Chapter VIII: Part 8

In November a sergeant and ten men were sent to form a permanent military post at Groenekloof. In the land of Waveren forty head of cattle, mostly belonging to Etienne Terreblanche, were seized by Bushmen, and one of the soldiers who tried to recover them was killed. Two hundred and seventy-four head belonging to Hottentot kraals at Riebeek’s Kasteel were driven off, but a party of soldiers followed the robbers to Twenty-four Rivers, and retook most of the spoil. In trying to afford protection, no distinction was made by the government between burghers and Hottentots, the officers at the outposts being instructed to do their utmost to recover cattle stolen by Bushmen and deliver them to their proper owners, whoever these might be.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

In 1702 the military patrols were kept busy on behalf of the Hottentots, for no complaints of depredations were made by burghers. A large number of cattle were recovered and restored to various kraals, and so many Bushmen were shot that those who were left seem to have been terrified. At any rate they gave less trouble during the next few years, though occasionally it was considered necessary to chastise them. The sergeants and corporals in command of the outposts were directed to endeavour to induce the Bushmen to keep the peace. When those wild people committed depredations they were to be followed up and punished, but under no circumstances were they to be attacked without provocation. The ruthless nature of the warfare pursued by the Bushmen was exemplified in February 1702, when a Hottentot captain came to the castle and reported that they had killed five of his wives and every one of his children.

There is little else on record concerning the Hottentots at this period. Some of them made such complaints of the rapacity and violence of burgher trading parties that the council of policy provisionally suspended the liberty of free barter, and, owing to the governor’s representations, in 1703 the assembly of seventeen withdrew the privilege. Commercial intercourse between the two races was again made illegal, and the European graziers were chiefly depended upon to provide as many cattle as were needed.

In September 1704 several Namaqua captains visited the Cape, when an agreement of friendship was made with them. This tribe, like the others with which the Europeans had come in contact, at once accepted as a matter of course the position of vassals. This was shown in October 1705, when three Namaqua captains came to the castle for the purpose of requesting the governor to confirm their authority. They were kindly treated, their request was complied with, and they left carrying with them presents of beads and other trifles and copper-headed canes upon which the new names given to them--Plato, Jason, and Vulcan--were inscribed. Thenceforth they were termed allies of the honourable Company. The number of captains mentioned as having applied for staffs is an indication that the tribes were now more broken up than formerly. Sometimes a clan requested the appointment of a regent, as its hereditary captain was a minor. There are instances of clans applying for a brother of a deceased captain to be appointed in his stead, but in such cases they always gave as a reason that the dead chief had left no children. Feuds between clans of the same tribe caused frequent disturbances, though these same clans usually acted together against the adjoining tribe.

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical Matters.]

After the removal in 1694 of the reverend Pierre Simond to Drakenstein, there was no resident clergyman at Stellenbosch for nearly six years. Once in three months the clergyman of the Cape visited the vacant church and administered the sacraments, and occasionally Mr. Simond attended for the same purpose. On the remaining Sundays the sick-comforter conducted the services. At length the assembly of seventeen appointed the reverend Hercules van Loon, who had once been acting clergyman of the Cape, resident clergyman of Stellenbosch. He arrived from the Netherlands on the 11th of April 1700.

In April 1678 the foundation of a church in Table Valley had been laid, but with that the work had ceased. For another quarter of a century services were conducted in a large hall within the castle. But in course of time the poor funds accumulated to a considerable amount, and the consistory then consented to apply a sum equal to £2,200 of our money to the erection of the building. As the original plan was now considered too small, it was enlarged, and a new foundation stone was laid by the governor on the 28th of December 1700. By the close of the year 1703 the edifice was finished, except the tower. The first service in it was held on the 6th of January 1704, the reverend Petrus Kalden being the preacher. Of the building then constructed the tower and one of the end walls still remain, the last forming part of the eastern wall of the present church.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

At Drakenstein service was conducted sometimes in the front room of a farmer’s house, sometimes in a large barn, or under a screen, there being as yet no church building. There was a French clergyman, who was assisted by a French sick-comforter. In April 1700 a sick-comforter and schoolmaster was first appointed for the Dutch portion of the congregation, that had previously been neglected. An able and zealous man named Jacobus de Groot, who was returning from India to Europe, was detained here for the purpose.

