede. Gaika with Botman and some chiefs of less note became so importunate that Brownlee had to write to government on the 20th of May. In answer, the missionaries were instructed to assemble the chiefs and to convey, in terms that could leave no shadow of doubt, the views of the colonial government. They were to be shown that the recent behaviour of both chiefs and people had proved the wisdom of excluding them from that territory. Gaika was rebuked for allowing Ndhlambi to recross the Buffalo River and was informed that His Excellency had been regularly apprised of his late fruitless endeavours to induce the border chiefs to break the peace. He was accused of attempting to form a coalition with the object of attacking the colony. Gaika denied the accusation. After this he removed to a secluded spot on the Keiskamma, about eight miles from the mission station, and thus rendered it almost impossible to get into communication with him, as Thomson found when it was necessary to inform him of the murders of the Freemantles. [4]
It was the aggressive Magomo, so near the colonial boundary on the Kat, who now determined the tranquillity of the frontier districts. His proximity to the Baviaans’ River and Tarka was soon shown by petty raids on the farmers there. Success encouraged those farther south, adjoining Albany; the whole line of the frontier soon needed a large defensive force. Landdrost Andries Stockenstrom expressed his willingness to co-operate with the military by calling out the burghers from his district. In case of emergency he offered to send 60 men to Grahamstown, 140 to cover the Tarka and 100 to the Baviaans’ River. In July he himself went forth at the head of a commando and patrolled the country round the Winterberg. Another commando, under Pieter Retief, assembled at De Bruin’s Drift on the Fish on the 26th of August. They scoured the country towards the Kat and returned to Grahamstown on the 3rd of September with 123 cattle and some horses. For months small military parties patrolled the bushy country between the Fish and Fort Willshire. It was a hopeless task: the bush was 50 miles long, and in places from 6 to 8 miles wide, and at best difficult of penetration. To act as a check upon Magomo and to watch his movements, Colonel Scott, in this year, erected a block-house and stationed troops on the open country near the mountains in which that chief had ensconced himself. This was named Fort Beaufort and was the beginning of the present town of that name. On a representation by Somerset that there was imminent danger of an invasion of the colony by the Xhosa, Earl Bathurst consented to enlarge the Cape regiment by two troops of cavalry, bringing its strength up to 480 rank and file. It was the general opinion of the English in South Africa that the real object was the advancement of the governor’s eldest son; that view was speedily confirmed by the promotion of Captain Henry Somerset to be lieutenant-colonel of the Cape regiment and commandant of the eastern border, while the civil situation of commissioner of stamps, which he held with a salary of 700 pounds a year, was allowed to be performed by deputy. The block-house mattered because Magomo was now the man who decided whether the Fish would be quiet, and the colony answered with a post on the Kat and two extra troops. [3] [4]
Public Meetings Forbidden — 24 May 1822
In their distress the settlers attributed many of the evils they suffered to the arbitrary conduct of the governor, and drew a sharp comparison between his coldness and the sympathy Donkin had always expressed for them. They proposed to hold meetings to discuss political matters. Although it had been stated in the general information to intending emigrants that on arrival they would be governed by the laws of the colony, it does not appear to have struck any that those laws might differ from those in England. They had not been settled long before they discovered that the freedom with which they had been accustomed to criticise public measures in England was not to be tolerated in South Africa, and that any attempt to convene a public meeting without the express sanction of the head of the government was a high misdemeanour. That discovery mattered because the second blight, the stoppage of rations, and the 8 February proclamation had given them plenty to discuss, and the law of the Cape gave them no meeting in which to do it. [3] [4]
