Boer History1823 at the Cape of Good Hope: English Official, the October Flood, Ingram’s Irish, and Lithako
English from the Secretary’s Office — 1 January 1823
From the 1st of January every document issued from the office of the secretary to government was to be in English. That is why 1823 opened on language as well as on blight. Lord Charles Henry Somerset was back in the oaths from the evening of the 30th of November 1821. Earl Bathurst had ordered the change. Somerset’s proclamation of the 5th of July 1822 had given notice: after the 1st of January 1823 the secretary’s office would issue in English; after six months other official acts and documents would be in English or Dutch, and after the 1st of January 1825 in English only; judicial acts would use English and Dutch until the 1st of January 1827, then English alone. The order mattered because Dutch was still the language of the benches. In Albany and Simonstown, where English was widely spoken, no one objected to English in the courts. In Stellenbosch, Swellendam, and Graaff-Reinet, where Dutch was the language of the great majority, it was treated as a serious grievance. [3]
At the opening of the year all judicial and official proceedings in the courts of law were still conducted in Dutch. A special case was Port Elizabeth. Almost all its inhabitants were English, and it was only beginning as an official place. A language proclamation for that town was issued on the 28th of May, nearly two years before the measure came into force in the rest of the colony, authorising English from the start of its official existence. The secretary’s paper and Algoa Bay thus moved first. The benches of the old Dutch districts still sat in Dutch, and would sit so until the dates named. [4]
In January the large building still used as public offices and a dwelling-house for the magistrate at Worcester was begun. The western storms of July 1822 had wrecked Tulbagh. Somerset had moved the landdrost to Worcester, a village of his own making, and on the 8th of November 1822 the district itself was renamed Worcester. The new offices were the mark that the move was meant to last. On the 22nd of February Somerset modified the liquor pacht regulations which Sir Rufane Shawe Donkin had issued on the 22nd of August 1821. In Albany nobody except the contractor might sell, lend, or give as a present Cape or foreign liquors within the established limit by a smaller quantity than half an aum — 19 gallons. The pachter had to sell only good liquor and in proper measure, though he might charge what he liked. He might not 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 was to be sold during hours of Divine service. The monopolies worked badly. A bottle ordered from Capetown cost about fivepence; through the pachter it cost eighteenpence, and with many it was a merit to cheat him. [3] [4]
A museum — chiefly of specimens of South African animals — was founded this year by Dr Andrew Smith, a surgeon in the army and an enthusiastic naturalist. On the 3rd of February the reverend Abraham Faure, one of the Dutch reformed clergymen in Capetown, and Thomas Pringle, assistant public librarian at Rds. 1000 a year, sent the governor the prospectus of a monthly periodical to be called the South African Magazine. They pointed to the benefits of spreading knowledge in Europe, promised that controversial and agitating topics would be excluded, and asked permission. An independent press was what Somerset would not have. He gave no public answer. He wrote privately to Downing Street against it, and after five weeks they were told verbally that he had not seen the application in a favourable light. The arrival of the commissioners of inquiry in July gave them fresh hope; those gentlemen advised them to wait. In July yet another aspirant arose: George Greig, who had arrived in March, a printer by trade, conceived the idea of a periodical in the interest of trade and merchandise — shipping intelligence, rates of exchange, and advertisements — rigidly excluding personal controversy and discussion of the colonial government’s policy. The prospectus mattered because the colony still had no independent paper; Somerset’s refusal, and Greig’s narrower trade sheet, are why the press fight of 1824 was already taking shape. [3] [4]
438 Left on the Locations, Locusts, and the 10 March Memorial
By May only 438 adult male settlers were left on the ground assigned to them. Of the 1004 adults — males above eighteen entitled to 100 acres each — who had arrived in 1820 to fill the Zuurveld after the war of 1819, rust, the stoppage of rations, and the stampede from the locations had done the rest. Those who remained were mostly men of some means, or men used to tilling the ground for a living. Their chief complaint was want of labourers. At the very time that nearly a thousand white men drawn from English towns and factories were leaving the locations for fear of starvation if they stayed, farms were offering high wages in vain. The settlers were forbidden to employ slaves. After 1820, by Bathurst’s order, every grant of land in the eastern portion of the colony was to be cultivated by free labourers alone. A list of persons who guaranteed employment for three years showed a want of 780 labourers — men, women, and serviceable boys and girls — at wages averaging 20 shillings a month, with food and lodging. Capetown and the western districts felt the same want. The figure 438 mattered because the 1820 scheme had been sold as a populated frontier; without labour, and without rations, the locations could not feed themselves. [3] [4]