The reverend Mr. Simond had prepared a new version in metre of the psalms of David, which he was desirous of submitting to a synod of the French churches, as great interest had been taken in the work by the Huguenots in Europe. He therefore tendered his resignation, to the regret of the Drakenstein people, and requested permission to return to the Netherlands. The assembly of seventeen consented to his request, on condition of his remaining until the arrival of the reverend Hendrik Bek, whom they appointed to succeed him. Mr. Bek reached the Cape in April 1702, and was installed at Drakenstein a few weeks later.

There was a desire on the part of the directors that in the families of the Huguenot immigrants the French language should be superseded by the Dutch as speedily as possible. It was only a question of time, for the proportion of French-speaking people was too small compared with those of Dutch and German descent for their language to remain long in use in the mixed community. To expedite its decay the new clergyman was directed to conduct the public services in Dutch, though he had been selected because he was conversant with French and could therefore admonish, comfort, and pray with the aged Huguenots who understood no other tongue. Instructions were at the same time sent out that the school children were to be taught to read and write Dutch only. The sick-comforter Paul Roux was not prevented, however, from ministering to the Huguenots of any age in whichever tongue was most familiar to them.

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical Matters.]

This arrangement created much dissatisfaction. The French immigrants sent in a memorial requesting that Mr. Bek should be instructed to preach in their language once a fortnight. They stated that they comprised over a hundred adults, not more than twenty-five of whom understood sufficient Dutch to gather the meaning of a sermon. There was also even a larger number of children of their nationality. The council of policy recommended the memorial to the favourable consideration of the assembly of seventeen; but before action could be taken upon it, Mr. Bek requested to be removed to Stellenbosch as successor to Mr. Van Loon, who died by his own hand on the 27th of June 1704. The directors then appointed the reverend Engelbertus Franciscus le Boucq[55] clergyman of Drakenstein, and gave instructions that upon his arrival from Batavia Mr. Bek should be transferred to Stellenbosch. They gave the council of policy permission to allow the French language to be used alternately with the Dutch in the church services at Drakenstein, if it should seem advisable to do so.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The newly appointed minister did not reach the Cape until the 30th of March 1707. Mr. Bek then took charge of the Stellenbosch congregation, which had been for nearly three years without a clergyman, except once in three months when he had preached and administered the sacraments. Mr. Le Boucq should have taken up the duties in the parish to which he had been appointed, but instead of doing so, he got into difficulties at the Cape, as will be related in another chapter, and Drakenstein was for several years without a resident clergyman.

In the evening of the 3rd of April 1702 the outward bound ship _Meresteyn_, an Indiaman of the first class, ran ashore on Jutten Island, and in less than an hour broke into little pieces. Her skipper was endeavouring to reach Saldanha Bay, and the ship was in a heavy surf before any one on board suspected danger. The majority of her crew were lost, as also were two women and five children passengers for the Cape. Ninety-nine persons managed to reach the shore.

In March 1702 a marauding party, consisting of forty-five white men and the same number of Hottentots, whose deeds were afterwards prominently brought to light, left Stellenbosch, and remained away seven months. They travelled eastward until they reached the neighbourhood of the Fish river, where at daylight one morning they were attacked unexpectedly and without provocation by a band of Xosa warriors who were fugitives from their own country and were living in friendship with the Hottentots. The assailants were beaten off, followed up, and when they turned and made another stand, were defeated again, losing many men. One European was killed. The party then commenced a career of robbery, excusing their acts to themselves under the plea that they were undertaken in retaliation. They fell upon the Gonaquas and other Hottentot hordes, shot many of them, and drove off their cattle.

