Boer History1825 at the Cape of Good Hope: Council of Advice, the Rixdollar, Somerset East, and Bourke
English Exclusive, Dundas in Albany, and Starving Refugees — January 1825
On the 1st of January all other official acts and documents were to be in English exclusively. That was the date named in Lord Charles Henry Somerset’s proclamation of the 5th of July 1822. Somerset was still in the oaths from the evening of the 30th of November 1821. English had issued from the secretary’s office since the 1st of January 1823. After two further years English and Dutch were to be used indiscriminately in judicial acts until the 1st of January 1827, when English alone would be used. Albany’s benches sat in English from the 1st of March 1824; Simonstown’s period was shortened because Dutch was seldom spoken there. In the other districts, where Dutch was spoken by the great majority, exclusive English in the offices was still regarded as a very serious grievance. The January change mattered because the 1820 locations already had an English bench, while Stellenbosch, Swellendam, and Graaff-Reinet still treated the language order as a wound, and because important notices still had to go into the Gazette in both languages. [3] [7]
Early in the year the governor visited Albany and greatly enlarged the plots of those who were still farming, by adding to them the ground abandoned by immigrants who had left the locations. Experience had taught the remainder that cattle-breeding was the most profitable branch of their industry. The colony had recently been invaded by starving Batswana who had escaped when their tribes were destroyed in the wars of extermination then carried on between the Orange and the Limpopo. The government provided for some of these refugees by having them apprenticed for 7 years to such settlers as needed their services. They could perform only the roughest labour, but as cattle-herds they were useful, and their maintenance cost little; to that extent they supplied the most pressing want of the Albany farmers. The visit mattered because the 1820 locations, after flood and failure of English-style tillage, were being turned into cattle runs, and because starving people from the interior wars were being bound as cheap herds on those same farms. [3]
Harry Rivers, having become very unpopular with those settlers, was removed in January to Swellendam. The landdrostship there having fallen vacant, he was appointed to it on the 22nd of January and expressed his deep gratitude to the governor for being taken out of Albany. The settlers were pleased as well. Thomas Phillips wrote to His Excellency that the measure made further observations unnecessary, except thanks for this attention to the welfare and happiness of the inhabitants of Albany. In his stead as landdrost of Albany the governor appointed Captain William Bolden Dundas of the royal artillery. The Albany Levy, authorised in October 1823 as 600 men under oath, had sunk into grumbling, excuses, and uselessness. On the 18th of March the governor issued a proclamation disbanding it. On the 5th of August Earl Bathurst told Somerset that, in consequence of the grave charges brought against Rivers, he did not feel at liberty to hold out any expectation of confirming the Swellendam appointment until Rivers had given a satisfactory explanation of his conduct in Albany. The January removal mattered because Albany’s landdrost was the man who had treated candles and a volley as a riot when the commissioners entered Grahamstown in 1824, and because London would not even confirm him at Swellendam without an answer. [3] [4]
The commissioners of inquiry, William Macbean George Colebrooke and John Thomas Bigge, were still in the colony, without power to make changes, instructed only to recommend to the secretary of state such alterations as they might think advisable. They had been the governor’s guests during a large portion of their time in Capetown. Civil servants understood that anyone who ventured to make disclosures of his department without previously communicating with the governor was liable to dismissal. On the 25th of May they sent Bathurst a lengthy account of the Albany settlement, historical, reviewing the emigration, and stating clearly the disabilities under which the district suffered. In August Bathurst directed that the settlers should be relieved of a payment that had sat on them. Their second report upon the differences between Somerset and Sir Rufane Donkin was dated the 27th of December. The commissioners mattered in this year because they could not change a law on the spot, but their recommendations were already being adopted in London, and because the mouths of the civil service were still stopped while they wrote. [3] [4]
Port Frances, Port Elizabeth, and the District of Somerset — February–April 1825