Those who had put their capital into buildings and tillage, and those who had no trade to take elsewhere, found 1823 a year of great suffering. Meat was fairly easy to get. Bread became extremely scarce. Tea and sugar were almost out of reach as poverty deepened. Clothes brought from England were worn out; others had to be cut from sheepskins. A common reed called the paliniet proved useful for hats. Another person wrote, under date the 23rd of January: “We have also this season been troubled with a new enemy; the caterpillars and locusts have been so numerous, that our gardens are totally destroyed. Bread is now quite out of the question; the scanty allowance of half a pound of rice is all we get. We feel much the want of vegetables, sometimes being under the necessity of living several days on meat alone.” Cattle had lately been driven from him — 24 head — and misfortune had so long been his companion that they began to get reconciled to each other. The letter mattered because the locations were not only short of bread after two rust years; a third enemy, locusts, took the gardens that might have stood in for grain. [4]
Mid-year, judged by buildings and stock, the settlement was still thin. Of dwellings there were 27 of stone, 15 of brick, 65 of Devonshire cob, and 267 of wattle and daub — wicker-work plastered with mud. Stock, which varied from month to month as parties from beyond the Fish drove animals, stood at horses 206, cows 2946, oxen 3227, pigs 494, sheep 3223, goats 640. And 1476½ acres were under wheat, barley, oats, rye, mealies, potatoes, and pumpkins. From December 1820, when some heavy rains had fallen, there had been little more than slight showers that moistened the surface for an hour and then evaporated. Drought was another affliction of that unpropitious time. In 1823 all hoped and longed for rain, and they got it — all at once. [4]
Somerset’s proclamation of the 24th of May 1822 had forbidden public meetings in Albany. Seeing that no meeting would be allowed, the settlers who were moving in the matter drew up a memorial to Earl Bathurst and sent it round for signatures. The document, dated the 10th of March, stated their case in language both respectful and moderate. The chief points were grateful recognition of the marks of favour at the start of the settlement; the modification of the law of succession; and particular gratitude to the acting governor, Donkin, who had given them a great share of his personal attention — “by his solicitous attentions to the interests and wishes of the settlers, he inspired them with a degree of energy and hope, of which there are now left only the recollection.” They regarded it as a peculiar hardship that, in a remote corner of the British dominion, their whole interests should be committed to the unlimited control of one individual, and, being debarred all means of expressing their collective sentiments, they had at length been compelled to approach Bathurst. Other grievances were the increasing depredations from beyond the Fish for want of adequate protection, the withdrawal of the military posts and the disestablishment of Fredericksburg, the removal of the seat of magistracy from Bathurst to Grahamstown, the smallness of the land grants, the government’s monopoly of supplies to the troops, and generally “the uniform reversal of every measure previously resorted to for their advantage.” The document bore 169 signatures, among them Major George Pigot, Lieutenant Bisset, Lieutenant Rubidge, Dr Pawle, J. C. Chase, John Dold, the Cawoods, Hezekiah Sephton, C. H. Dell, T. P. Adams, Thomas Phillips, and Duncan Campbell. The memorial mattered because it was the settlers’ way around the ban on meetings: a paper to London when they could not assemble in Albany. [4]
There was opposition among the settlers themselves. A counter memorial bore date the 13th of May. It did not deny the grievances in the first paper — except the inroads from beyond the Fish, which it described as the work of a few stragglers of enterprising spirit and dishonest principles, occasionally invading the settlement and driving off a few cattle which the vigilance of the troops usually restored. It capitalised “the establishment of a PORT AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER KOWIE by His Excellency the Right Honourable Lord Charles Somerset” as the only act it chose to praise. How far its spontaneity was due to the settlers, and how far to a scheme for shielding the governor, remained an open question. Harry Rivers still sat as landdrost at Grahamstown, the man Somerset had put in after recalling Donkin’s arrangements. Men who lived 45 miles from the drostdy waited days for an audience; one had called upwards of 40 times, always waiting at least four hours; another made 13 journeys of 16 miles each way for a second muid of seed corn and then found that part of it was such damaged wheat as he had never seen. Rivers’s delays mattered because the landdrost was the settlers’ only civil authority, and the March memorial named neglect of their interests as the chief irritation. [4]