The perpetrators of these scandalous acts were not brought to justice. In after years when the governor and the colonists were at variance, and each party was endeavouring to blacken the reputation of the other, the governor stated that they were in league with the colonists and were too numerous to be punished without ruining half the settlement. This statement was, however, indignantly contradicted by the most respectable burghers, who asserted that the marauding Europeans were miscreants without families or homes, being chiefly fugitives from justice and men of loose character who had been imprudently discharged from the Company’s service. The burghers maintained that they ought to have been punished, and that the real reason why they were not prosecuted was that the governor’s agents had obtained cattle for him in the same manner, which would be brought to light at a trial. The names of the forty-five white men who formed the robber band are given. Forty of them are quite unknown in South Africa at the present day, and the remaining five are of that class that cannot be distinguished with certainty, so that the statements of the burghers are strongly borne out.

[Sidenote: Expedition to Natal.]

Owing chiefly to the scarcity of timber and fuel, in 1705 it was resolved to send an expedition to Natal and the adjoining coast, to make an inspection of the country and particularly of the forests there. The schooner _Centaurus_, which had been built at Natal in 1686-7, principally of timber growing on the shore of the inlet, was a proof that the wood was valuable, for she had been in use nearly fourteen years before needing repair. The galiot _Postlooper_ was made ready for the expedition. Her master, Theunis van der Schelling, had visited Natal when he was mate of the _Noord_ in 1689 and 1690, and therefore knew the harbour. He was instructed to make a thorough exploration of the forests, and to frame a chart of the coast. A sailor who was expert in drawing pictures was sent to take sketches of the scenery.

The _Postlooper_ sailed from Table Bay on the 20th of November 1705. She reached Natal on the 29th of December, and found the bar so silted up that she could only cross at high water. There were not so many cattle in the neighbourhood as there had been sixteen years before. Wood still remained on the shores of the inlet in considerable quantities.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

In December 1689 a purchase of the inlet and surrounding land had been made from the chief then living at Port Natal, and had been recorded in a formal contract, two copies of which had been drawn up. The one kept by the Dutch officers was lost when the _Noord_ was wrecked in January 1690, and the master of the _Postlooper_ had therefore received instructions to endeavour to procure the other, that had been left with the chief, in order that a notarial copy might be made. The chief who sold the ground was dead, and his son was now the head of the tribe or clan, whichever it may have been. Upon Skipper Van der Schelling making inquiry of him concerning the document, the chief stated that he knew nothing about it, and supposed it had been buried with his father’s other effects. It was evident that he did not recognise the sale as binding upon him or his people.

At Natal an Englishman was found who gave his name as Vaughan Goodwin, and who stated that he was a native of London. He had two wives and several children. His story was that he arrived in February 1699 in a vessel named the _Fidele_, and with two others had been left behind by Captain Stadis, who intended to form a settlement there. They were to purchase ivory from the blacks, for which purpose goods had been left with them, and were to keep possession of the place until Captain Stadis should return, which he promised them would certainly be within three years; but he had not yet made his appearance. In 1700 the blacks some distance inland had killed the other white men on account of their having become robbers.

The life which Goodwin was leading seemed so attractive to two of the _Postlooper’s_ crew that they ran away from the vessel. When crossing the bar in leaving Natal the galiot lurched, and the tiller struck the skipper in the chest and hurt him so badly that he became unfit for duty. There was no one on board who could take his place, so the vessel returned to the Cape without any further attempt at exploration being made. She dropped anchor again in Table Bay on the 8th of March 1706.

[Sidenote: Failure to introduce Woolled Sheep.]

The directors were desirous of procuring sheep’s wool from South Africa, as some samples sent to Europe were pronounced of excellent quality. They were of opinion that if it could be produced at seventeen pence halfpenny a kilogramme, they would be able to make a good profit from it, and the colonists would have another reliable source of income. Instructions were sent to the government to have this industry taken in hand by the burghers. But it was not a pursuit that commended itself to South African farmers at that time. Although a good many European sheep had been imported in former years, there were very few of pure breed left, nearly all having been crossed with the large tailed animal. It was commonly believed that woolled sheep were more subject to scab than others, and the havoc created by that disease was so great that the farmers were in constant dread of it. Then there was the expense of separate herds. Further the carcase of the woolled sheep was not so valuable as that of the other, so that the graziers who bred for slaughter could not be induced even to make experiments.