In April one or two heads of parties proposed that a meeting should be called to send a deputation to the governor to represent the real state of affairs. The suggestion, in this form, was originally made by Major Somerset, the governor’s son, to Thomas Phillips. Circulars, bearing date the 2nd of May, were issued, calling a meeting for the 24th. On that day, however, the landdrost, Rivers, caused public notices forbidding the meeting to be posted in conspicuous places in the village; and, very curiously, on this same day the governor issued the famous proclamation declaring illegal any public meeting held without his sanction. It is possible that Major Somerset, who had gone to Capetown in the meantime, had told his father of what was intended; if so, the coincidence is accounted for. The proclamation of the 24th of May declared such meetings illegal, subjecting persons attending them to severe punishment, and announcing that he had instructed the local authorities to arrest and bring to trial any persons who should disregard this warning. He declared at the same time that he would take every opportunity of redressing real grievances and of promoting the general and individual welfare of the settlers. “Certain individuals (probably ignorant of the Laws of the Colony) have proposed to convene Public Meetings, for the discussion of Public Measures and Political subjects, contrary to the Law and Usage of this place,” the text ran: every person who attempted to convene any meeting of such nature without his sanction, or any person attending such unsanctioned meeting, was guilty of a high misdemeanour and was severely punishable. The settlers did not venture to defy the government, so no meetings were held; but from this date complaints of the tyranny to which they were subjected were constantly sent to England, and attracted much attention there. [3] [4]
This attitude toward a proposal of so reasonable and peaceable a character was felt to indicate an unmistakable hostility which was quite undeserved. It was clear that to look for any amelioration of their conditions from the governor was out of the question. Their only hope now was, acting in accordance with the proclamation of the 24th of May, to seek permission to hold a meeting for the purpose of bringing their troubles before the notice of the home government. The matter for a few months was discussed as openly as was dared, and then on the 3rd of December a letter, signed by 97 names, was transmitted to Rivers through the senior heemraad. The undersigned, deeming it absolutely necessary to the success of their pursuits in this colony to lay a statement of their condition and the causes which had rendered it insupportable before His Majesty’s government, were desirous to meet together for that purpose, and requested that the earliest occasion be taken to sanction the meeting required. This was forwarded to Capetown. Colonel Bird, the colonial secretary, in reply to Rivers, said he was instructed to desire that Rivers ascertain from the persons who had promoted this application more specifically the objects of the proposed meeting, it appearing to His Excellency that the letter addressed to the senior heemraad was so general as to be open to any purpose, and while the application was so vague, His Excellency did not see the expediency or indeed utility of giving his legal sanction to the requisition. [4]
Besides the above, Somerset well exhibited his opinion of the settlers by the account he gave of them in a despatch to Earl Bathurst dated the 16th of December. “I can best describe to your Lordship,” he said, “the characteristics and disposition of the major part of the settlers who have emigrated from England and Ireland by attaching to them the familiar appellation of Radical, they have no disposition to Industry and no inclination to exert themselves, and their chief object is to oppose and render odious all authority, to magnify all difficulties and to promote and sow the seeds of discontent wherever their baneful influence can extend. The unfortunate blights in the Wheat Crops for the last two seasons and the distresses caused thereby have served their turn well, and the increasing depredations furnish them with additional means of fomenting.” The despatch mattered because it was the governor’s case to the secretary of state: rust and raids were, in his telling, tools of Radical discontent, not reasons to let 97 men meet. [4]
A fund for the relief of distressed settlers had been initiated by Captain Moresby of H.M.S. Menai at the disembarkation of 1820. On his return to Capetown he enlisted the sympathy of Henry Ellis, the deputy colonial secretary, Sir Jahleel Brenton, the admiral at Simon’s Town, and Donkin, together with a few other prominent men. Acting as an informal committee they asked for subscriptions, and within a very short time Rds. 7000 were collected. As the fund grew more necessary, the Capetown committee became more properly organised and appeals, instead of being confined to the colony, were extended to England and India. Monthly meetings were held for the consideration of cases, and an annual meeting was initiated for rendering to the subscribers an account of the monies received and the work done. A special committee meeting was held on the 15th of May for the purpose