Boer History1831 at the Cape of Good Hope: Cole, the Grahamstown Journal, Theopolis, and Goderich
Menzies, Pompey, and Thomson at the Kat — January–July 1831
Lieutenant-General Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole was in his third Cape year. He had taken the oaths on the 9th of September 1828, after a passage from Mauritius in HMS Tweed. The frontier he governed was not a new war on the Fish. In May 1829 Colonel Henry Somerset and Captain Andries Stockenstrom had driven Maqoma from the Kat valleys, and from June Khoikhoi had taken the ground as a freehold settlement. On the 2nd of January 1830 Cole had judged that experiment a success beyond his most sanguine expectations. The question in 1831 was whether a freehold Khoikhoi settlement of about 400 square miles could hold its crops and its cattle without a magistrate of its own, and whether a government clergyman paid from the treasury would drive the London society off the Kat. [3] [4]
Stockenstrom had offered a prize col named Pompey to the Khoikhoi who, on the 1st of January 1831, should be found to have done most on his place. Mr. Justice Menzies took the opportunity to visit the settlement while on circuit in the eastern province, and wrote to the governor a most favourable report on the state of the locations at the Kat. He eulogised the crops of mealies, sorghum, and pumpkins, and the skill and labour spent on irrigation. At Balfour, John Valentyn had the water carried across a ravine of more than 60 feet in a trough formed by large trees hollowed out. Willem Valentyn had finished, and now inhabited, a large and commodious cottage, white-washed outside; from the state of everything about his place Menzies thought he had every chance of gaining the Pompey col. So far as the judge could form an opinion, the settlement did not at present require any magistrate appropriated to it, and the people seemed quite capable of managing their own affairs without the interference of any European. The letter mattered because a puisne judge, not a missionary, now told the castle that the Kat could govern itself, and because Pompey was a prize for work on the ground, not for a petition in London. [4]
The reverend James Read still sat at Philipton, the location of Andries Stoffles, maintained almost entirely by his society, with Sunday schools and day schools in full operation. Cole was not disposed to countenance the London society’s agents in the new settlement. In July the reverend William Ritchie Thomson, who was anxious to leave the Tyumie, was sent to the Kat at a cost to the government of 200 pounds a year. Thomson was a clergyman of the Scotch church who had come out as an agent of the Glasgow missionary society, then accepted the post of government agent at the Tyumie in succession to the reverend John Brownlee. Cole’s design was that an able and zealous clergyman at the public expense would oblige the London society’s agents to withdraw, and that interference by the reverend Dr. John Philip would be prevented. The design failed. Read received no assistance from the public treasury and did not go. The stipend mattered because the Kat now held two ministers — one paid by the castle, one paid by London — and because Cole had spent 200 pounds to empty a chapel that stayed full. [3] [4]
The darker side of the picture was still the side that those responsible for order had to look at. As the settlement increased in prosperity it offered greater temptation to those on the watch for plunder. The area allotted was about 400 square miles and bordered on nearly three sides by rugged mountains. Refuge and safe hiding could be found by all intruders. Xhosa, Fingo, Batswana, and Gonaqua sat in the fastnesses or squatted on the lands, and Ordinance Fifty of the 17th of July 1828 still prevented the idle from being arrested for vagrancy. Tyali was still in the Ceded Territory, occupying the valley of the Mancazana to the south of the country allotted to the Khoikhoi. Botumane and Eno were equally active. The valleys therefore opened this year on Menzies’s letter of praise, a prize col named for a horse, Thomson’s July stipend, and three chiefs still sitting on ceded ground who had not forgotten Maqoma. [3] [4]
Tyali, Erasmus, and the Zeko Charge — July–August 1831
About a year after the June drive, namely in July of this year, Stockenstrom was visiting the kraals of Tyali when that chief brought up the subject of the Zeko expedition. He stated that Zeko and his men had been shot in cold blood, that they were unarmed and assisting the farmers in driving the cattle when they were wantonly murdered. The statement moved the commissioner-general to commence a private inquiry. In carrying it out he confined himself singularly to the collection of evidence for the prosecution. Except that he wrote to field-commandant P. Rasmus Erasmus advising him to hear what was charged against him by the Xhosa, the burghers were not approached and knew nothing of these charges until they were brought forward in London years afterwards. The witnesses on whose words Stockenstrom relied were chiefly Xhosa who had not been present. The inquiry mattered because a charge of wanton murder against a field-commandant, if true, was a military offence under Somerset’s orders, and because a private file in the commissioner-general’s desk was not a court at Grahamstown. [4]
