Boer History1845 in South Africa: West in Natal, Zwartkopjes, Touwfontein, and the Maitland Treaties
The Volksraad of the 6th of January, Stanger’s Survey, and West of the 4th of December — Natal 1845
On the 6th of January the volksraad at Pietermaritzburg wrote to Sir Peregrine Maitland. Maitland was the man who had taken the Cape oaths on the 18th of March 1844, after Sir George Napier laid down the government. Natal had been taken as a British colony in 1843. Advocate Henry Cloete had been commissioner. The volksraad had submitted on the 8th of August 1843. Lord Stanley’s letters patent of the 31st of May 1844 had annexed Natal to the Cape as a dependency, separate for judicial, financial, and executive work, with legislation through the Cape governor. What still hung in the air was a lieutenant-governor at Pietermaritzburg, title to farms, and a court that could sit. The letter mattered because 2 years and 6 months had passed since the agreement with Lieutenant-colonel Cloete, and 16 months since they had placed a detailed statement of their wishes in Cloete’s hands under Napier’s proclamation of the 12th of May 1843, and they still did not know the queen’s resolves on land, natives, or government. Cultivation and population, they said, had fallen toward a total abandonment by the agriculturists. [4]
Stanley’s despatch of the 25th of May 1844 fixed the form: a lieutenant-governor with an executive council of 5, a single judge sitting at Pietermaritzburg, Port Natal, and Weenen, appeals to the supreme court at Capetown. Local government might take the form most acceptable to the people: Pietermaritzburg, being Dutch, might restore landdrost and heemraden; Port Natal might have a municipal board. The attorney-general communicated the matter to Major Thomas Charlton Smith on the 12th of October 1844. Smith did not think proper to acquaint the volksraad — hence the tone of January. The delay mattered because, without a civil government, the farmers still sat in a volksraad that had no legal standing, while Smith held the only force in the country, and hope of another abandonment as in 1839 still fed the trek north. [3] [4]
One account has Dr William Stanger and a small staff appointed on the 2nd of January; another has the appointment on the 17th of February, the party leaving Capetown on the 12th of March as a sign that measurement would begin. Maitland named the survey because uncertainty over land grants was driving farmers out of Natal. The Natalier of the 25th of April still wrote that up to that day nothing had been done: they had heard from Stanger himself of his appointment, but nothing official had been communicated to the volksraad. Civil officers already named were William Swan Field at the customs, William Cowie as postmaster from the 22nd of December 1844, and Captain William Bell as harbour master from the same day. Port dues, raised in 1844 from threepence to 3 shillings a ton, remained until the 6th of December, when they were abolished altogether. [3] [4]
On the 30th of April a commission under the privy seal provided that the Cape governor when in Natal should supersede the lieutenant-governor, and empowered him to appoint provisionally if there were no one commissioned by the queen. On the 21st of August — 14 months after Westminster — Maitland promulgated the letters patent by two proclamations: one defining Natal as the right banks of the Tugela and Umzinyati, the south-eastern base of the Drakensberg, and the principal western branch of the Umzimkulu to the sea; the other declaring that the queen did not thereby renounce sovereign authority over subjects beyond those limits. The Umzimkulu, not the Umzimvubu, was the south-western line, because Fodo sat on the southern bank and because the advisers wished to cut off a pastoral tract without a port. In July Neapayi, the most formidable of Faku’s opponents, was killed in battle; his son Makaula carried on the feud with the Pondos. An ordinance establishing Roman-Dutch law in Natal issued on the 27th of August; an ordinance erecting a district court, 39 sections, on the 16th of October. The proclamations mattered because they turned Stanley’s paper of 1844 into a published boundary, and because the second paper told farmers who trekked over the Berg that they were still British subjects under the Cape of Good Hope punishment bill. [3] [4]