of approaching Somerset upon the subject. As a mark of respect the secretary wrote to His Excellency, acquainting him with the formation and objects of the society, sent all the details of receipts and expenditure and respectfully requested that he would afford it his patronage and support and, further, that he would condescend to take the chair at the forthcoming meeting. No answer or even acknowledgment was vouchsafed to this appeal. About a week later, on the 24th, the proclamation forbidding public meetings was issued. While they were in this dilemma, a letter appeared in the Cape Gazette for the 22nd of June proposing the formation of a fund for the relief of distressed settlers, proposing as a committee the landdrost and Anglican clergyman of Grahamstown together with a heemraad, and as a nucleus of a fund, Somerset’s name was appended as subscribing Rds. 500, Lady Somerset Rds. 100, and Colonel Bird Rds. 100. The original committee persuaded Sir John Truter, the chief justice, to consent to take the chair, and an advertisement calling the meeting was sent to the Cape Gazette printing office. But it did not appear. On inquiry, it was found that it would not be published without the governor’s sanction, and this could not at first be obtained. The committee wrote and assured him of the benevolent intentions of all concerned and the strictly non-political character of the objects of the meeting. In answer they were told that the printers had acted most properly in refusing the advertisement, but that, “under the guarantee you have given,” the meeting was sanctioned. And thus it was held. The fund mattered because even charity now needed the governor’s leave to meet, a week after he had made an unsanctioned assembly a high misdemeanour. [4]
English from the Secretary’s Office — 5 July 1822
At that date all judicial and official proceedings in the courts of law had to be conducted in the Dutch language. A change in this respect was impending, and not from Capetown’s own motion. It was considered advisable by the imperial authorities that English should as soon as possible supersede Dutch in South Africa, and by order of Earl Bathurst a proclamation was issued by Somerset on the 5th of July, announcing that after the 1st of January 1823 all documents issued from the office of the secretary to government would be in English; after six months all other official acts and documents would be either in English or Dutch, and after the 1st of January 1825 in English exclusively; and that after two years English and Dutch would be indiscriminately used in judicial acts and proceedings until the 1st of January 1827, when English alone would be used. A five years’ notice, so to speak, was given that in and after 1827 English was to be the official language of the country. So far as Albany and Simonstown were concerned, no objection would later be raised by any one to the exclusive use of English in the courts of law; but in the other districts, where Dutch was spoken by the great majority of the people, it was regarded as a very serious grievance. In all other respects the proclamation would be enforced, and after the dates named English became the official language of the colony, with the exception that important notices were published in the Gazette in both languages. The order mattered because the secretary’s office was the colony’s mouth: from 1823 that mouth would speak English, and Dutch districts would feel it as more than a clerk’s convenience. [3] [4]
By direction of Earl Bathurst, on the 12th of July a proclamation was issued by Somerset, granting to natural-born subjects of the United Kingdom settling in the colony, and married before their arrival, the right of devising property according to the English laws of inheritance. But if they married in the colony, without an antenuptial contract, they became subject to the colonial law, which gives to husband and wife equal rights, and at that time permitted testamentary disposition of only a portion of the property of either man or woman, unless there were no natural heirs. The law of inheritance in cases where no will was made was not affected by the proclamation of July 1822: property of people born and married in Great Britain and dying intestate in the colony was divided equally among the children. The distinction mattered because the 1820 settlers had brought English marriage with them; those who married here without a contract stepped into Roman-Dutch community of property, and the proclamation left intestacy where it was. [3]