Two Khoikhoi who had accompanied the commando were examined. Boesak Tamboer, an achter-ryder to Erasmus, said he saw no assegais and conveyed the idea that Zeko and his people were doing kindly acts when they were killed. A note was appended to his evidence, bearing date the 16th of July of this year: it was necessary to observe that the witness prevaricated repeatedly, and that with difficulty the above answers were procured, so that his statement must be received with much suspicion. Lodewyk Peffer, the other, had no statement on oath taken from him. All he had to say was that he saw the rush of cattle in consequence of some shouting from a distance, that he did not hear Erasmus give any orders to fire, and that he saw a man wearing grey pantaloons and a tiger-skin kaross shot — and another native said that the man so dressed was not Zeko. It is true that, in this year, Stockenstrom told Erasmus of what the chief Tyali had accused him. The note mattered because the only Khoikhoi examination Stockenstrom marked as evidence was the one he himself labelled suspicious, and because Erasmus was told of the accusation without being called to answer it before his own neighbours. [4] [4]
Stockenstrom did report the matter to the governor in a letter of the 31st of August of this year, and expected that it would have been made the subject of a judicial investigation. Nothing was done. Cole seems to have thought that it was the business of the commissioner-general himself. In reality it was matter for the consideration of the commandant of the frontier, Colonel Somerset, as the men were under his orders and hence it was, supposing it to have existed, a military offence. Somerset knew nothing about these charges. Neither did Captain Duncan Campbell, the civil commissioner of Albany, who stated that he would have moved had he heard of them. In spite of the evidence in favour of Erasmus and his men, Stockenstrom did not change his opinion. The letter mattered because a governor who would not make a court left the charge to ripen in London, and because neither Somerset nor Campbell was told that a field-commandant under their orders stood accused of murder. [4]
The June drive itself had not changed its facts in the twelve months. Erasmus’s left division of 60 burghers had come in sight of Zeko’s huts on the morning after the 17th of June 1830, had taken about 2500 head, had left the milch cows, and had been joined by 18 unarmed men to drive the cattle toward Willshire. In the bush the cattle had turned, Zeko and 6 of his men had been shot, and about 1000 head had been recaptured by the assailants. Somerset and Stockenstrom commended Erasmus. What this year’s inquiry added was not new cattle on the Keiskama but a chief’s word taken in July, a Khoikhoi examination marked as suspicious on the 16th, and a governor who would not make it a court. [3] [4]
Theopolis, Philip, and Cole’s Report — May 1831
In November 1830 Cole, in pursuance of instructions from Downing Street, had instituted an inquiry into the charge that land had been cut off from Theopolis. Philip’s Researches had made it appear that not only land outside the original diagram, but one-third of what the diagram itself embraced, was to be taken from the institution. The land granted by Sir John Cradock in 1814 was a square tract of about 3000 morgen. Verbal permission to graze beyond those bounds had been given while the country was almost uninhabited, and Lord Charles Somerset had confirmed that permission in 1817. After the British settlers arrived in 1820 the freedom beyond the proper limits had to be restricted. Far from being deprived of the original grant, Theopolis received an addition of nearly 2000 morgen in 1825. A commission sat consisting of Captain Campbell and Lieutenant Hope on behalf of the government, Mr. Thomas Phillips and the reverend G. Barker on behalf of Philip, together with two land surveyors. The results were that there had been no encroachment whatever on the Theopolis lands. With respect to the diagram which Philip had published, it was discovered that Philip himself, together with a Mr. Wright, a teacher at Theopolis, had actually made the alterations on their copy of the original and published it in its garbled state, with the government surveyor’s name still attached. The commission mattered because Downing Street had ordered the inspection after a book published in England, and because the diagram that carried a government surveyor’s name was not the surveyor’s diagram. [3] [4]
Cole transmitted a long report on all this to Viscount Goderich on the 10th of May of this year. He termed Philip’s claim to the ground said to have been cut off a monstrous and unfounded demand, and added that Philip had admitted that he, a Mr. Wright, and the resident missionary were the parties who altered from their own measurements their copy of the original diagram, which Philip afterwards published in its garbled state with the government surveyor’s name still attached, thereby giving, inadvertently perhaps, a colour of authenticity to a charge which had no foundation in facts. Alterations or additions of this nature in official documents were at least inconvenient, when the object was to establish facts rather than to support errors. The despatch mattered because the secretary of state now had the governor’s word that the Theopolis claim was monstrous, and because a garbled diagram with a surveyor’s name still on it was the evidence Philip had used in England. [3] [4]