In this same tour the governor visited the mouth of the Kowie and, at the request of the residents, named the place Port Frances, in honour of the wife of his son, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Somerset. There he stationed Lieutenant Donald Moodie as magistrate, with a salary of 90 pounds a year — in the eastern returns Rds. 1200, with a secretary at Rds. 600 and a messenger at Rds. 300, and Rds. 7820 authorised for government buildings. Ever since the 9th of November 1821, when the little coasting schooner Elizabeth, belonging to Henry Nourse, had first entered the river, great hopes had been entertained that this port would quickly become a place of large trade; those hopes were never realised. In September the small draught vessel Bridekirk, built to take cargo from ships that could not enter the Kowie, left for Port Elizabeth and was never heard of again. The naming mattered because Albany wanted a port of its own instead of depending on Algoa Bay, and because the governor’s son’s wife now stood on the chart of a river that still could not hold a ship. [3] [4]
At Port Elizabeth the governor directed Captain Evatt, commandant at Fort Frederick, to act as resident magistrate, on the same salary as Moodie. The powers of these magistrates were defined in a proclamation of the 8th of April, after the governor’s return to Capetown. They could try civil cases under the value of 7 pounds 10 shillings, and in criminal cases could sentence to 6 months’ imprisonment or a fine of 7 pounds 10 shillings; their jurisdiction was limited to the townships. Until this year Port Elizabeth had been merely a field-cornetcy of Uitenhage, Evatt acting as field-cornet under Colonel Cuyler. By that proclamation it became a seat of magistracy, and Evatt, with the title of government resident, was given authority to deal with ordinary petty cases. The township was defined as an imaginary line from the place of Michael Cordie and McCulloch at the south-west point of Algoa Bay, up to Jacobus Theodorus Botha, thence to Gert H. Halshuizen, and onward. Port Elizabeth was rapidly becoming a place of importance, though as yet only frequented by coasting vessels. On the 1st of October, long before the necessary funds were raised for a church, the reverend Francis McCleland, who up to that time had been at Clanwilliam, was appointed English clergyman at Port Elizabeth at a salary of 150 pounds a year. That was the beginning of St Mary’s. In July the reverend W. Carlisle was appointed chaplain at Grahamstown, a marked contrast to his predecessor William Geary, dismissed in October 1824. Grahamstown by 1824 or this year had emerged from a village and assumed that of a town, the English congregating for the most part on the higher lands to the south-east afterward known as Settlers’ Hill. The April proclamation mattered because Algoa Bay ceased to be a field-cornet’s beach and became a magistracy, and because an English pulpit at 150 pounds followed the same coast before a church was paid for. [3] [4]
On the 7th of January Robert Hart, superintendent of the government farm at Somerset, received a letter dated the 31st of December 1824 from Sir Richard Plasket, the colonial secretary, to the effect that it was the governor’s intention to give up the farm without delay and to establish a drostdy on the spot for a new district about to be formed, and that every person employed on the farm, including Hart himself, was to be retired on or before the end of January, from which day all allowances would cease. On the 14th of February notices to debtors and creditors appeared in the Cape Gazette. On the 11th of March two government advertisements announced the dissolution of the subdrostdy of Cradock and the creation of a new district named Somerset. It comprised the territory from the Orange on the north to the Zuurberg on the south, and from the Sunday and Little Riet rivers on the west to the Koonap, Zwart Kei, and Stormberg Spruit on the east — including a portion of the land ceded by Gaika in 1819. The farm was no longer needed: provisions for the troops on the frontier could now be procured by contract as easily and cheaply as they could be grown. The March advertisements mattered because a government farm that had fed the frontier was being turned into a drostdy, and because the new district reached into the 1819 cession toward the Koonap. [3] [4]
On the 31st of March William Mackay, who in January 1824 had succeeded Captain Harding as deputy landdrost at Cradock, was appointed landdrost of the new district. The subordinate officials at Cradock were removed to the Somerset farm at the Boschberg, where the existing buildings were easily converted into offices and dwelling-houses: the old tannery for magisterial offices, the large store for a church, an outhouse for a school, the waggon-house for a prison. Home parsimony allowed, in the first place, only 3 pounds 10 shillings 8½ pence for adapting those outhouses. In July the board of landdrost and heemraden asked to borrow 3000 pounds for a church. A village was laid out on the ground that had been under cultivation, and on the 13th and 14th of April 83 erven, each 150 by 450 