So many complaints of the arbitrary nature of Somerset’s government reached England that the ministry found it expedient to prevent discussion in the house of commons by sending out a commission of inquiry. There were several subjects upon which the most accurate knowledge was desired by the imperial authorities, and concerning which there was no intention to conceal the slightest detail. On the 25th of July an address to the crown was presented by the commons, which resulted in the appointment of Major William Macbean George Colebrooke and Mr John Thomas Bigge as commissioners for inquiring into the state of the colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, and Ceylon. The pecuniary difficulties of the Cape began in 1822, when unavoidable expenses increased without an equivalent enlargement of revenue. The finances of England were then in a disordered state, and the governor was expected by some means or other to keep the colonial expenditure within the revenue. The frequent questions concerning South Africa asked by members of the opposition in the house of commons were also embarrassing to the ministers. Still, the influence of his family and his connections was so strong that the secretary of state took care to support him publicly, while admonishing him privately. The address mattered because it was how London answered the settlers’ letters without yet changing the man who forbade them to meet. [3]
Somerset West, Schools, the Library, and Worcester — 1822
On the 13th of February 1820 a building had been opened for public worship at a place near the head of False Bay, where the clergyman of the Dutch reformed church of Stellenbosch was in the habit of holding periodical services for the people in the neighbourhood. Early in 1822 a village was laid out there, which was named Somerset West, and in July of that year a congregation distinct from that of Stellenbosch was formed. The reverend J. Spyker, who since June 1817 had been stationed at Swellendam, was appointed its first pastor. The village mattered because it gave the False Bay side of Stellenbosch its own church and a name from the governor, in the same July that English was ordered from the secretary’s office. [3]
The irritation caused by the order to substitute English for Dutch as the official language was just then at its height. In 1821 Dr George Thom had been sent by the government to Scotland, to endeavour to procure men of ability to fill the vacant pulpits of the Dutch reformed church, and to establish free schools of a high class in the principal villages. He secured the services of the reverend Andrew Murray, who arrived in July 1822 and was stationed at Graaff-Reinet, and of the reverend Alexander Smith, who arrived at the same time and was stationed at Uitenhage in succession to Mr Mol, who was transferred to Swellendam. He also made arrangements with three students preparing for ordination — Messrs Henry Sutherland, Colin Fraser, and George Morgan — that they should proceed to Holland and learn the Dutch language, preparatory to taking employment in South Africa. Dr Thom also engaged six teachers to come out at once, and two others to follow as soon as possible. In July William Robertson was appointed to Graaff-Reinet, James Rose Innes, M.A., to Uitenhage, Archibald Brown, M.A., to Stellenbosch, William Dawson to George, James Rattray to Tulbagh, and R. Blair to Caledon. In some of the western villages much hostility was shown to the establishment of the schools, because instruction in them was confined to the English and Latin languages. Many parents regarded the schools merely as instruments for destroying their mother tongue, and refused to allow their children to attend, so that in one or two instances it was necessary to withdraw the teachers. In other places, however, and especially where some of the inhabitants were English, the attendance was large. The schools mattered because they were the 5 July order in a classroom: English and Latin in villages whose homes still spoke Dutch. [3] [4]
The Wesleyans had established a congregation in Capetown, and on the 16th of June their first chapel — in Barrack-street — was opened for public worship. Before that date their clergymen had conducted service in a store hired for the purpose. In Albany they had several places of worship. On the 16th of October 1821 a plot of land had been bought in Grahamstown, and upon it the foundation stone of a chapel and school had been laid on the 5th of December; 500 pounds were required to complete the building, of which 250 were raised in subscriptions. The chapel was finished and opened on the 22nd of November 1822. For some years it was the only place of worship in Grahamstown, and was generously placed at the service of the other denominations. The Baptists held regular meetings in it, and when, shortly after, a military chaplain was appointed, it did duty as garrison church as well as providing accommodation for a Church of England congregation. In his concern for the religious welfare of Grahamstown, William Shaw did not forget Salem. The old dilapidated Dutch house in which he first preached was replaced by a substantial building, the construction of which went on simultaneously with that of the Grahamstown chapel. The foundation stone was laid on New Year’s Day of 1822 and, with the time, labour and subscriptions of the Salem people themselves, it was finished and opened for public worship on the 31st of December of that year. Besides these, less pretentious buildings were erected on some of the locations, particularly at Clumber by the Nottingham party. Shaw’s chapel mattered because Grahamstown, not Bathurst, was where the people and the troops actually sat, and he opened a building for that fact in the same year Rivers confirmed the office there. [3] [4]