Far from damaging Philip’s reputation in England, all this seems to have been looked upon as nothing more than part of the persecution he was suffering in the colony. His own attitude was characteristic: he accused all those who had taken part in the investigation of being corrupt and dishonest. Cole, commenting, said that the honour and the professional reputation of gentlemen who had been sworn to the faithful discharge of their public duties, and who could not by any possibility be interested in the result of the inspection at Theopolis, the evidence of eye-witnesses to the operation, nay, the very character of his own coadjutor as a man of observation and understanding, all was to be sacrificed without scruple by Philip to the superior credibility of Khoikhoi witnesses examined by himself five years ago, when he was avowedly engaged in the compilation of charges not only against the government but against the whole colony. Unperturbed by these matters, Philip continued his course. It was at this time, probably conscious of the recognition he had received from the government in England, that he went among the Xhosa chiefs with an air of authority and discussed their grievances with them. Cole was convinced that these conversations had much to do with the outrageous conduct of the Xhosa shortly afterwards, but he could produce no proof and so could take no official notice of them. The conversations mattered because a superintendent whom Downing Street treated as an adviser now spoke to chiefs as if he were an inkosi, and because Cole would not act without proof. [3] [4]
The Mackay judgment of July 1830 named Philip a libeller in the colony’s own court. Sir John Wylde had considered it a false and malicious libel, Mr. Justice Burton a slander and falsehood, and Menzies utterly without foundation. Judgment had been given for 200 pounds and costs, and the costs had amounted to nearly 1000 pounds. Memorials had gone to the secretary of state assuming that Philip was in personal danger. What May of this year added was not another libel action but a governor’s letter of the 10th that called the Theopolis claim monstrous, a diagram with the surveyor’s name still on it, and a superintendent who would not be perturbed. [3] [4]
Stellenbosch and the Punishment Books — April 1831
The order in council of the 2nd of February 1830 had required that a punishment record book should be kept by each slave proprietor and submitted twice in every year to the protector, when the proprietor or manager should make oath to its accuracy. It was published in Capetown on the 12th of August 1830, to be in force on and after the 26th. The same treatment was required for slaves thinly scattered over South African farms as for those working in gangs on a West Indian sugar plantation. Food, clothing, hours of labour, and many other particulars were minutely entered into. There were many provisions which could not be observed in South Africa. Cole wrote to Goderich that the slaveholders were unanimous in their determination to suffer the penalties of the law rather than comply with its provisions relative to that book, and that even if he possessed the means he should not feel it right to compel the observance of this order without a larger military force than was then in South Africa. The book mattered because it turned every flogging into a sworn return, and because owners who would free girls by subscription still refused to put their own names to a punishment ledger twice a year. [3] [7]
In Stellenbosch there was something like a riot. On the 11th of April of this year a few slaveowners went to that village to submit their punishment record books to the assistant protector, whose office was in the public building, now the theological seminary. As soon as their object became known, a number of people assembled, and began to hiss at them and pelt them with dirt. The assistant protector endeavoured to see Mr. Faure, the resident magistrate, whose office was in the same building; but he was refused admittance. The rioters broke the windows of the houses of the assistant protector and another person who was obnoxious to them, and kept control of the village until the expiration of the 5 days specified by law for the production of the books. Faure did not report the circumstance until the 16th, and when called upon for an explanation replied that from the weakness of the constabulary he did not think it right to interfere. Cole thereupon deprived him of office. Seven of the principal rioters were put upon their trial before the next circuit court at Stellenbosch. They pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to pay fines of 10 pounds each and to furnish security to the amount of 20 pounds to keep the peace. The riot mattered because the first open resistance to the 1830 order was not a memorial but broken glass, and because Cole sacked a magistrate rather than suspend the book. [3]