feet, were sold by auction at an average price of 46 pounds. Another return of the same sale gives 84 plots at Rds. 50864 — about 3134 pounds — with live stock taken to Grahamstown ( 708 oxen, 7 horses, 26 head of cattle, 1425 sheep, 133 muids of forage, leather, and 10 waggons) producing Rds. 47911, the whole property about Rds. 124513. The village was named Somerset East. Nearly all the grants in the previously unoccupied territory toward the Koonap went to members of old South African families, the object being to strengthen the frontier with men accustomed to border warfare, the military force having been greatly reduced. About 200 applications were made for portions of that East Riet River field cornetcy — the greater part of the later district of Bedford. That measure gave great offence to persons in England who believed the Dutch colonists habitual oppressors of coloured people; through their influence Bathurst wrote disapproving of such a settlement as a possible means of extending slavery. When the despatch arrived, 46 families had built houses and cultivated plots, and 74 were grazing cattle on their grants but had not yet commenced to build. They were told they would have to relinquish either their lands or their slaves. Bathurst, in a chilling reply dated the 20th of August, approved of the abolition of the Somerset farm, but was not prepared to give any opinion on the formation of the township until he was better assured that no call on the treasury was likely to be made. Dutch Reformed commencements in the east this year included those of Colesberg and Somerset East. The April sales mattered because a drostdy now sat on a farm that had been a government store, and because London treated Dutch grants toward the Koonap as a slavery question. [3] [4] [4]
The Council of Advice and Lieutenant-Governor Bourke — February–August 1825
The first recommendation of the commissioners that the ministry of the earl of Liverpool adopted was the creation of a council to assist and advise the governor upon every occasion of importance. Until then the government of the Cape was under the control of one man. On the 9th of February the sanction of the king was obtained, and the requisite order was issued. That same day Bathurst was able to write to Somerset that, instead of the government of the Cape being any longer under the control of one man, His Majesty with the advice of his privy council had decided on the creation of a council to whose assistance and advice the governor, upon every occasion of novelty, difficulty, and importance, must have recourse. None of the resolutions or ordinances of “the Governor in Council” were to become operative until they had met with the approval of the authorities in England. The council was to consist of 6 members, three of whom — the chief justice, the secretary to government, and the military officer next in rank to the governor — were to have seats by virtue of their offices. The other three named by Bathurst were Lieutenant-Colonel John Bell, Walter Bentinck, and Joachim Willem Stoll. The February order mattered because Somerset, who had sat alone since 1821, was now required to put ordinances through a closed room of officials, and because nothing those six men passed would operate until England approved. [3] [4] [4]
The governor was instructed to submit to the council all ordinances, public orders, and proclamations; but if he saw good reason he could act in opposition to the opinion of a majority. No question was to be discussed unless proposed by the governor, who was to preside, and who could dismiss any member if necessity arose. The meetings were to be held with closed doors, and the members were to be sworn not to divulge anything that came before them. The governor and two members formed a quorum. A clerk of the council was appointed by the secretary of state, with a salary of 800 pounds a year. These officers were sworn in under a royal salute from the guns at the castle on the 4th of May, and on that day, in one account, the council held its first sitting. A later printed account dates the first meeting of the council thus constituted to the 2nd of May 1826. As formed in this year, when first called into existence at the recommendation of the commissioners, the council was composed of 6 officials with no representative colonists. The governor’s word was still law. The May oaths mattered because a closed council of officials was not a legislature, and because Somerset could still overrule a majority, name the business, and dismiss a member. [3] [4] [7]