After three and a half years at Fort Napier, Major Smith with his detachment of the 27th embarked in the Pilot on the 9th of August for Simon’s Bay. On the previous day Lieutenant-colonel Edward French Boys with the 45th took military possession. On the 28th of August Boys, Stanger, and Field were invested with the power of local magistrates. One account has Maitland writing to Colonel Hare on the 29th of August that Martin Thomas West of Grahamstown had been appointed first lieutenant-governor; another has the provisional commission on the 13th of November, with a magistrate’s commission under the Cape of Good Hope punishment bill. At the same time Advocate Henry Cloete was named recorder, Donald Moodie secretary to government, Walter Harding crown prosecutor, and a few days later Theophilus Shepstone agent for natives. On the 22nd of November the executive council was named: the senior military officer, the secretary, the surveyor-general, the collector of customs, and the crown prosecutor. West and the staff landed at Port Natal on the 4th of December and were received with enthusiasm; on the 12th he reached Pietermaritzburg, and the recorder and lieutenant-governor swore each other in. That landing mattered because, for the first time since Congella, Natal had a civil head who could sit without Smith’s bayonet at the table. [3] [4]
The European inhabitants were then about 400 Dutch pastoral families and a couple of hundred Englishmen, most of them at Durban. There were still no roads along which goods could be conveyed over the mountains to the communities inland, so that trade was limited to the people within the borders and those of Zululand. Cloete had estimated the blacks in the former republic and the land between the Tugela and Buffalo at between 80000 and 100000, and had recommended defined locations under superintendents. They were of three classes: inhabitants never driven out, believed then between 5000 and 11000, whose claim to ground none denied; those driven out by Tshaka who had returned after the Europeans, about whose rights men differed; and refugees from tribes that had never occupied Natal, come in since 1838 to be under white protection, believed fully half the whole, with no claim beyond what government might choose to give. Practically the distinctions could not be observed: the imperial authorities would not incur expense beyond a small garrison. Imports of the year were 30283 pounds from the Cape and 1337 pounds from foreign countries; exports 10162 pounds — ivory 3557, hides 2538, butter 2246, maize 858, wool 232, other produce 731. Twenty-one vessels came from the Cape, two from Boston, one from Sweden. On the 15th of December West thought he would have to ask for more troops against Bushman depredations on the farms. The numbers mattered because they showed a colony with a civil staff and almost no roads, and a black population the Crown would not pay to locate. [3] [3] [4]
Krynauw, Touwfontein, and Zwartkopjes of the 1st of May — January–May 1845
North of the Orange the Napier paper of 1843 with Adam Kok still stood. That treaty treated Kok as a British ally in a tract the emigrant farmers occupied and denied was his to rule. The farmers still denied that they were British subjects. On the 13th of January Kok wrote asking for a military post in his country. The secretary to government replied on the 19th of February that if any general movement of the emigrants should take place to attack him, a force would be marched from the colony with all possible despatch. After a promise like that Kok abated none of his pretensions. The promise mattered because it told the Griqua captain that Capetown would treat an attack on him as an attack on an ally, and it told the farmers that the queen’s troops would cross the Orange against them. [3]
The spark was a farm quarrel. Two blacks from beyond the Vaal in the service of Jan Krynauw menaced a European on the same farm with assagais. One account has the men — September and his brother April, Morolong adherents of Moroko, not Kok’s people — told to keep cattle off certain lands, becoming insolent, and being seized. Krynauw secured them and took them to Commandant Jan Kock. One account has Kock sentencing them to a sound flogging; another has Kock refusing punishment and Krynauw taking it on himself. In any case they were tied to a waggon-wheel and given 29 lashes each with a stirrup leather. Kok rode to Colesberg and asked Fleetwood Rawstorne whether he would receive Krynauw for trial. Rawstorne advised caution. Kok sent about a hundred armed men. Krynauw was from home. They poured abuse on his wife, broke into the house, and carried off three guns and ammunition — another account adds two bars of lead and a bag of powder, and the cry “Come out, Krynauw, this is the day when your blood must flow.” The raid mattered because it turned a flogging of Moroko’s men into an armed Griqua entry on a Boer farm, which the commandants would not leave unanswered. [3] [4]