On the 27th of May Goderich directed Cole to impose a tax — but only of 5 shillings — upon all slaves between 10 and 60 years of age; and even this order was cancelled upon a representation by the governor that it would be very imprudent to enforce it. On the 22nd of May he authorised half of the fines received under the various orders in council to be paid to the treasurer of the Cape of Good Hope society for aiding deserving slaves and slave children to purchase their freedom, a society formed in Capetown on the 27th of June 1828 which, with means limited almost entirely to colonial subscriptions, was able to effect the emancipation of about 25 girls yearly. The tax mattered because Downing Street still reached for a levy on slave property, and because Cole would not collect even 5 shillings after Stellenbosch had hissed a book. [3]
Goderich, the Ceded Farms, and the November Order — May–November 1831
Under the notice of the 2nd of August 1830 Stockenstrom had issued grants between the Winterberg and the junction of the Koonap and Fish to about a hundred individuals selected indiscriminately from the families of old colonists and recent British settlers, no other distinction than that of personal qualification being regarded. The farms were free of charge or rent. The grantees were to occupy them in person and to maintain a number of able-bodied Europeans capable of bearing arms, so that a farm of the ordinary size of 3000 morgen would have at least 4 men upon it. The use of slave labour was prohibited. Under this system the settlement of the border was being effected in a manner well adapted to the country, when a despatch from the secretary of state put a stop to it. On the 26th of May of this year Goderich issued directions that Dutch farmers were to be excluded from the ceded territory. English settlers and Khoikhoi might be located there, but the ground was to be sold, not given to them. These instructions were followed in August by others that no crown lands in any part of the colony were to be alienated except by sale at public auction, and that one of the conditions of the sale should be the exclusion of slave labour. The governor attempted to induce the secretary of state to reconsider this decision, but without success. The despatch mattered because it stopped the one system Cole thought would hold the Winterberg with armed men on freehold, and because Dutch families already selected would not get the ground. [3]
The expenditure of the colony continued to be in excess of the revenue. Cole, like Lieutenant-General Richard Bourke before him, balanced his accounts by drawing upon the capital of the loan bank. Goderich attempted to rectify this by retrenchment. In May of this year he issued instructions that various offices, with salaries attached to them amounting altogether to 3718 pounds a year, were to be summarily abolished. As other situations became vacant, they were to be filled by men with reduced salaries, or two posts were to be blended into one. The first of these orders was carried out. At Port Frances the office of harbour-master was abolished in this year. The retrenchment mattered because a colony that already drew on the loan bank now lost 3718 pounds of salaries at a stroke, and because the Kowie lost the harbour-master who had marked it as a port. [3] [4]
The order in council of the 2nd of November of this year limited the hours of slave labour to 9 daily, prohibited the employment of slaves between 6 in the evening and 6 in the morning, and gave protectors and assistant protectors judicial and police powers with the right to enter upon estates and into slave dwellings at any time, with other clauses almost equally destructive of the owners’ authority. That order was received in the colony with another of the 6th of February 1832, relieving slaveholders except those living in Capetown and Grahamstown or within 20 miles of those places from keeping punishment record books, and both were published to come in force on the 28th of August of the following year. The orders of 1830 and of this year laid down rules as to the food, clothes, hours of labour, and recreation that should be provided for slaves. The November order mattered because a nine-hour day and a protector’s right of entry reached every farm that still held slaves, and because Stellenbosch had shown what a book without soldiers would cost. [3] [7]
The question whether a knowledge of English was a necessary qualification in a juryman, left undecided since the charter of justice, was actually decided in this year. Until then the great majority of the white inhabitants of the country were liable to be excluded from the jury. In the circuit court at Worcester in 1828 one of the judges had removed criminal cases for trial to Capetown because an English-speaking jury could not be found in a Dutch district. The Cape jury consisted of 9 instead of 12. The decision mattered because for three years Dutch districts had sat under the risk of a bench that would not take them as they were, and because a jury of nine was still not a jury of twelve. [7]
Burg-street Chapel, Savings Banks, and Table Bay — February–October 1831