Ingram’s Irish and the Commissioners — February–July 1823
Want of labour is why John Ingram, head of one of the Irish parties of 1820, went back to England as a commercial speculation and in February made an arrangement with Bathurst. Ingram undertook to bring out at his own expense 50 labourers, and Bathurst undertook to advance, on conditions, the passage money for any others, not exceeding 200 men, 50 women, and 100 children. They were all to be apprenticed for three years to Ingram, who would have the right of selling the indentures. Working people were engaged in Ireland and embarked at Cork. To fill places, any worthless character who could be persuaded at the last moment was taken, and even then, instead of 400, there were only 347 emigrants on board the Barrosa when she started. They arrived in Capetown in December: 188 men, 59 women, and 105 children. They were at liberty either to work for Ingram or to find another employer. In the latter case they had to pay, or promise to pay from their wages, the sum demanded for their freedom: men Rds. 300, women Rds. 200, children Rds. 150. A few turned out badly. The only difficulty with the great majority was that they soon raised themselves above the rank of servants, and then, by competing with those who had employed them, increased the demand for people of their former class. The contract mattered because Albany’s 780 vacant places were not to be filled with slaves; Ingram’s indentures were the imperial answer to a free-labour shortage. [3] [4]
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. On the 25th of July 1822 an address to the crown was presented by the commons, which resulted in the appointment of Major William Macbean George Colebrooke and John Thomas Bigge as commissioners for inquiring into the state of the colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, and Ceylon. On the 12th of July these gentlemen with their secretary, John Gregory, arrived in Simon’s Bay in the ship Lady Campbell, and on the 24th of the same month they entered upon their duties. For more than three years they were to investigate the form of government, the state of the finances, the condition of the coloured people, the administration of justice, and other matters. They carried on their investigations of official documents through the governor, to whom an application was formally made for every paper they wanted to see. They were the governor’s guests during a large portion of the time they spent in Capetown. They did not take the trouble to learn Dutch, in which all the old records were written. The commission mattered because Somerset’s critics in the commons were to be answered by a report, not by a debate — and the papers they saw still passed through the castle. [3] [4]
The March and May memorials came before these gentlemen. On the complaint in the memorial of the 10th of March the commissioners were satisfied that no factious or disloyal motives had actuated those who signed it, but that the landdrost’s neglect of their interests was the chief cause of the irritation. They concurred with the settlers in thinking that Somerset’s never having visited them was not conducive to a realisation of their circumstances. On the whole they seemed to sympathise with the locations. The mouths of the civil servants were effectually stopped: anyone who ventured to make disclosures about his department, without previously communicating with the governor, was understood to be liable to dismissal. Early in the year Somerset came to suspect that certain documents used to his detriment by Donkin in London had been supplied by the colonial secretary, Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Bird. Bird had been recommended by Somerset himself upon the death of Henry Alexander in May 1818, at a salary of 3500 pounds and a perquisite of 300. The suspicion sat between the castle and Downing Street through the rest of this year. It mattered because the commissioners were guests in the same house that suspected its own secretary of feeding Donkin. [3] [4]