In January the South African public library was opened to the public. There was a portion of the old slave lodge that had not yet been converted into public offices, and the governor gave the committee permission to make use of it. In September 1820 a loan of Rds. 13700 had been obtained without interest from what was termed the private fund of the orphan chamber, and the money was devoted to rebuilding and repairing the apartments. Practically this loan was equivalent to a grant. Messrs Harmse and Hanson were the first librarians, but after a short time Thomas Pringle received the appointment. Several valuable donations were made by residents in Capetown, and shortly after the establishment of the new library the books bequeathed to the colony by Mr Van Dessin, and which had been during 62 years under the care of the consistory of the Dutch reformed church, were placed in it by an agreement with the consistory that they were to be kept separate from the others and remain under general control of the perpetual trustees named in the donor’s will. In this manner the South African public library was apparently firmly established as a library of reference. The opening mattered because the lodge that had held slaves now held books, on an orphan-chamber loan that was in practice a grant. [3]
On the 17th of January Lieutenant Bonamy, of the 6th regiment of infantry, was attached to the engineer department, and was directed to proceed to Graaff-Reinet, to aid the landdrost in the inspection of a north-eastern and northern boundary line, and to frame a map of that part of the colony. These instructions were acted upon without the least delay. In March of the same year Messrs Bonamy and Stockenstrom reported that they had fixed upon the Zwart Kei and Klaas Smiths rivers and the Stormberg spruit on the north-east. On the north they had inspected the Orange from the junction of the Stormberg spruit to a little below the junction of the Seacow river. Having proceeded so far, Landdrost Stockenstrom found himself obliged to return to the drostdy; so Lieutenant Bonamy was left to make a rough survey of the country they had gone over so rapidly, and to frame a map of it, after which the inspection farther westward would be resumed. Between 1819 and later years several military officers were engaged upon a rough survey of the colony, under direction of Major Holloway, of the royal engineers. Including the work of Lieutenant Bonamy, about 10000 square miles were completed, at a cost to the colony of only 1100 pounds, but the survey was then stopped for want of funds. The inspection mattered because the northern line was still a farmer’s claim until an engineer walked it; Bonamy’s map was that walk begun. [3]
A great storm from the 20th to the 24th of July in that year gave the governor an opportunity to solicit aid. Major Josias Cloete was sent in all haste to England to represent to Earl Bathurst more powerfully than could be done in writing the appalling losses. In October Somerset abolished the subdrostdy of Caledon, and transferred the duties to the officials of Swellendam. At the same time, on the plea that the public buildings at Tulbagh were irreparably damaged by that July storm, he abolished the subdrostdy of Worcester, and removed the landdrost of Tulbagh to that village. In truth, however, the principal building at Tulbagh was hardly damaged at all, and it is standing to the present day. But Worcester was a creation of the governor’s, and he desired to see it prosper. On the 8th of November a notice was issued changing the name of the district from Tulbagh to Worcester. Another matter which caused a good deal of adverse comment was the excessive cost of the governor’s establishment, while the colony was in a condition of financial distress. Somerset had for his own use four residences, kept in repair at the public expense: the government house in the gardens in Capetown; the summer-house at Newlands; as a marine villa the building in Camp’s Bay; and as a shooting-box the premises at Groote Post, whose grounds were 12000 morgen in extent, the game upon them preserved for the diversion of the governor and his friends. The rename mattered because a July storm was made the reason to move a drostdy to a village the governor had laid out, while four houses of his own remained on the public purse. [3]