The burghers assembled under arms. A party from between the Orange and the lower Caledon under Commandant Jacobus Duplooy came to their aid. They formed a lager at Touwfontein, a farm of Adriaan van Wyk about 30 miles from Philippolis, left their families under a guard, and the two sides began seizing each other’s cattle. Whenever they met, shots were exchanged, each accusing the other of firing first. Rawstorne issued a circular calling on the farmers to keep the peace; it had no effect. He then supplied Kok with muskets and ammunition — another account gives 60 muskets, 225 lbs of powder, 224 lbs of lead, and a barrel of flints — and desired Major Campbell to move from Colesberg to Alleman’s Drift to protect fugitives and stop colonial Dutch from crossing to the farmers. At Zuurfontein, about 30 miles east of Philippolis, some 200 Griquas for several days kept at bay a larger Boer force; at Hout Haal Bay they fought at distances almost beyond the guns. Casualties of that small war, before the dragoons came, were given as one Griqua killed and six taken, and on the Boer side ten killed and wounded. The muskets mattered because a Cape magistrate armed an ally against British subjects whom the Crown still claimed, and because the farmers then treated the quarrel as war. [3] [4]
On the 22nd of April Campbell with 200 men crossed the Orange and, marching at night, reached Philippolis next morning without molestation. Rawstorne went with the troops. A conference at Alwyn’s Kop on the 25th of April brought Jan Mocke, Jan Kock, Hermanus Steyn, and Michiel Oberholster. Mocke and Kock said they were independent, subject only to the council of Potchefstroom and Winburg; they would restore cattle if the Griquas did the same, but they required a line of demarcation and recognition as a free people. Rawstorne could not concede it. To that date four or five farmers had been wounded; they had killed one Griqua, made six prisoners, and captured 280 horses and 3600 head of horned cattle. The conference mattered because it put the farmers’ claim of independence on the table, and because Rawstorne, holding a commission under the punishment bill, could not treat them as a free people. [3] [4]
The 7th dragoon guards under Lieutenant-colonel Richardson, artillery under Captain Shepherd, and a troop of Cape mounted riflemen under Captain H. D. Warden had been ordered forward from the eastern frontier. Another account has 94 dragoons, some royal artillery, and 24 rifles, 11 days’ march, 240 miles from Fort Beaufort. They reached Philippolis on the 26th or, as another account has it, on Sunday the 27th of April, and joined Campbell’s 160 of the 91st. Richardson proclaimed that emigrant British subjects unlawfully assembled in arms must surrender unconditionally. The proclamation had no effect. The march mattered because it was the first time regular cavalry from the Fish were sent over the Orange to uphold Kok against the emigrants. [3] [4]
One account has Richardson leaving Philippolis on the night of the 1st of May with 118 cavalry, 160 infantry, and most of Kok’s Griquas, a body of Griquas sent in advance to draw the farmers, some 250 under Mocke, Kock, Steyn, and Duplooy pursuing them to broken ground called the Zwartkopjes, about 5 miles from Touwfontein, and the cavalry getting unobserved in their rear. Another has infantry marching at midnight on Tuesday the 29th of April, cavalry joining next day, a first brush at rocky eminences near Drie Kuil — a three-pounder in charge of a Frenchman and a deserter of the 91st captured by Lieutenant Gray of the 7th — then a midnight move on the Zwartkopjes camp, Griquas shown on a hill at dawn, dragoons charging when the farmers left the lager. The farmers did not attempt a stand. On the English side one Griqua was killed. On the emigrant side one farmer and a French adventurer were killed, and another farmer mortally wounded — the first brush in another account gives one Griqua and two Boers killed. Fifteen prisoners were taken, among them two deserters; one was later sentenced to death, the other to 14 years’ hard labour. Infantry took the Touwfontein lager: about a hundred men, the rest women and children, surrendered without resistance; arms and ammunition were seized, other property left, and on earnest request most of the guns were restored. Mocke, Kock, and Duplooy retired to Winburg. The skirmish mattered because it broke the lager without a battle, and because it left the commandants who would not swear to the queen on the road to Winburg. [3] [4]
Oberholster’s party, which had tried from the first to keep out of the strife, came in and took the oath; Steyn’s adherents did the same; by the 17th of May 316 emigrants had sworn — another account has 70 under field-cornet Oosthuisen on the 4th of May and 280, chiefly Oberholster’s, on the 8th. About 2000 of the Griqua cattle were restored through Steyn. Jacobus Theodorus Snyman’s people along the lower Caledon, holding from Moshesh, took no part. Before Maitland arrived, Mocke, Kock, and Duplooy offered to restore everything taken from the Griquas if everything taken from them were returned; Rawstorne was directed to write that the governor would accept only an unconditional restoration. On the 22nd of May Richardson broke up the Zwartkopjes camp and moved to Touwfontein, where the governor had convened the chiefs. The oaths mattered because they split the emigrants: those who swore could stay under a British resident; those who would not went to Winburg or over the Vaal. [3] [4] [7]