The same want of working people that had sent Ingram to Cork sat beside other paper of the year. The reverend Mr Leitner with his wife went to reside at the asylum: religious instruction, as everywhere with these men, was accompanied with the example of industry, the only object being to create some healthy occupation for the minds of the sufferers. In December the reverend John Taylor was removed to Cradock. Woolled sheep had been introduced into the eastern districts by some of the British settlers of 1820. Captain Duncan Campbell had brought out a few southdowns from England, but that species was not found to thrive. This year Miles Bowker purchased two merino rams which Somerset sent to the eastern districts, and from them and African ewes he raised a small flock of wool-bearing sheep. The grass in the part of lower Albany where Bowker resided was not healthy for sheep, and though the flock produced very fair wool, it did not increase in number, and there was no market for wool in such small quantities. The rams mattered because Albany’s wheat had failed twice; wool was the other staple some of the 1820 men still hoped would pay. [3]
The Great Flood of October 1823
Early in October the eastern districts were devastated by a flood such as had never before been known in that part of the colony. For days together rain fell as in ordinary thunderstorms, every rill became a foaming torrent, and the rivers, overflowing their banks, rolled down to the sea in great volumes of discoloured water. The British settlers who still remained on their locations in Albany, having never experienced anything of the kind, had built their cottages and made their gardens on the low-lying lands along the streamlets which course through the district. When the flood came, cottages, gardens, orchards, and cornfields were all swept away. Many of the poor people escaped with nothing but their lives and the clothing they had on. In some places even the ground loosened by the plough or the spade disappeared, leaving the barren subsoil bare. By this misfortune many families were reduced to the last stage of distress. The flood mattered because the 438 who had stayed after rust and locusts now lost the soil itself, not only the crop. [3]
On Sunday, the 5th of October, a gentle rain set in and lasted throughout that day and Monday. The parched ground absorbed it as soon as it fell, and all nature seemed to be refreshed and to raise visions of a prosperous harvest. The clouds then broke and blue sky appeared, but only for a while. The rain recommenced and continued in heavier showers until Thursday, when a storm of driving wind and a torrential downpour, which lasted for some hours, visited the district. The earth had had its fill, and every river came down in full force; those watercourses which, except on such occasions, are as dry as the surrounding country became mighty rushing torrents. Ploughed and cultivated lands, especially those on the slopes of the hills, were deeply furrowed; the wattle and daub houses suffered from the softening of the walls and the increased weight of the soaked thatched roofs. Saturday and Sunday were fine, and all trouble seemed to have passed. Thankfulness for the rain and mutual congratulations that the damage had been no worse prevailed throughout the community. But Monday dawned with mist which turned to more rain. This increased throughout the day until, towards nightfall, the climax arrived. A most terrific thunderstorm came over and seems to have lasted for hours, accompanied by violent wind and a deluge of rain compared with which the fall of the previous Thursday was a mere perspiration. [4]
There does not appear to be on record any other storm in the Eastern Province which even distantly approached it either in its widespread violence or in the quantity of water which fell in so short a time. The rivers and streams, already full, overflowed their banks and inundated the surrounding country; large tracts of land being under water to a depth of 3 or 4 feet. Thomas Phillips told that a small stream near his house, which usually contained no water, rose 12 feet over the banks and was 140 feet wide. After the waters subsided he found, at a place lower down the stream, some of the vegetables which had been washed out of his lands clinging to or entangled in the branches of the trees 5 feet from the ground; about the same time another settler asked him if he had seen his house coming down in that direction. There seems to have been only one fatality: a man named Cadle was drowned in endeavouring to cross a deep stream at Salem. Many did not go to bed, as the storm began early in the night and they feared, what in most cases took place, the fall of their houses. One woman with two small children escaped from her home in which the water was rising, and remained throughout that night without any shelter on a higher part of the hill on which she dwelt. One man, waking up and finding the water 2 feet deep in the bedroom, the stream having washed through a hole in the back wall, knocked down a part of the front wall to allow it to flow out, and through the same hole he, with his wife and child, fled through the intense darkness to a place of safety. [4]