Another recommendation of the commissioners, also adopted by Liverpool’s ministry, was that the colony should be divided into two provinces of nearly equal extent, the eastern to have a distinct government with a council of its own. On the 5th of July Major-General Richard Bourke was gazetted lieutenant-governor. On the 20th of August Bathurst announced to Somerset that Bourke had been appointed with a salary of 3600 pounds a year, that he would shortly proceed to the Cape to assume the administration of the eastern province as soon as it should be formed into a separate government, and that he would carry out his duties in direct communication with the secretary of state. It was eventually intended to divide the civil administration of the Cape according to the precedent of the division of the Province of Quebec. Somerset was to remain governor in chief and to retain military command over the whole country, but was to conduct the civil administration of the western province only. Upon any extraordinary occasion he might proceed to the east and have control as long as he remained there, the lieutenant-governor’s functions being for the time suspended; nothing short of the most urgent necessity would justify such action. From the tenor of the communications it was clear that Bourke was being sent out as governor of the whole colony and not merely of the eastern province. A solution of the difficulty in London — how to change the Cape without the unpleasant duty of suspending or recalling a Beaufort — had been found in the appointment of a lieutenant-governor who might, if expedient, be called upon to assume the duties of governor, and in offering Somerset the option of going to England to defend himself against what, until further proof, might be considered defamation. The July gazette mattered because Albany’s complaints were being answered not by recalling Somerset outright, but by sending a lieutenant-governor who could take the whole chair if London needed him to. [3] [4]
Although it was announced in parliament as early as June that leave of absence had been granted to Somerset, months passed without his arrival in England. The Times of the 26th of October commented on the surmises then circulating. On the 16th of June Bishop Burnett’s petition was first presented by Mr. Brougham, member for Winchelsea. In June Burnett applied to the Commons for redress, and Brougham observed that if the statements were proved he should feel it his duty to impeach the governor. On the 10th of May Bathurst told Earl Caledon that Colonel Bird had not been removed on account of his religious persuasion, nor from any suspicion of want of integrity or assiduity, but because his line of conduct had been utterly incompatible with the confidential situation he held. William Blair, selected as a third commissioner because Bigge was in ill health, arrived at the Cape on the 24th of December. Somerset requested leave to return in order, as he expressed himself, to refute the gross calumnies with which he was assailed, and Bathurst had given him permission. The June petition mattered because Burnett, banished in 1824, now had a voice in the Commons that spoke of impeachment, and because a third commissioner was on the water before the year closed. [3] [4]
One Shilling and Sixpence to the Rixdollar — June–October 1825
The greatest impediment to the prosperity of the colony at this period was the paper money, which rested upon no other security than the public buildings and the lands reserved in olden times for the government — a security of no practical value, the castle and the forts not being for sale. There was no metallic coin in circulation. Brokers sold metallic coin to merchants who needed it for remittances at rates that had fallen from 2 shillings and 2 pence in 1816 to 1 shilling and 6 pence in this year for a paper rixdollar. From 1806 to 1810 the rixdollar had on the average been worth 3 s. 6 d.; from 1811 to 1815, 2 s. 6 d.; from 1816 to 1820, 1 s. 10 d.; from 1821 to this year, about 1 s. 6½ d. When money was needed by officers of the imperial government for the troops, treasury bills were offered for sale by tender at nearly the same rates. A note which professed the purchasing power of an English sovereign was in reality worth no more than 7 shillings and 6 pence. As the standard of purchase, and in the valuation of property and in mortgages, the rixdollar was still reckoned at 4 s., and it was fully expected it would be redeemed at that rate. The paper mattered because every farm, every mortgage, and every official salary was written in a note the castle could not cash. [3] [4]
After investigation by the lords of the treasury, an order in council declared that a tender of 1 shilling and 6 pence in British silver should be equivalent to a tender of one paper rixdollar at the Cape. The imperial government resolved to advance money to redeem a portion of the paper, as part of a measure for introducing British coinage into British possessions throughout the world. On the 6th of June an ordinance of the governor in council announced the determination of His Majesty’s government to make British silver legal tender in discharge of all debts due to individuals and to the public at 1 s. 6 d. for each rixdollar, and announced that from the 1st of January 1826 the public accounts would be kept in British money. 69992 rixdollars had been cancelled before that 6th of June. When the ordinance was issued the accounts stood: capital of the loan and discount bank, secured by mortgages and pledges, rds. 1385255; debt, rds. 1713950; together rds. 3099205 — at 1 s. 6 d. equal to 232440 pounds 7 s. 6 d. Another return gives the paper in circulation in June as rds. 3099204, equal to 232240 pounds 6 s. 8 d. Issued and created from Company, Batavian, and English administrations the paper had run to rds. 3169197 before those cancellations. The ordinance subjected the colony, on the old 4 s. reckoning, to a loss of five-eighths of its general wealth. The 6th of June mattered because a paper rixdollar that had been treated as 4 s. on a mortgage was now 18 pence in British silver, and because from 1826 the public books would be kept in pounds. [3] [4]