Maitland at Touwfontein, the Kok Agreement of June, and Joubert’s Tour — May–August 1845
Maitland left Capetown on the 15th of May to settle the country in person, with William Porter the attorney-general. He did the journey on horseback. Leaving Beaufort West at five on a dark cold morning his horse stumbled and threw him with violence; he had to lie there some days, then reached Colesberg on the 7th of June and lay up until the 16th before he could move to Touwfontein. From Colesberg he refused Mocke and Kock any explanation of their quarrel: he looked on them as subjects in rebellion. Toward the close of June he arrived at the camp. The chiefs Moshesh, Moroko, Molitsane, Lepui, Gert Taaibosch, Carolus Baatje, Peter Davids, Adam Kok, and Andries Waterboer were there, with a large number of missionaries. Sikonyela of the Batlokua was the only chief of note between Vaal and Orange who was absent. With Waterboer there was nothing to settle: his district under the treaty of 1834 lay beyond the disturbed area. Lepui, Carolus Baatje, and Peter Davids had no quarrels on hand. Molitsane asked to be treated as Moshesh’s dependent. Moroko and Taaibosch would not admit that they were Moshesh’s vassals; Moshesh would not renounce the claim. The meeting mattered because Maitland meant to replace the Napier paper with a scheme that put a British officer over the Europeans north of the Orange, without annexing the land. [3] [4]
Kok at first claimed that every one in his territory who did not obey him was a rebel and forfeited property, that all leases without his approval were invalid, and that those who had been in arms should be driven out by British troops. He then moderated. The governor proposed to divide the claimed territory into two districts: an inalienable Griqua reserve in which no white men except missionaries and traders — and those only with colonial consent — might thereafter purchase or lease, present residents to leave when leases expired; and a district in which land could be freely leased to white men, the Griqua dominion maintained on paper, but administration entrusted to an English officer styled British resident, holding a commission under the punishment bill, with jurisdiction over all Europeans, collecting rents, paying half to the Griqua government, the other half to defray cost. All persons of European birth or descent were to be considered British subjects. Kok was to place 300 men at the resident’s control when called upon. The reserve was to comprise the land between the Riet and Orange from a straight line Ramah–David’s Graf eastward to Kromme-Elleboog Spruit, Van Zyl’s Spruit, and Lepui’s Bethulie. Upwards of 80 farms held by Europeans lay in that reserve; purchases without Griqua-government sanction were to be treated as 40-year leases. The agreement was made at Touwfontein in June and acted upon at once, though the formal treaty was still unsigned when the year closed — it was not sealed until February 1846. On the 1st of July the governor left for the colony. He instructed Rawstorne to reside at Philippolis as special magistrate, visiting Colesberg once a fortnight. All troops were ordered back to the eastern frontier except Warden’s Cape mounted rifles, who were to remain at Philippolis. The British residentship was offered to Major Smith, who declined; it was then offered to Captain Sutton of the Cape mounted rifles, who accepted provisionally and took over on the 8th of December. Sutton resigned in January 1846 rather than lose army promotion, and Warden succeeded him. The June paper mattered because it created, without annexation, a British officer over every European between the Riet and the Orange, and because more than 80 farms inside the reserve became leases instead of purchases. [3] [4]
No similar arrangement could be closed with Moshesh. He professed willingness, then offered for Europeans only a small triangle between Caledon and Orange up to a line from Commissie Drift to Buffels Vlei, and asked the governor to remove the Europeans — 447 families — from the rest of the Napier assignment. His missionaries returned his people at between 40000 and 50000. There had never been Basuto residents in or near the little plot he was willing to give up. Maitland deferred, and sent Commandant Gideon Joubert, a loyal and trusted man already used as special commissioner, on a tour of inspection in July and August. Joubert heard from David Stephanus Fourie of an 1839 purchase from the Korana captain David Danser — Vaal at Platberg above the Hart, south to the Modder, up to Doorn Spruit, north to the Vet and into the Vaal — price 300 sheep and a waggon valued at 67 pounds 10 shillings, the sheep perhaps 75 pounds, in all 142 pounds 10 shillings for a tract Fourie thought would make 50 farms; 12 emigrant families then occupied it. At Coal Spruit he found Tulu, highest in rank of the Bataung, who said his father had sold the country except the reserve; Molitsane at Mekuatling was a remnant under Moshesh. At Winburg Joubert was in a republican centre: Kock denouncing the British government, Mocke already over the Vaal, landdrost J. Meyer a feeble old man who would speak only at dead of night. The tour mattered because Maitland would not sign a Moshesh paper until he knew how many European families sat inside the Napier assignment, and because Winburg would not treat the queen as sovereign. [3]