The distress was heart-rending. Many families lost everything — not only houses and crops but furniture and even clothes. The loss in stock was considerable; sheep especially were caught by the raging waters, washed away and drowned. This happened more particularly in the Bruintjes Hoogte district, where hundreds perished in this manner. In 1820 a few charitable persons had united in a relief committee to assist sick and infirm immigrants, and about 600 pounds had been collected and distributed; as the need for aid increased, a society was formed in Capetown purposely to receive and disburse subscriptions to what was called the settlers’ fund. This society was still in existence, and there was a small amount of money available for immediate use. Although a great deal of good had been done by this fund, which distributed something like Rds. 3000 annually, its resources were inadequate to the demands of 1823. Nevertheless much was done in providing first necessaries. A second fund, which might be called the Governor’s Fund, had been started in June 1822, and Rds. 500 had been sent to Grahamstown in December; the first meeting for the consideration of its administration did not take place until the 14th of April of this year — nearly ten months after its initiation. The committee consisted of Rivers, the reverend W. Geary, and Miles Bowker, with G. Dyason as secretary. An appeal for help was made to the benevolent in England and in India. The funds mattered because the flood left no crop to sell and no cottage to live in; the Capetown society and the governor’s delayed committee were all the cash on the ground. [3] [4]
While the east sat under water, the Kowie sat under a small draught. In order to land cargo from vessels which could not enter the river, the governor caused to be built a sailing vessel of small draught named the Bridekirk, capable of plying between the Kowie and Port Elizabeth. Having made a successful voyage from Capetown to Algoa Bay with a cargo of 234 bags of barley, in September she commenced her Kowie career. Until this year there had been no attempt to erect buildings of a more permanent character at the mouth: the accommodation for the harbour people had been tents or the most makeshift shelter among the thick bush, and perishable produce used to remain upon the sand until conveyances could take it away, at the mercy of thieves who lurked in the bush and walked off with cases of tea, opened pockets of sugar, and tapped casks of spirits. Somerset instructed the government land-surveyor, Mr Hope, to examine both banks of the Kowie with a view to selecting spots for the erection of suitable residences for the harbour-master, officer of customs, and other necessary buildings. On the 18th of April Hope made his report and decided upon the east bank. Plans for two similar houses, each consisting of five rooms and a kitchen, were drawn out; the work was undertaken by Messrs Roberts and Tainton for Rds. 6700. On the 14th of December the harbour-master, Mr MacKay, reported that the Good Intent had sailed for Table Bay with a full cargo of sundry produce, hides, fat, and butter, purchased principally from the settlers. The Kowie mattered because Albany’s bags still came overland from Algoa Bay; a sloop that could cross the bar, and houses on the east bank, were the difference between a river mouth and a port — the one act the May counter-memorial had chosen to praise. [4]
Lithako, Waterboer, and the Mantati Horde — 26 June 1823
Beyond the colonial boundary the invading torrent of 1822 had arrived: wars in the east had set tribe after tribe in motion, and the remnants driven west were known to the colony as the Mantati horde. Their principal leader was named Tshuane, but the one whose fame has been most widely spread was Ma Ntatisi, the chieftainess of the Batlokua. After crossing the Vaal they turned to the north-west and created awful havoc with the tribes in their line of march. Twenty-eight distinct tribes are believed to have disappeared, leaving not so much as a trace of their former existence, before the Mantatis received a check. Then Makaba, chief of the Bangwaketsi, taking advantage of an opportunity when they were encamped in two divisions at a distance from each other, fell upon them unawares, defeated them, and compelled them to turn to the south. In this direction the Barolong lay in their route; these they dispersed and drove into the desert, and then they fell upon the Batlapin. They took possession of Lithako, the second Batlapin kraal in importance, and were about to march to Kuruman, when they were attacked by a body of Griquas under Andries Waterboer, Adam Kok, and Barend Barends, on the 26th of June. Being mounted and provided with firearms, the Griquas easily secured a victory, without loss to themselves. After this second defeat the Mantati horde broke up into several sections. The check mattered because Kuruman and Griquatown sat on the road of that horde; a missionary station and a government agency would have gone under if Waterboer’s horses and guns had not broken it. [3] [4] [7]