In 1700 the government sent home one hundred and twenty-nine kilogrammes of wool shorn from sheep belonging to the Company. This was received with favour, but instead of increasing, the quantity fell off in succeeding years. In 1703 one small bale was all that could be obtained. It realised about thirty-two pence English money a kilogramme on the market in Amsterdam. In 1704 a very small quantity was procured, in 1705 none at all, and in 1706 fifty-two kilogrammes. In the meantime the governor took the matter in hand as a private speculation. He collected all the wool-bearing sheep in the settlement at a farm of his own, wrote to Europe for rams and ewes of good breed and to Java for some Persian sheep, and was about to give the industry a fair trial when he was recalled.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The governor had previously endeavoured to encourage the production of silk. He made experiments with the white mulberry, which was found to grow and thrive well, but the silkworms which he obtained from imported eggs all died. He then gave up the trial, being of opinion that the mulberry was in leaf at the wrong season of the year for worms from the south of Europe.

A less important but more successful experiment made by this governor was placing partridges and pheasants on Robben Island to breed.

From 1698 to 1705 the seasons were very unfavourable for farming, and no wheat could be exported. In 1700 it became necessary to import rice from Java, as there was not sufficient grain in the country for the consumption of the people and the supply of fresh bread to the crews of ships. In 1705 the long drought broke up, and the crops were very good; but as the wheat was being reaped heavy rains set in and greatly damaged it. There was, however, a surplus above the requirements of the country, and in 1706 exportation was resumed, and fourteen hundred muids were sent to Batavia.

The population of the colony was at this time increasing rapidly. The families of the burghers were generally large, they married at an early age, and no young women remained single. From Europe every year a few settlers were received. A custom had come into vogue of allowing soldiers and convalescent sailors to engage for short periods as servants to burghers, their wages and cost of maintenance being thus saved to the Company, while they were at hand in case of need. From a hundred to a hundred and fifty of the garrison and seamen were commonly out at service. A great many slaves were being introduced from Madagascar and Mozambique.

[Sidenote: Condition of Affairs in India.]

The bad seasons tended to produce a spirit of restlessness among the farming population, which was increased by the conduct of the principal officers of the government. Between Willem Adriaan van der Stel and the colonists of South Africa there was not the slightest feeling of sympathy, nor could there be between men who had a difficulty in making more than a frugal livelihood and a governor who was unscrupulous in his manner of acquiring wealth, and who regarded their interests as entirely subordinate to his own. In all the official documents of the period during which he was at the head of affairs, and the quantity is great, there is not a single expression like “our own Netherlanders” of his father. He requested the directors, indeed, to send out industrious Zeeland farmers and no more French cadets, but the sentence displays as little affection for the one as for the other.

The condition of things in the country districts was one of discontent, mingled with indignation towards the governor and some others, the reasons for which will presently be explained. In Capetown it was different. The people there could more easily be kept in restraint, and were less affected by the causes which at this time tended to produce intense dissatisfaction among the farmers. Those causes were not trifling ones, as will be seen in the following pages.

The East India Company had now been a century in existence, and the honesty and rectitude of conduct which distinguished its officials in early times were no longer noticeable except in a very few instances. Its mode of paying its servants, largely by perquisites, had tended to create a spirit of greed, and most of them were actuated more by the desire of acquiring wealth with which to retire than of advancing the interests of the association that employed them. To such an extent was private trading carried on in the East that the Company feared its utter ruin would be the result. There were even instances of Indian produce being sent to Europe in its own ships, and transferred to smuggling vessels off the coast of Holland, when it was landed and sold stealthily at rates with which the legitimate trade could not compete.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

In November 1699 the directors found it necessary to instruct the governor-general and council of India to appoint two of the ablest men they could find to proceed to the various stations and check the abuses. They were to be empowered to dismiss from the service all of the Company’s officials who should be found guilty of abusing their trust, and to confiscate summarily all goods found in their possession which they were not entitled to have according to the regulations. They did not then imagine that the man whom they had recently appointed governor of the Cape settlement would in coming years prove to be the foremost of all the offenders in this respect.