Moroko and Taaibosch offered large unoccupied tracts for Europeans; Moshesh would not relinquish more than the Touwfontein slip. Joubert found no Basuto south of the Koesberg, but between that mountain and Moshesh’s line 72 farms occupied by 289 emigrant families. He estimated Moshesh at 50000 or 60000, Moroko at 10000, Molitsane at 1000, Gert Taaibosch at 300, Carolus Baatje at 200, Peter Davids at 200 of all ages. The French and Wesleyan missionaries held opposite opinions on Moshesh’s right over Moroko, Taaibosch, Peter Davids, and Carolus Baatje; Joubert inclined to the Wesleyan view because it was better supported by evidence, and because he thought it unwise to let the Basuto absorb their neighbours. The report showed such difficulty, without violating the Napier treaty, that no immediate action was taken. In 1845 Gontse of the Barolong moved to another part of the Potchefstroom district without notice being taken of his doings. The figures mattered because they showed why a Kok-style reserve could not be copied for Moshesh: hundreds of European families sat on ground the 1843 paper had assigned to the chief of Thaba Bosigo. [3]
Fort Peddie of the 2nd of January, Sandile’s Marks, and Scholtz of the 29th of November — Frontier 1845
The Rarabe arrangements Maitland had read at Fort Peddie in September 1844 were forwarded after his return to Capetown. Former treaties were annulled. The boundary of 1819, as agreed by Gaika, divided British territory from the land of the Rarabe captains; they accepted as a special favour the loan of the district they occupied west of that line, guaranteed in perpetuity except in case of hostility or breach. The government might build forts and station troops anywhere west of 1819. Police and Cape mounted riflemen might enter that territory to apprehend criminals and seize stolen property. Stolen cattle traced to their grounds were to be restored or paid for. The ground occupied by British subjects and Xhosa remained as in the Stockenstrom treaties, as did the articles on diplomatic agents and passes. Christians at mission stations were not to be forced into marriage, witchcraft charges, or circumcision. The substitution mattered because it replaced the Stockenstrom paper of 1836, which had treated the captains as independent powers, with a loan of the ceded territory and a right to put troops west of Gaika’s line. [3]
At Fort Peddie on the 2nd of January the captains Umkayi, Umhala, Siwani, and Gasela attached their marks in presence of Colonel Hare, Shepstone, and Captain John Maclean of the 27th, who commanded the fort. As long as they observed the conditions the governor undertook to pay them jointly 200 pounds a year. At the same time and place Eno and his son Stokwe marked a copy and were promised 50 pounds between them; Pato and Kobe another, 100 pounds a year; the Fingo captains Jokweni, Mabandla, Kwenkwezi, Matomela, Kawulela, Pahla, and Jama a copy, 100 pounds among them, with 200 guns for self-defence. These four treaties were signed by Maitland in Capetown on the 30th of January. Sandile, Makoma, Botumane, and Koko attached their marks on the 21st of January but were promised nothing; they objected to a border court of appeal, negotiations ran on, and the governor did not sign until the 22nd of November, by which time he attached very little value to it. A treaty of similar import received the marks of the Tembu chiefs Umtirara, Mapasa, and six others on the 25th of March and was signed by the governor on the 11th of April. The Gaikas had taken strong exception to the court of appeal under a frontier commissioner and to the clause protecting mission Christians; the appeal article was waived and expunged from all the treaties, the protection clause was not. Makoma was the chief speaker at a meeting of about a hundred followers at Stretch’s Tyumie residency in January: they were satisfied with Stretch and Shepstone and did not see why a wall should be raised between them and the government. The subsidies mattered because the Gaika house, nearest the farms and most able to stop theft, was paid nothing, while the coast captains and the Fingos were. [3] [4]