All who owed money to the bank and to individuals, and all whose taxes — especially quitrents — were fixed in rixdollars, were jubilant. Persons who had brought British money to the country and invested it, those to whom money was due, those whose incomes were fixed in rixdollars, the orphan chamber, and all others to whom a rise in the rate of exchange would have been advantageous, believed themselves greatly wronged. Public meetings, with the governor’s permission, were held in all parts. A petition to the king in council received 2115 signatures, praying that the ordinance might be withdrawn or a higher rate fixed. The orphan masters represented that the property they administered was of greater value than the whole paper in circulation, that much of it had been for many years in their care, and that a large number of their wards would be ruined. Some would be satisfied with nothing less than 4 shillings, others thought 2 shillings a fair rate. The agitation in Capetown was so great that on the 28th of June Somerset issued an advertisement that any person could obtain paper money at the bank or at the landdrosts’ offices for any sum exceeding 100 rixdollars in exchange for British silver at the same rate as that at which they were obliged to receive silver from their debtors. Nothing came of the petition: the rixdollar became 1 s. 6 d. The June meetings mattered because debtors gained and creditors, orphans, and salaries written in rixdollars lost, and because 2115 names could not move the treasury off eighteen pence. [3] [4]
From the commissariat chest sums amounting altogether to 37262 pounds had been drawn on loan. When that source was exhausted, on the 30th of June the governor borrowed from the agent of the East India Company 18760 pounds at 4 percent yearly interest. From various local boards sums amounting in all to 4670 pounds were obtained. When this was reported in England, Bathurst, on the 8th of October, issued peremptory instructions for the immediate suspension of all public works in the colony, and prohibited new appointments or increases of salaries without his previous sanction. Further taxation was agreed by everyone to be impossible; the colonists were loud that the only remedy was retrenchment in the salaries of the principal officials. A petition against redemption at eighteen pence went to England in Colonel Bird’s charge and excited much comment. Those smarting under the loss held that Somerset was to blame because he had not reduced expenditure so as to apply the interest received through the loan bank to the redemption of the paper, instead of crediting it to the revenue. The October stop mattered because the Cape could not tax its way out of paper, and because London answered borrowing from the Company’s agent by freezing works and salaries. [3]
In March the difference in the duties on Cape and other wines entering Great Britain was reduced. Thereafter French wines were to be charged 6 shillings a gallon if conveyed in British ships. The ordinary Cape wines were already found inferior to those produced before the appointment of a taster. Owing to the necessities of the government, in July the gauging fees — a rixdollar upon every cask of wine and spirits entering Capetown, imposed in March 1818 for a public library — were diverted to the colonial treasury, and from them a fixed sum of 300 pounds a year was thereafter paid to three trustees of the library. In June the museum founded in 1823 by Dr. Andrew Smith, chiefly of specimens of South African animals, was attached to the public library, with a grant of 100 pounds a year for its support. In this year another site was selected for the observatory, the first having been a temporary wooden structure in Capetown after the reverend Fearon Fallows arrived in August 1821. The July diversion mattered because a library fee on wine now fed the treasury at 300 pounds, while a museum of 100 pounds and a new observatory site were the year’s other public ornaments in a colony whose works Bathurst was about to stop. [3]
Greig’s Return and the Advertiser of 31 August — February–August 1825