One day in June Robert Moffat, the missionary at Kuruman, arrived hurriedly at Griquatown with the alarming news that a warlike and formidable nation, called the Mantatees, was marching on to his station. His people, the Batlapin, were wild with terror and were making preparations to flee from the country. He persuaded them to stay further action until he had been to the Griquas and endeavoured to get their assistance. Rumours of the state of affairs in the far east had spread throughout the country, mixed up with extraordinary fabulous tales — that the Mantatees besides being voracious cannibals were being led by a great giantess with one eye in the middle of her forehead. There was, however, some truth in the statements that it was the intention of these people to attack Griquatown after they had sacked Old Lattakoo and Kuruman. Mr Melville, the government agent appointed from the 21st of March 1822 because a missionary could not police the illicit traffic, instantly called together all the Griquas he could and formed a council of war. The dissensions among the chiefs and people vanished before the common danger. It was decided that about 200 armed Griquas should be in Kuruman in ten days. With Moffat there went a Mr George Thompson, who was making a tour. The council mattered because Griqua chiefs who had been at odds now rode together; Melville’s post, taken at a seventh of his Capetown pay, was the colony’s only secular hold on that road. [4]
On Tuesday, the 24th of June, a force consisting of the Griquas, under the command of Waterboer, and 500 Batlapin set out from Kuruman. Melville had made the latter promise that they would not molest the women and children and that quarter should be given to all prisoners and wounded. Moffat with a reconnoitring party of ten Griquas under Waterboer went ahead and after a few hours’ riding came in sight of the enemy. One division, estimated at 15000, was lying on a declivity a short distance south of Old Lattakoo, while a second and far more numerous division occupied the town itself. The crowds consisted of men, women, and children, together with the cattle they had obtained in some recent raid. All were nearly naked. The men, of good stature and athletic mien, wore merely diminutive loin cloths and plumes of ostrich feathers upon their heads. Besides the customary shields and assegais, they were armed with clubs and curved knives, like reaping hooks sharpened on the outer curve, fastened to the end of long stout sticks. On closer examination all were found to be in an emaciated and semi-starving condition. Moffat found a man and his son lying in a sheltered nook who paid no attention to his approach; on speaking to them he discovered that they had scarcely sufficient strength to say that they were dying of hunger. Before any attack was allowed, Moffat and Melville, at great risk of their lives, did what could be done by words. Two days later the mounted Griquas with firearms broke the horde at Lithako. One section of the broken horde went northward; another returned to the Caledon under Ma Ntatisi and her son Sikonyela. [3] [4]
The invasion of Hintza’s territory by these people in 1823 may have contributed towards bringing to an end the period of comparative quiet which had reigned among the Xhosa generally since 1819. In that year there were indications of combination among chiefs who, for some time, had been on unfriendly terms with one another. In the Baviaan’s River district in particular, a continuation of most daring robberies, even in broad daylight and accompanied in some cases with brutal murders, commenced. Night after night some kraal was broken into and all the animals driven off. In a petition which 16 farmers of a portion of the Somerset district sent to landdrost Andries Stockenstrom, they stated that within the previous fourteen months they had lost 117 oxen, 521 cows, and 35 horses. The evil to be anticipated from Magomo’s proximity to the colony — he had been placed on the Kat in 1822 — was fully realised. On the 2nd of August Colonel Scott consulted Gaika at the Chumie with a view to securing his co-operation in establishing fairs in his country. The chief, with whom it was difficult to come in contact, as the alarm of 1822 still operated, expressed his willingness and even his desire for such a measure. At first it was intended to hold the fairs at the Chumie near the mission station; but eventually Fort Willshire was chosen, as more central and more convenient for the colonists, and as the officer commanding the troops there could be upon the spot and maintain order. The fairs mattered because illicit traffic across the Fish had not been checked by prohibition; a licensed market under a commandant was the colony’s attempt to put that trade on a paper it could watch. [4]