Sandile said robbery of the farmers was against his wish and that he had not enough authority to suppress it. Asked if he would like a fort near his kraal, he said he would. The site proposed was the eastern bank of the Tyumie at Blockdrift, close to Lovedale and Stretch’s residency, better watered than Post Victoria. On the 19th of November his terms were a yearly rent, no traders without his permission, each to pay him 20 pounds a year for a licence. Toward the end of the year the Sheshegu at Post Victoria was found little more than stagnant pools under grey slime, unwholesome by the military doctor’s analysis, and the drought made it worse. In October Sandile asked that the troops be withdrawn; he was told they could not be while depredations were so rife. In August Pato had fallen foul of Shepstone; his loyalty was no longer above suspicion. Shepstone, warned that his life was not safe among Pato’s people, asked to be transferred to Natal, and went as agent for natives. Maclean replaced him as diplomatic agent only 16 days before the murder on the Peddie road. The Blockdrift proposal mattered because a fort there would have put troops on Sandile’s doorstep, on ground the 1819 line left outside the colony, and because Sandile’s rent terms showed he meant to treat the ground as his to lease. [3] [4]
On the 29th of November the border was thrown into excitement by the murder of a missionary near Fort Peddie. The reverend Mr Döhne had recently formed Bethel with Gasela’s people. Three missionaries were on the way from Port Elizabeth to join him, waggons conducted by Richard Tainton, one waggon the property of Shepstone. They outspanned about 7 miles from the fort, in Pato’s country, after crossing at Trompeter’s Drift. Shepstone was out of favour with Pato’s people, and a plan was made to murder him on the road; he was not with the party, though his servant was. About two o’clock in the morning Gunukwebes attacked. Shepstone’s servant, asleep by a fire, was stabbed to death. Tainton and another slipped out and hid. An assagai thrown into the missionaries’ waggon wounded the reverend Ernest Scholtz, who died a few hours afterwards — another account has the wound in the abdomen as he leaned out. The surrender of the murderers was demanded from Pato; he promised and never gave them up. The murder mattered because it was done in Pato’s country, on the road a diplomatic agent used, and because Pato’s refusal to give the men up left the new treaties without a test the government could enforce. [3] [4]
Gasela had died in March; his son Toyise succeeded. In July Stretch, least inclined to give an adverse account, wrote that for 7 months there had been talk of a combination including the Tembu for an attack on the colony. In September Xoxo, too severe on cattle-thieves, was being deposed by Makoma and Sandile from the people Tyali had left him. On the 23rd of February Makoma applied to Major Smith for a location in the colony for himself and his people, as he wished to be out of the way in case of war; the request was not granted. The close of the year saw a disposition to increased recklessness among the young men with guns and horses; the older captains stood aloof and were over-ruled. The Fish was still quiet. The powder was not. Those signs mattered because the January marks were paper by November, and because the next year’s war would be fought with the same captains who had just been paid, or not paid, under Maitland’s substitutes for Stockenstrom. [3] [4]
Ichaboe Cleared, the Susan of the 23rd of October, and the 1845 Settlers
The brig Ann of Bristol reached Table Bay on the 15th of February, her master Captain Parr learning from an American whaler the exact position of the islet the people on the mainland a mile and a half distant called by a name written Ichaboe. She took three-fourths of a cargo, parted her cables in a gale, and bore away for Bristol. Litigation followed, and the deposit became public. By February of this year the whole mass was gone. During the busiest period some thousands of labourers had been on the rock, a frigate from Simon’s Bay supporting a committee of shipmasters. The quantity that entered the English market in 1844 and 1845 was about 300000 tons, sold at an average of 7 pounds a ton, equal in value to 2100000 pounds; importers cleared about 2 pounds a ton, freight 4, shipping and landing about 1. It held less ammoniacal salt than the Peruvian, and was worth less. The colony’s share of the original mass was small: harbour dues, supplies, and the knowledge that the rock had been scraped bare. The clearance mattered because the rush of 1843– 1844 was over, and because Capetown had taken almost nothing from a cargo worth more than two million pounds in England. [3]