On the 12th of February Bathurst gave his decision on the sealed press of 1824. George Greig was permitted to return to the Cape Colony, with liberty to publish a newspaper under the terms of the prospectus issued by him in December 1823. The type sold to the Cape government was to be restored to him at the same price, and he was to have a long credit for payment. The dispute with Dr. John Philip concerning the ownership of the press was to be settled between themselves, or by a court of law. The exact meaning of the prospectus was referred to the governor in council, who could withdraw the licence to publish if the terms were not observed. The February decision mattered because the press sealed on the 8th of May 1824 was now to come back under a prospectus, and because the new council — not the governor alone — would judge whether Greig kept its terms. [3]
Greig accordingly determined to return and make another attempt. After an absence of only 9 months he arrived in Capetown in August. To his surprise he found that another paper, the South African Chronicle and Mercantile Advertiser, had been started and was being printed with the materials which were to be returned to him but which had been sold to William Bridekirk. The matter was adjusted in accordance with Bathurst’s decision by transferring the property to Greig and sending out other type for Bridekirk. The Chronicle remained to all intents a government organ, eulogistic of Somerset personally. He was unable to obtain the type which had been transferred to Bridekirk, but he managed to procure other, and on the 31st of August the South African Commercial Advertiser appeared again. John Fairbairn now became its sole editor, as Thomas Pringle returned to England. The paper from this date became decidedly an opposition organ to the existing government. Within a month after Greig’s return it had reappeared. The 31st of August mattered because Capetown again had a paper that was not the Chronicle, and because Fairbairn, not Pringle, now sat in the editor’s chair. [3] [4]
An academy conducted by Pringle and Fairbairn, which had been in a thriving condition, now rapidly lost its best pupils, as the governor showed himself unfriendly to those who sent children to it. He regarded it as a school where seditious principles were being instilled into the young, and wrote so urgently to Bathurst upon the necessity of counteracting it that the secretary of state engaged the reverend Edward Judge to come out and establish a seminary. In May Judge arrived and opened a high-class school in Capetown, with which it was impossible for a private establishment to compete. About the middle of the year Pringle’s school seems to have closed, and he returned to the location on the Baviaans River. Seeing no prospect of pursuing in this country the calling he had intended, he left for England. The Nederduitsch Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift continued; the South African Journal had expired with its second number on the 7th of May 1824. His Excellency had enlarged the grant to Pringle’s party of settlers at Glen Lynden by 9400 acres. Judge’s school mattered because a government seminary was set up to kill a private academy the governor called seditious, and because Pringle, who had edited with Fairbairn in 1824, left the colony. [3] [4]
Willshire Ivory, the Wesleyan Bell, and Somerset’s Commando — 1825
Ivory had come to the rescue of the struggling Albany community in 1824 and this year in much the same manner as ostrich feathers would later to impoverished farmers. From the 18th of August 1824 to the 11th of January of this year, 38424 lb. of ivory were obtained in barter at Fort Willshire; from the 12th of January to the 12th of March, 12017 lb. more — in about 7 months 50441 lb., some 20½ Cape tons. Besides this about 16800 lb. of gum and 15000 hides were obtained. The average price given for ivory in beads and such goods was Rds. 2 ( 3 s.) a pound, for hides Rds. 4 ( 6 s.), and for gum one skilling ( 4½ d.) a pound. A proclamation of November regulated the trade. The Willshire fairs mattered because Albany, still poor in grain, was living on ivory, gum, and hides taken across the Keiskama for beads, and because a November paper now tried to keep that trade in order. [4]
In Grahamstown the Wesleyans had hung a bell. The Anglican chaplain treated it as an intrusion upon his sole and special privilege, and on the 7th of February sent a protest to the governor against this action on the part of “the person S. Kay,” who had taken upon himself a power to which he was not entitled. Landdrost Dundas wrote to Kay on the 3rd of April that as he conceived the use of a bell for calling together the Wesleyan congregation in Grahamstown to be an assumption, he had to request that Kay discontinue it. The case was sent to Bathurst, who on the 2nd of October replied in favour of the Wesleyans, stating that the privileges claimed had been confirmed to them by the judgment aforesaid. The bell mattered because an English chaplain and an Albany landdrost tried to silence a Wesleyan congregation in a town of 1820 settlers, and because London, not Grahamstown, decided who might ring. [4]