Port Elizabeth, during the few years after the landing of the settlers, did not give much promise of the large town it has since become. The barren sandhills, the scarcity of water and the generally inhospitable appearance of the place were not features likely to attract an agricultural or purely residential population. The military buildings in connection with Fort Frederick, for the most part in a state of dilapidation, formed the nucleus around which Port Elizabeth very gradually developed. The old block house at the edge of the Baakens River was, in 1822, repaired and used as a prison. A Mr S. Hudson, who lived there in that year, described the place: houses rose up like mushrooms in the night and the building mania pervaded all classes, some for comfort, some for necessity, but more for speculation — a parcel of miserable huts huddled together, giving the Bay much the appearance of a village of the better sort of Khoikhoi. In spite of that appearance, however, the waggon traffic increased, and Port Elizabeth gradually asserted itself as the “key to the Interior.” For the repair and maintenance of the roads as well as the care of the chief well, from which the drinking water for both the inhabitants and the supply for the ships was obtained, Somerset, in 1822, authorised Colonel Cuyler to levy a tax on all the inhabitants of Port Elizabeth, then numbering between 300 and 400. The tax mattered because the landing-place below Fort Frederick was no longer only a beach: it had a prison, a well, and a rate to keep the road and the water. [4]
Fairs, the Kowie, and Griquatown — 1822
Somerset, on the 17th of September, issued a proclamation against illegal traffic across the Fish. He ascribed the recent murders to the temptations held out to the natives to enter the colony, and forbade any intercourse with them except at such fairs or meetings as he should sanction, under a penalty of Rds. 500 for the first offence, and for the second a fine of Rds. 500 and banishment from the district for five years. All Xhosa cattle then in the possession of individuals were to be branded with some distinctive mark and, after that, any others found in their possession to be confiscated. The first step in that direction had been taken by Donkin when, in 1821, he endeavoured to start a periodical fair on the bank of the Keiskamma and thus, by a properly regulated trade, to transform, so he hoped, a nation of thieves into an honest and civilised people. But on account of his departure shortly afterwards, and Somerset’s prejudice against everything initiated by the acting-governor, nothing came of it in 1822 beyond the September prohibition and the promise of sanctioned fairs. The prohibition mattered because the clay pits and the ivory waggons had shown what unsanctioned traffic cost; Somerset answered with a fine, not with Donkin’s fair on the Keiskamma. [4]
Toward the end of each year, the sole right to sell, during the following year, wines and spirits by retail in a particular district was put up to public auction. The highest bidder obtained the privilege and was known as the pachter of that district. The amounts, or annual licences, paid were very large; that for the Albany pacht for 1822 was no less than Rds. 40200 — 3015 pounds. In return for some such payment, the pachter was allowed to open as many canteens as he liked in his district and to grant licences to others to sell his liquors. In Albany nobody except the contractor was at liberty to sell, to lend or to give as a present, Cape or foreign liquors within the established limit by a smaller quantity than half an aum — 19 gallons. The pachter, on the other hand, was bound to sell only good liquors and in proper measure, though he might charge whatever he liked or could get. He was not permitted to sell to soldiers or their wives, to constables, 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 was permitted to be sold during hours of Divine service. These monopolies worked extremely unsatisfactorily. The high prices charged, together with the enmity with which the pachter was regarded, led to successful smuggling. The pacht mattered because Rds. 40200 was a year’s drink-licence on a frontier whose wheat had failed twice, and the canteens that paid it were the same village in which Rivers forbade a meeting. [4]