The legislative council had voted 10000 pounds for immigration bounties. Three classes of emigrants were to be assisted, according to supposed worth: farm overseers and master workmen at 15 pounds for a single man between 18 and 40, 22 pounds 10 shillings if married, and 5 pounds for each of three children; a second class at 12, 18, and 4; a third, unskilled, at 10, 15, and 3. Bounty orders in any one month were limited to 100 persons, so that the stream should not exceed the demand for labour. A Capetown immigration board sat — the secretary to government, the treasurer-general, the officer of health, and the collector of customs as immigration officer. The government later became the importer itself, and let those who wanted servants meet the new arrivals and make their own terms. John Marshall and Co. were the shipping contractors, at 10 pounds 8 shillings for each statute adult. The first ship of the scheme, the Susan, left London on the 23rd of October with 144 emigrants bound for Table Bay. She had not yet come to anchor when the year closed; she would reach Table Bay on the 7th of February 1846. In point of numbers the people of this new stream were to exceed those of 1820; in circumstance they were not. The 1820 men had arrived homeless and ignorant of the country; these were chosen for work already waiting, their paths made straight, no call to cut a career out of adversity. The 10th of April 1844 had been kept at Grahamstown as the first public remembering of 1820, in the year when this new immigration was commencing. The bounties mattered because South Africa, unlike Canada or Australia, had no waste-land fund to pay passages, and because the colony now bought labour with its own 10000 pounds rather than wait for Downing Street. [4]
On the 26th of May the Mutual life assurance society opened its office in Capetown. The Colonial bank, capital 100000 pounds, had opened on the 1st of October 1844. Advocate Henry Cloete having left the colony, Thomas Butterworth Charles Bayley of Caledon was nominated by Maitland to the unofficial seat on the 10th of December. The nomination was reported to Lord Stanley, but Mr Gladstone, who on the 23rd of December succeeded that minister as secretary of state for the colonies, did not see fit to confirm it. The eastern districts still had no unofficial seat. The nomination mattered because Cloete’s removal to Natal left a western unofficial chair empty, and because Gladstone’s refusal left the council as it was: five official members and no eastern voice at the table. [3]
The Flats Road to Klapmuts, the Roman Rock Light, and the Eastern Petition of December — 1845
For ships of war using Simon’s Bay, Lord Stanley had directed a lighthouse on Miller’s Point; naval officers on the station induced him to abandon it, and on the 10th of January a light was first shown from a hulk moored off the Roman rock — a bright revolving light, 37 feet above sea-level, the third exhibited on the South African coast after Green Point and Mouille Point. In this year the legislative council voted 10000 pounds toward lighthouses on capes Agulhas and Recife. Shipowners had subscribed toward Agulhas; lanterns were being made in France; neither light was yet on the point. Agulhas would not be shown until the 1st of March 1849; Recife not until the 1st of April 1851. The hulk mattered because Simon’s Bay still had no stone tower, and because Agulhas, where the St. Mungo had drowned 10 men in September 1844, was still dark. [3]
The hard road over the Cape flats was opened in sections as fast as they could be completed. Montagu bridge over the Salt river had begun to be used on the 1st of July 1844; the last section through the sand toward Klapmuts was opened on the 24th of December of this year. Exclusive of convict labour the road cost about 50000 pounds, raised by rates, tolls, and special grants. Through the mountain range close to George a carriage way was being cut in place of Cradock’s pass, thickly strewn with broken vehicles and the skeletons of oxen; it was not yet open, and would take the name Montagu Pass when it was, on the 18th of January 1848. Eastern men still wanted a road board of their own, separate from the west, and still objected to a government that contemplated a loan of 300000 pounds for a Table Bay breakwater while the east went short. The Klapmuts opening mattered because the sand between Capetown and the corn farms was at last a hard road, paid in part by convict labour under Montagu’s code of the 1st of January 1844, and because the east still had no board of its own. [3] [4]