Starving remnants of the Mantatee devastation again appeared. In this year some hundreds invaded the districts of Graaff-Reinet and Somerset in a dreadful state of want. They were fed and treated kindly by the inhabitants. Alarming rumours of the approach of ferocious tribes again spread, and the Thembu fled in large numbers toward the colony. Lieutenant Rogers of the Cape Corps and others went out upon those rumours. Plasket, who had succeeded Bird, spoke of the condition of the country as he found it in September: the colony at its very lowest ebb, something soon to be done to alter the system in toto; the report of the commissioners of inquiry would do much good when acted upon. The rumours mattered because Graaff-Reinet and the new Somerset district were feeding refugees from the interior wars, and because the colonial secretary himself described the Cape, in September, as at its lowest ebb. [3] [4]
A commando which earned for itself great notoriety under the name of Somerset’s blundering commando went forth on the 20th of December to recover cattle. During the night of the 22nd of December Lieutenant-Colonel Somerset, with 170 men of the Cape regiment and a party of farmers under commandant Jan Durand, entered Xhosa country to recover stolen cattle that had been traced to the kraal of Susa, a sister of Gaika, who was associated with a daring robber named Nyoka — the same service another return records as aimed at Neuka, a relation or headman of Gaika. The force in that return is given as 200 of the Cape Corps and a party of farmers. The principal division crossed high up the Tyumie; a smaller division under Captain Armstrong crossed the Keiskama above Fort Willshire. It was intended to surprise Susa’s kraal at daylight, but in a very thick haze Armstrong’s division lost the way and came upon the kraal of the Imidange captain Botumane. A few shots were fired; no one was hurt. Botumane furnished guides to Susa’s kraal. Other accounts of the same service say wrong places were attacked and some women and children shot before the cattle were restored and Neuka, having received warning, escaped, so that there was nothing to do but return to the colony. The December commando mattered because the governor’s son crossed the Keiskama for cattle and came home with a blunder attached to his name, and because two printed accounts of the same night do not agree on who was hit. [3] [4]
Retief’s contracts for the Grahamstown drostdy house and Scott’s barracks remained in litigation through the year: the work should have been finished by December 1824, but during this year both landdrost and contractor still laboured under misunderstanding. In September George Gilbert and John Bailie were appointed arbitrators and suggested that Retief should be paid Rds. 6000 on condition. On the 23rd of October the colonial secretary wrote to Pohl that so many delays and difficulties had occurred in the performance of his contract that His Excellency could not but approve of the landdrost’s complaints. Bathurst, which had been blighted in 1822, was now encouraged by offering erven gratis to any who would build houses of a prescribed size and of stable material; 25 applications were made on the strength of that offer. In August the reverend W. Boardman of Willson’s party was permitted to occupy the finished magistrate’s house at Bathurst and to conduct a grammar school; about a month afterward he died. The litigation mattered because Grahamstown still had no finished drostdy from a contract of 1822, and because Bathurst, stripped of its magistracy, was offering free erven and a dead schoolmaster’s house. [4]
Worcester Rising, the Trinidad Order, the Enterprise, and Natal — 1825
The most serious instance of disorder occurred in the district of Worcester. On the 1st of February a party of 7 slaves, aided by some Khoikhoi, rose against their masters — W. N. van der Merwe, J. H. van Rensburg, and J. M. Verlee — murdered them, assaulted and wounded two others, and then plundered the houses. Having armed themselves, they resisted a commando hastily assembled by the fieldcornet Dutoit, but were ultimately compelled to surrender. The slaves and 5 Khoikhoi were brought to trial before the high court of justice, when it clearly appeared that they believed they had been kept in servitude by their masters in opposition to the intentions of the government. Two of the Khoikhoi were acquitted; the others were found guilty. Three were hanged, and their heads were afterwards exposed on stakes; 5 were scourged and imprisoned for long periods; 2 were scourged only. The February rising mattered because Worcester slaves believed the government meant them to be free, and because the high court answered that belief with three heads on stakes. [3]