On the 26th of October 1829 the foundation stone of the Wesleyan chapel in Burg-street — later known as the metropolitan hall — had been laid, and on the 13th of February of this year the building was opened for public worship. The members of the English episcopal communion still used the Dutch reformed church. St. George’s stone had gone into the garden on the 23rd of April 1830, and on the 24th Berg-street had taken a saint’s name; the church itself would not open in this calendar. The old Dutch reformed church was too small, and another in a different part of the town was resolved upon, but that stone was not for this year. After April 1830 St. George’s-street was lit on dark nights with oil lamps, provided and maintained by subscription of the householders. Respectable females who went out in the evening were usually carried in a sedan chair, and a slave walked in front with a lantern. Early hours were kept, and very few people of the better classes remained out after nine. The chapel mattered because Burg-street now had a Wesleyan congregation in its own walls, and because St. George’s still had a street name without a finished church. [3]
At a meeting held in the commercial hall on the 22nd of November 1830, resolutions had been adopted in favour of the formation of savings banks on the same principle as those in England, and a committee had been appointed to carry out the project. The government approved of the design, and on the 8th of June of this year an ordinance was issued legalising it. On the 25th of the same month the first savings bank, properly so called, commenced to receive deposits in an office in St. George’s-street, and thereafter it was open every Saturday evening from five to seven o’clock and every Tuesday from eleven to one. Interest was allowed at the rate of 4 per cent. In a very short time branches were formed at the different seats of magistracy, and were found to be of great service to the poorer classes of the people. There had previously been a department of the government bank open for the reception of small sums, termed the savings bank branch, but in principle it had not differed from the other depositing branch. The ordinance mattered because a labourer’s Saturday evening now had a legal bank at 4 per cent, and because the government’s old savings branch had never been a savings bank in the English sense. [3]
In March of this year an association termed the South African fire and life assurance company was founded, with a subscribed capital of 30000 pounds, and its office was opened in Capetown. It was the first company of the kind formed in the colony, though several English insurance offices had agencies there. During a heavy gale from the 16th to the 18th of July 6 ships were driven ashore in Table Bay, happily without loss of life; but their cargoes, valued at 40000 pounds, were destroyed. This disaster led to the government undertaking the construction of a stone pier from which anchors and cables could be conveyed to ships in danger of parting. The only wharf at this time was one close to the castle, so far to leeward in winter gales that boats could not reach the anchorage from it. The new pier was at the foot of Bree-street. The gale mattered because 40000 pounds of cargo went ashore in three days, and because the castle wharf could not send a boat to an anchor in a north-wester. [3]
In October of this year the act that had, since March 1825, charged Cape wine entering Great Britain 2 shillings a gallon in British ships was repealed, and the duty on Cape wine was fixed at 2 shillings and 9 pence, and on all other wines at 5 shillings and 6 pence a gallon. The export of this article now rapidly fell off. A monthly magazine in quarto form, the Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette, began to be published at Capetown in this year. In January the resident magistrate at Port Elizabeth asked the governor to name the streets which, up to that time, had been formed, and this was done. At Uitenhage, in September, the long appeal against the contractor C. F. Pohl over the Dutch reformed church came before the court, when the former judgment was reversed and Pohl was condemned in 1350 pounds and costs — but by this time he was getting an old man and had become a bankrupt, and could not pay. In January the reverend Alexander Smith of Uitenhage installed elders and deacons for the Dutch-speaking people in Albany who had petitioned for a church of their own, and from that date the congregation existed distinct from others. On the 22nd of April the presbytery of Graaff-Reinet approved of what had been done, and elected as consulent the reverend George Morgan of Somerset East. The west therefore built this year a chapel in Burg-street, a bank in St. George’s-street on Saturday evenings, an assurance office of 30000 pounds, a pier talked of after six wrecks, a wine duty that would not hold the export, named streets at Port Elizabeth, and a congregation in Albany that still had no village. [3] [3] [4]
The Grahamstown Journal — December 1831
Shortly after the press ordinance of the 30th of April 1829 quite a number of newspapers and other periodicals had sprung into existence, but most of them were short-lived. Two newspapers remained: the Zuid-Afrikaan, partly in Dutch and partly in English, which had commenced in Capetown on the 9th of April 1830, and the Grahamstown Journal, a purely English sheet. Until this year there had been no attempt whatever to start a newspaper in the eastern province. In fact it was not until then that the more fortunate west had overcome the difficulties in connection with the government restrictions on the press and the South African Commercial Advertiser had become properly established. The ordinance of 1829 had taken the press from the governor and given libel to the judges, on condition that editors, printers, and proprietors were recorded on oath and bound in 300 pounds. The east had had no sheet of its own under that law. [3] [4]