In 1823 landdrost Stockenstrom and the reverend Abraham Faure, clergyman of the Dutch reformed church at Graaff-Reinet, caused a school to be established a couple of hours’ ride north of the Orange river, at a place which Faure named Philippolis, in honour of the superintendent of the London society. They were in hopes of collecting together there a number of Koranas and San who were wandering about on both sides of the river, but they were disappointed, for these people could not be induced to settle anywhere permanently. At this time there were no other people than San and Koranas in those parts, except when a few farmers from the colony went over the Great river with their herds, and remained while the grass was good. According to the returns for this year there was a total population of 1811 at Bethelsdorp, of which 538 were males over sixteen. The total population of the Cape Colony was somewhat over 110000; of those, some 30000, or thereabouts, were Khoikhoi. Philippolis mattered because the Orange was still a grazing limit, not a settled line: a school named for Philip was an attempt to fix people who would not stay. [3] [4] [7]
The Salisbury, Farewell, and the South-Eastern Coast — 23 June 1823
In 1823 some merchants at Capetown formed a joint stock company for the purpose of trading with the natives on the south-eastern coast, and with that object chartered a brig named the Salisbury, of which James Saunders King was then master. The Salisbury sailed from Table Bay on the 23rd of June. She had on board two members of the company that chartered her: J. R. Thomson and Francis George Farewell, previously a lieutenant in the royal navy and a close friend of King. On her passage up the coast she put into Algoa Bay, and found there His Majesty’s surveying ship Leven, under command of Captain Owen. Farewell went on board the Leven and obtained a good deal of information concerning the coast. Seven men selected by the Cape government from the convicts on Robben Island had been given to the surveying expedition as interpreters, and two of them, named Fire and Jacob, were transferred with their own consent by Captain Owen to Farewell. Fire was shortly afterwards accidentally shot, and Jacob managed to run away, but was subsequently met under strange circumstances. The charter mattered because Natal was not yet a Cape drostdy; it was a coast the castle knew from a brig and a survey ship, not from a magistrate. [3] [7]
On the 13th of July the Salisbury sailed from Algoa Bay. In trying to land on an open beach north of Natal two boats were lost and 6 men were drowned, but 12 others got safely to shore. Five weeks elapsed before they could be recovered, the brig having been blown to sea in a gale; but during that time they were well treated by the people on the coast. The Salisbury then put back to Algoa Bay for supplies, after which she once more proceeded up the coast, and visited Port Natal. On the 3rd of December she reached Table Bay again. The voyage was an unfortunate one for the company. Farewell, however, was so impressed with the capabilities of Natal for colonisation, and of its port as a gateway for trade with the interior of the continent, that he resolved to return and establish himself there. In the trading expedition of this year there had been associated with him King, an ex-midshipman, and Thomson, a Capetown merchant; they had gone northwards along the coast as far as St Lucia Bay. Tshaka claimed the almost uninhabited country about the port, a country with elephants. The castle did not yet send a magistrate there; it sent a joint-stock brig. Farewell’s resolution mattered because 1824 would send him back with the Julia and a party; this year’s voyage was the reconnaissance that made that return thinkable. [3] [7]
The 18 March Slave Proclamation and the Albany Levy
The next legislation on the subject of slaves was a very important proclamation issued on the 18th of March by Lord Charles Somerset, under direction of the imperial government. Registration of slave property had been in force since the 26th of April 1816; this paper was to limit what a master might do with the people already on the books. Its principal clauses provided that no slave should be compelled to perform other labour on the sabbath day than work of necessity; that slaves professing Christianity might be manumitted without payment of the fee of 50 rixdollars to the church; that in the towns and villages proprietors should send slave children from three to ten years of age to school at least three days in each week; that baptized slaves might intermarry with their proprietors’ consent; that such marriages should be performed by the clergymen without payment; that after such marriages husband and wife could not be sold apart, nor could their children under ten years of age be sold separately from them except by a decree of the high court of justice; that in no case should children under eight years of age be sold separately from their mothers; that slaves might acquire property by work during extra hours, donation, inheritance, or any other honest means; that every slave should be provided with sufficient clothing and food of a wholesome kind; that slaves should not be employed in field labour more than 10 hours a day in winter and 12 hours a day in summer, except in ploughing or harvesting, when they should receive payment for the extra work; that only mild domestic punishment, not exceeding 25 cuts with a rod or similar implement, should be inflicted, and that punishment should not be repeated within 24 hours. Penalties for the infringement of each provision, in no case less than 10 rixdollars, were to be inflicted by the landdrost upon the transgressing master. One-third of the fines was to be paid to the informer; the other two-thirds were to be placed to account of a fund for the purchase and emancipation of slave girls. The proclamation mattered because it turned indulgences into rights: hours, the sabbath, the rod, and the sale of children were now paper a landdrost could fine on. [3] [4]