The people of the eastern districts were not very desirous of being represented in a council whose unofficial members were practically powerless. What they wanted was a government of their own, nearly or quite independent of Capetown: it was on the eastern frontier, they said, that all the danger from an enemy existed, and they had merely a nominal lieutenant-governor in Colonel Hare. In December they sent a strong petition to England to that effect. On the 24th of October, while the petition was being signed, Maitland wrote to Stanley that if a frontier commissioner were appointed to see the treaties carried out, the lieutenant-governor’s establishment might with advantage be done away with after a bi-weekly post between Capetown and the frontier. Stanley approved a commissioner but did not dispense with Hare, and decidedly objected to anything like independent government for the east: if that were granted, the west would be absolved from assistance in a rupture, and the whole burden would fall upon England. The petition mattered because it was the east’s answer to a council that still gave it no unofficial seat, and because Stanley’s refusal kept the Fish a Cape charge, not a separate colony’s. [3]
Early in the year about 300 families on the Stormberg spruit, the north-eastern boundary, occupying land empty but for a few Bushmen after Moyakisani had gone to the Koesberg, petitioned Hare for annexation to the Cape. On the 22nd of August Maitland forwarded the petition with his opinion that it should be complied with; the secretary of state declined to enlarge the British possessions. The governor would not allow the new village there to take his name. The refusal mattered because the Stormberg farmers wanted a drostdy and a church under the Cape, and because Downing Street would not take another strip beyond the Orange while Zwartkopjes was still settling. [3]
Prince Albert, French Hoek, Mossel Bay, and the Year’s Close — 1845
By notice in the Gazette on the 31st of July the name Prince Albert was given, at the consistory’s request, to the village on Kweekvallei which the Zwartberg people had laid out, and whose first clergyman, the reverend Pieter Kuypers Albertyn, had commenced on the 1st of August 1844. The farm had been bought, the village laid out, and the congregation established by the synod in November 1842; the name was the last piece. At French Hoek both the Cape and Swellendam presbyteries approved a distinct congregation, after the evangelist who had instructed coloured people since 1834 left in 1844 and the people determined to form themselves apart from the Paarl, with a clergyman who would also carry on mission work. Some of Caledon parish who lived nearer French Hoek than to their own church asked to join. On the 10th of February the boundaries were submitted and confirmed; on the 8th of May the names of the first elders and deacons were forwarded as a courtesy and approved the next day. The reverend Pieter Nicolaas Ham had been labouring there among Europeans and coloured people; the congregation paid him until the 2nd of October, when the governor placed him on the clerical staff. Ham was the same man who had gone to Natal in 1843 to minister to the emigrants, had been refused a landing by Major Smith, and had left Lourenço Marques when hope of serving them failed. The two villages mattered because they were church places first: the farm was bought, the allotments sold, and the name taken only after the consistory asked for it. [3]
At Mossel Bay the reverend Tobias Johannes van der Riet received the appointment on the 30th of April and was inducted on the 11th of May, the same day the church building was first used for public worship. The request to be formed into a distinct congregation had come before the presbytery of Swellendam in October 1844 and had been received with approval. Clergymen of the English episcopal church were stationed this year at Graaff-Reinet and at George. A second place of worship of that body — Trinity church in Harrington Street — was opened in Capetown on the 12th of July. Forty-eight mission centres were then connected, directly or indirectly, with the Dutch church. The inductions mattered because each new congregation fixed a village on the map, and because Trinity was the second English episcopal church in Capetown, after the years when bishops on the way to India had been the only visitors who could confirm. [3]
On the 21st of February there died in Edinburgh a gentleman named Henry Murray, who had been a merchant in Capetown in the early years of the century and had left the colony in June 1817. His wife was childless. He set apart 5000 pounds, interest to the widow for life, the principal then to the South African college as Murray’s Gift for the gratuitous admission of youths from the less affluent colonists, sons or descendants of the old Dutch settlers to have the preference. Vacancies were to be advertised at least 2 months before the day of election. Another bequest of his, 3300 pounds, went to the orphan house, which could then maintain about 33 children at a time. The gift mattered because the college, whose government subsidy had not yet been doubled, now had a fund named for poor Dutch sons, and because the orphan house could keep 33 instead of living on the smaller stock of earlier years. [3]