An Order in Council for the amelioration of the slaves in the island of Trinidad was sent from London on the 8th of February and on the 12th of July came before the governor in council at the Cape. The chief justice was authorised to redraft it in view of some of its provisions being inapplicable to this colony, such as leaving out all reference to the whip and cat, “because it is not customary here to carry whips, cats, or other instruments of punishment into the field as an emblem of authority.” On the 5th of September these alterations and the reasons for making them were transmitted to Bathurst. Manumissions in this year numbered 29, against 56 in 1824 and 44 in 1823. A return of complaints from the 1st of August of this year into the next counted cases of ill-treatment brought by slaves against masters: proved 16, disproved 55, undecided 6. The Trinidad paper mattered because London was trying to write one slave law for the empire, and because the Cape council struck out the whip as a field emblem while manumissions fell to 29. [4]
In this year the reverend John Brownlee left that part of Xhosa country on the Tyumie entirely to the Glasgow missionaries, and founded, in connection with the London society, a station on the eastern bank of the Buffalo. The London society also founded the station of Hankey on the Gamtoos. In August the mission station of Mount Coke, on the right bank of the Buffalo, was founded by Kay of the Wesleyan society. Altogether there were in the colony at the close of the year 54 places of religious worship and about 120 schools of various classes. Beyond the colony there were mission stations with the Namaqua, Griqua, Batlhaping, and Xhosa. On the 12th of October the reverend Jean Guillaume Louis Gebhard died at Capetown and by his will left a legacy to the London Missionary Society and the French poor of the Walloon congregation at Mannheim. Upon the death of the reverend Mr. Kicherer in this year, Dr. George Thom, previously of Caledon, was removed to Tulbagh. On the 25th of December the Roman Catholics of Grahamstown and Albany were given permission to hold a public meeting to petition the Home government for a priest to minister to the whole district. The missions mattered because the Tyumie was left to Glasgow, the Buffalo gained Brownlee and Kay, and Albany’s Catholics, without a priest since Scully left in 1824, were allowed to ask London for one. [3] [3] [4] [8]
On the 13th of October the first steamship that plied between England and India put into Table Bay. She was named the Enterprise, of 500 tons burden, with two engines of 60 horse-power each. Her commander was Lieutenant J. H. Johnson of the royal navy. When she was signalled from the Lion’s Rump, on the 58th day after leaving Falmouth, business was suspended, the schools were closed, and every one, young and old, hurried to the beach. Before anchoring she steamed about the bay to exhibit her power of moving forward with the wind in any direction. As her anchor fell, the first gun of a salute was fired from the castle, and the ships in harbour ran up their flags. She had called at only one port — St Thomas — where she remained 3 days. She left England with 300 tons of coal, which was not all consumed when she reached Table Bay. Her engines were not used when the wind was fair for sailing. Her greatest speed under steam was 169 miles in 24 hours, and the engines were used on 35 days. The Enterprise mattered because Table Bay saw steam move a ship against the wind, and because the castle saluted a machine that had not used all of 300 tons of coal in 58 days from Falmouth. [3]
At Port Natal James Saunders King had come out in a brig named the Mary, bringing from St Helena a young man named Nathaniel Isaacs. Bathurst had not been disposed to furnish active assistance, but wishing to encourage commercial enterprise he had given King a letter of recommendation to Somerset — equivalent to permission to settle at Natal on his own responsibility. On the 1st of October the Mary was wrecked on the outer beach while attempting to cross the bar at Port Natal; no lives were lost. The chief mate and three of the seamen proceeded to Algoa Bay in the longboat; the remainder of the crew, with King and Isaacs, joined the little party of white people already there under Tshaka. In Natal, a small colony of merchants and traders from Capetown had, in 1824 and this year, settled by permission of the Zulu king on the Bay of Natal. The territory in which they lived had a seaboard of 25 or 35 miles and extended inland about 100 miles, but it was not ceded to them: it remained the king’s ground. In October a superintendent of police was appointed in Capetown, and the fiscal was relieved of the duty of preserving order in the town; Willem Cornelis van Ryneveld received the appointment provisionally. English remained the official language of the offices, with the exception that important notices were still published in the Gazette in both languages. The wreck mattered because King and Isaacs joined Farewell’s handful under Tshaka after Bathurst would give only a letter, and because Capetown in the same month took police from the fiscal and gave it to a superintendent. [3] [3] [7]