This proclamation was not objected to by the colonists at first, for it conferred upon the slaves very few privileges that the well-behaved among them were not already in possession of. But symptoms of intractability soon appeared in many slaves, who found their masters’ power limited by law, and that they had now as a right what previously they had received as an indulgence. Insubordination rapidly gained ground, and the old feelings of attachment between the proprietors and their dependents became weakened. In several places almost at the same time very disorderly conduct on the part of the slaves occurred, so that the fear of a general negro insurrection became widespread. Emancipation in the Cape Colony had been common long before this paper: manumissions numbered 35 in 1816, 87 in 1817, 52 in 1818, 58 in 1819, 24 in 1820, 26 in 1821, 34 in 1822, and 44 in 1823. On the 13th of May Thomas Fowell Buxton brought the matter before the House, when he moved that a state of slavery is repugnant to the principles of the British Constitution and of the Christian religion, and that it ought to be gradually abolished throughout the British Dominions with as much expedition as may be consistent with due regard to the well-being of the parties concerned. Canning carried amendments looking to progressive improvement and a fair consideration of the interests of private property. Buxton’s motion mattered because Somerset’s March paper was the Cape’s local answer to the same imperial pressure that was moving the commons; the 44 manumissions of this year were still purchases and kindnesses, not a general emancipation. [3] [4]
On the 4th of October — the eve of the flood — Somerset issued a proclamation authorising the landdrost to select 600 individuals, 50 from each of Grahamstown and Bathurst districts to form two mounted companies and 500 from the whole of Albany to form the five companies of infantry, all to take the oath of allegiance, under a penalty of Rds. 50, or a month’s imprisonment in case of neglect or refusal to do so. The required number of men presented themselves and the Albany Levy, as it was called, was established. Rivers was appointed commandant at a salary of Rds. 2000 — in addition to his salary as landdrost — with forage for four horses. George Dyason became adjutant at Rds. 360 per annum with forage for two horses, and seven lieutenants at Rds. 200 per annum without forage completed the command. Some old muskets which had remained over at the taking of the Cape in 1806 were issued as arms to the infantry. The paragraph concerning the oath with the penalty clause gave considerable offence and many refused to take the oath and were fined accordingly. They contended that the deep loyalty with which they were imbued needed no oath to emphasise it, and that in subscribing to it they placed themselves under martial law equally with any private in His Majesty’s regiments. A memorial to this effect was sent to the governor. The lieutenants of divisions were John Willis for the Grahamstown troop, Charles Crause for Bathurst, William Austin, Lieutenant Gilfillan, Captain H. Crause, and Lieutenant John Crause among the infantry. The levy mattered because the Fish was still an open line, Magomo sat on the Kat, and Somerset would not trust the locations without an oath and a fine; the muskets of 1806 were what he put in their hands. [4]
At length, in a memorial to Lord Charles Somerset dated at Grahamstown on the 2nd of December, Bishop Burnett accused Messrs Borcherds and Truter, the judges of the circuit court, of prejudice, partiality, and a corrupt violation of justice. He stated that the whole history of the proceedings in which he had been engaged was one of flagrant injustice, of legal error and perversion, of inconsistency, of extra-judicial procedure, of scandalous oppression, and of intolerable persecution. In conclusion he denounced Truter and Borcherds as persons morally disqualified to fulfil the sacred functions entrusted to them. The governor placed this memorial in the hands of the fiscal. Burnett’s denunciations of Captain Somerset, of Robert Hart, and of every one connected with the courts of justice had been publicly made in very violent language through the year. The December paper mattered because the commissioners were in the colony and the civil servants’ mouths were stopped: Burnett put on the table, in language the castle could not ignore, a charge against the circuit itself. [3] [4]