The Elizabeth had been lost on the rocks at Cape Recife shortly after Somerset’s return. To prevent the Kowie enterprise from coming to a standstill, he caused her to be replaced by a government sloop, the Winifred, which left Capetown in company with another coasting vessel, the Locust, in February. On her arrival at Algoa Bay, or Port Elizabeth as the landing-place had by this time become known, Robert Hughes was placed in command of her. In March the Winifred made her first attempt to enter the Kowie. After taking seven days to sail as far as the Bird Islands, 37 miles from Port Elizabeth, she arrived within signalling distance from the mouth. The bar was reported safe, but Hughes delayed so long that the flag indicating a dangerous bar had to be hoisted. On leaving the Kowie, in order to return to Port Elizabeth, the Winifred got into a western current and was carried as far as Plettenberg Bay. After some days she again tried for the Kowie; the elements took her on to some distance beyond the Buffalo. Floundering about in this way for many days, she seems to have arrived at Port Elizabeth, more by accident than design, with all the beef and firewood exhausted and all on board limited to half a pint of water per diem. On the 8th of May the Winifred got in for the first time though not without sustaining some damage to the rudder. Hughes’s complaint of the neglect of the people on shore was not without reason: the crew on whose exertions the tow through the bar depended were not only very poorly paid but experienced much difficulty in getting their money when it was due. Rivers paid but scant attention to Mr Dyason’s letters and the representations of the men; the result was that they either deserted or refused to move a hand when called upon to assist. In July matters came to a crisis when Dyason himself struck. A quarrel seems to have taken place on the Winifred as she was being got out of the river. On crossing the bar she grounded and lurched slightly over to one side. The entry mattered because Albany’s bags still came overland from Algoa Bay; a sloop that could cross the Kowie bar was the difference between a river mouth and a port, and Rivers would not pay the boat’s crew that made the difference. [4]
Along the northern frontier the San trouble continued. Mr J. Baird, the deputy landdrost of Beaufort West, asked on the 4th of February to be permitted to go forth with 150 men to appear before the kraals of Moses and Plaatje, two daring leaders who had been doing widespread damage. In reply on the 7th of February Stockenstrom said he could not bring himself to sanction the request: it was impossible for him, under present circumstances, to deviate from his system of strenuously opposing everything like strong commandos against the San, except in cases of the utmost necessity. A burgher named Smit, who in 1821 was suspected of having caused the death of a Khoikhoi and who, in consequence, fled toward the Orange River, was captured, tried and publicly hanged by his fellow-countrymen at Graaff-Reinet in January 1822. In reporting the execution to the governor, Stockenstrom said that the spectacle had made a great impression throughout the district. He testified to the order and good conduct of all, particularly to those who, for want of a military force, were obliged to act on guard and who, though sunk in deep melancholy, evinced the most profound respect for the law. In 1822 Commandant Van Wyk brought into the colony 24 San women and children, who were starving and had no means of subsistence in their own country. The hanging mattered because Graaff-Reinet carried out a sentence on one of its own without a garrison, and Stockenstrom would not, in the same year, sanction a 150-man commando against Moses and Plaatje. [4]
Griquatown had been formed by the missionary Anderson inducing the Bastards, afterwards called Griquas — the offspring of Dutch inhabitants of the Cape and Khoikhoi women — to give up their roving life in the northern wilds and to settle down upon the place called Klaarwater. In consequence of the missionary being unable to wield sufficient secular authority in order to suppress the illicit traffic with the colony as well as the increasing disorder, a government agent was appointed in 1822. The gentleman who volunteered for this duty was a Mr Melville, an officer of the government in Capetown then drawing a salary of Rds. 7000 per annum, who had visited the Griquas and knew their needs. Being a deeply religious man, he sacrificed his position and prospects of advancement as well as the comforts of life in Capetown. His appointment dated from the 21st of March, and his new salary was Rds. 1000 — 75 pounds — per annum. Beyond the colonial boundary, in the north-western part of Basutoland and the upper waters of the Caledon river basin, the invading torrent of 1822 had arrived: Chaka’s wars had set tribe after tribe in motion, and the country from there northwards to the Vaal, then densely populated, was driven northward by the invaders. Manumissions in the colony that year numbered 34 — against 26 in 1821 and 24 in 1820. Melville’s post mattered because Klaarwater sat on the road of that illicit traffic and of those wars: a missionary could not police it, and the colony sent an agent at a seventh of his former pay. [4] [4] [4] [7]