On the 30th of December the first number of the Grahamstown Journal appeared; the eastern account dated that first number to the 31st. The first editor and proprietor was Mr. L. H. Meurant, and with him Mr. Robert Godlonton, then a clerk in the civil commissioner’s office, co-operated from the first. Godlonton was responsible chiefly for the literary matter. He wrote the leading articles, and by his judgment, fearless uprightness, and command of vigorous English gave to the Journal its characteristic tone. He had arrived with the first party of settlers, a printer by trade, and had brought with him the materials for pursuing that calling, but as the laws of the land forbade it his press and types were confiscated, and he was compelled to suffer the privations of the early days upon his location. Knowing nothing of agriculture he commenced as a constable in the streets of Grahamstown and then, obtaining an insignificant post in the landdrost’s office, became chief clerk to the civil commissioner, where he was when his connection with the Journal commenced. The first number mattered because the east now printed its own English sheet, and because the clerk who wrote the leaders had once had his press seized in Table Bay. [3] [4]
The Advertiser was the organ of the party about Philip, the editor, Mr. John Fairbairn, having married Philip’s daughter, hence the sentiments expressed in that paper were generally hostile to the white inhabitants and laudatory of the natives. The settlers were referred to as cockney pin makers and wearers of breeches who were afraid to look a real man in the face. Fairbairn was an able man and his opinion carried great weight; it was fortunate, therefore, for the east that it should have possessed an equally able man in Godlonton, who felt called upon to take up the cudgels in its defence. Grahamstown remained the metropolis of the east. Large places of business had come into existence; these, together with the increased waggon traffic and the growth of the chief market for all kinds of produce, made the town the centre of the interior trade. Wool and the native trade did more than anything else at this time to provide a scope for the profitable utilisation of capital and labour. Lieutenant Daniell of Sidbury and Major T. C. White had commenced fine-wool farming in 1827. The two topics, apart from business, which absorbed public attention were Philip’s Researches and temperance — or that form of intemperance known as teetotalism. A flourishing society was formed. Port Elizabeth shared in the enthusiasm; the principles of the society of that place, however, were on a broader basis, as it was evident from Rule No. 3, namely that no member of the Port Elizabeth Temperance Society was allowed to take his grog stronger than three parts spirit and one of water. The Journal mattered because Fairbairn now had an eastern answer, and because Grahamstown’s wool and waggons at last had a paper of their own. [4]
Drought, Thaba Bosigo, and the Fynns’ Return — 1831
In times of drought and locusts — and the years 1830 and this year were very bad in this respect — the colonial Boers were compelled to seek pasturage for their cattle in the northern regions or to lose all by starvation. Hence with their families they trekked north and remained there many months at a time, until rain had resuscitated the grass in their own parts. This naturally brought them into conflict with the people whose cattle competed for the same pastures. The whole country on the north side of the Orange was a waste occupied only by bands of robbers under no other control than that which could be exercised by the small personal influence of Andries Waterboer, Adam Kok, and the missionaries. The Koranas were a nomadic and marauding people, the chief cattle thieves and the worst enemies of the inoffensive Betshuana, whom they continually robbed in order to supply the traders from the colony with the cattle which they exchanged for gunpowder and brandy. San bands created havoc on their own account or joined Griquas and Koranas in more wholesale depredations. Hendrick Badenhorst with his children and widow Kruger with her two sons, sojourning peaceably with their cattle in the Griqua country, were driven to the Orange by Kok with a large number of his men; as the river was in flood the people had to wait on the bank some days, and Kok took their guns and ammunition. The drought mattered because Boers who left their own grass for the Orange walked into Kok’s range, and because neither Waterboer nor Kok had the force to police the islands. [3] [4]
After a few visits in search of plunder, in this year an army sent by Moselekatse besieged Thaba Bosigo, but could not capture the stronghold. When the besiegers were compelled by want of food to retreat, Moshesh sent them provisions for their homeward journey, with a message that he desired to live in peace with all men. They went away singing his praises. At this time the country along the Orange was infested by Griqua and Korana marauders, mounted on horses and armed with guns, animals and weapons not as yet possessed by the followers of Moshesh. The accounts of the missionaries which reached the Lesuto about this year were to the effect that they were not only benevolent and courageous and provided with terribly destructive weapons like other white men, but that they possessed magical powers. The stories told of the reverend Mr. Moffat at Kuruman led to the belief that he possessed a knowledge of some exceedingly powerful medicine of this kind, because during the two years after his visit the Batlhaping were spared while other Betshuana tribes were nearly exterminated. Moshesh sent 200 head of cattle to Adam Kok at Philippolis with a request that he might be supplied with a missionary in return; on the way the cattle were seized by a band of Korana marauders. The siege mattered because Moselekatse’s army failed on the mountain and went home on Moshesh’s food, and because 200 head paid for a missionary never reached Philippolis. [3]
On the 10th of November of this year all the stock at the commissioner-general’s farm was sold, as he was intending to resign his office and to settle in another country. The sale was attended by a number of the Kat River people as well as the Boers of the districts. Some friction arose in connection with the credit which was to be given to the Khoikhoi and the refusal of some of the farmers to stand as security for them, and they were further incensed, so it was said, by being jeered at by the farmers. This is all the foundation in fact there was for any casus belli between the two races. Early in December there were whisperings to the effect that the Khoikhoi at the Kat River were preparing to rebel and to commit unheard-of atrocities among the Boers. These gained strength with going, until general consternation reigned. S. J. Bekker, the field-cornet of Zwart Ruggens, wrote that he had heard frightful tidings that the Khoikhoi and Xhosa were committing murder, that they were to commence that day on Bruintjes Hoogte, and that the commandant Piet Erasmus was already dead. A woman at Zwagershoek wrote that at Somerset there was a swarm of Khoikhoi and that they had sent to inform the people that they must keep themselves in readiness with victuals for them against the new year. Campbell at first paid little heed to the rumours, but the general apprehension and the apparent intention of some of the farmers to abandon their homes compelled him to bring the state of affairs before the government. He, together with Somerset, was then instructed to investigate. Witnesses were examined at the Kat River, at the Koonap, and at Somerset, but nothing except the most untrustworthy hearsay evidence could anywhere be found. There seemed to be some dissatisfaction at the Kat with field-cornet Groepe, who was considered to have too much “Boernick” about him, but with regard to any intention to blow away all Europeans before the new year, nothing of any kind was elicited. What did come out prominently was the ill-favour with which many of the Boers regarded the countenance which the government had given to the Khoikhoi in the formation of the Kat River Settlement. Field-cornet Buchner of Quagga Flats was of opinion that the government preferred the Khoikhoi to the Boers and was prepared to take their part against them. The rumours mattered because a stock sale and a jeer became, in a fortnight, a frontier panic, and because Campbell and Somerset found no rebellion at the Kat — only the farmers’ anger that Khoikhoi now held Maqoma’s valleys. [4]
After Dingane had sent ivory to Grahamstown in October 1830 and Captain Campbell had declined it, the Europeans at Port Natal came to learn of the approach of a Zulu regiment and thought it prudent to get out of the way. The two Fynns fled to Buntingville in Pondoland; John Cane, Henry Ogle, and Thomas Holstead retired to a thicket on the Umzimkulu; and Nathaniel Isaacs left in the American brig St. Michael. As soon as Dingane’s passion was over he sent for the others, and they all went back. The Fynns left Buntingville on the 11th of August of this year in company with Mr. James Collis, who had visited Natal in the preceding year, and was now on his way from Grahamstown to establish himself as a trader at the port. He took with him several assistants, among them the parents of William Wood, who was afterwards Dingane’s interpreter. Within the next year some 15 or 20 other Englishmen also made their way to Natal. Dingane threw upon Hlambamanzi the blame of his conduct towards them after the return of his embassy, and by his instructions Ogle caused that individual to be put to death. The return mattered because Port Natal was again a traders’ camp under Dingane’s protection, and because the ivory Grahamstown had turned back in December 1830 had almost emptied the port. [3]
The reverend James Laing arrived in this year as an agent of the Glasgow society. Of late years mission stations had been greatly multiplied beyond the Keiskama. The Glasgow society had one near the source of the Tyumie, another at old Lovedale farther down the same river, a third at Burnshill on the Keiskama, and a fourth at Perie near one of the sources of the Buffalo. Laing’s arrival mattered because Glasgow now had another clergyman on those waters, and because Moshesh had paid 200 head for a missionary and lost the cattle on the road. [3] [3]