III.

FAITHLESS CONDUCT OF THE GOVERNOR.

[Sidenote: _Faithless Conduct of the Governor._]

Willem Adriaan van der Stel, as soon as he assumed the administration, looked around for some means of acquiring money. The Cape settlement did not offer such facilities for this purpose as an Indian island or province would have done, still there were means for making large profits on trade even here. One plan that he adopted was by obtaining--purchasing as he termed it, constraining them to sell, as the burghers called it--from the poorer viticulturists their wines at from £3 2_s._ 6_d._ to £4 3_s._ 4_d._ the legger, and selling it to English and Dutch ships at £28 15_s._ or more. When these transactions were brought to light in later years, his explanation was that he had naturally purchased at as low a rate as he could, and that the ships’ people were willing to pay more for wines which he had improved by his skill than for those which the burghers made quite carelessly.[56] The farmers asserted that until his own vineyards were productive he bought and sold in this manner about one hundred leggers yearly; in the _Korte Deductie_, a kind of excuse for his conduct which he published after his dismissal, he stated that he had not bought and sold twenty leggers altogether, and there are no means now of ascertaining which statement is correct. There may have been nothing actually criminal in dealings of this kind, but they certainly did not tend to create respect, much less affection, for a governor who could act in this manner.

This was, however, a small matter compared with the governor’s conduct in carrying on farming operations on a very large scale on his own account, in disregard of the Company’s desire to favour the colonists by relinquishing the breeding of cattle and the cultivation of wheat and the vine in order that they might have better means of making a living, and in direct opposition to the express orders of the directors of the 26th of April 1668, the 14th of July 1695, and the 27th of June 1699. In the first of these instructions the directors had forbidden the members of the council to have larger gardens or a greater number of cattle than they required for the use of their own households, and this order had never been cancelled. The high commissioner Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede, lord of Mydrecht, had indeed made a grant of Constantia after that date to the governor’s father, Simon van der Stel, but he possessed very great and special powers, and the ground was given under circumstances which no longer existed. No one except the directors themselves or some official possessing equal authority to that of the lord of Mydrecht could legally grant land to a governor of the colony.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

In February 1700, when Willem Adriaan van der Stel had been a year at the head of affairs, a commissioner, Wouter Valckenier by name, holding authority from the governor-general and council of India to inspect matters at the Cape and rectify anything that was wrong, on his way from Batavia to Europe called here, and during his stay took precedence of all the local officials.[57] What representations were made to him cannot be ascertained, for there is nothing concerning the matter in the Cape archives or those at the Hague, but at any rate he made a grant to the governor of four hundred morgen of ground at Hottentots-Holland, and signed a title-deed of it. He could not have foreseen the consequences, for he knew that the policy of the Company at the time was directly opposed to the head of the government being engaged in farming, and he could not have imagined that an official, whose duties required his presence at the castle almost constantly, would so far forget his obligations as to leave his post and devote his time and attention to private affairs. Probably he thought that the possession of a tract of land at such a distance could signify very little, but he realised afterwards that he had made a great mistake, for he was one of the directors of the Company when the grant was annulled on the ground of its having been improperly and fraudulently obtained.

[Sidenote: Farms held by Heads of the Government.]

Of the two precedents for heads of the government holding farms--not mere gardens--at the Cape,[58] both dated from a time when the settlement was very small, and the land assigned was so close to Table Valley that it could be cultivated without detriment to the public service. There was no precedent for a grant to a commander or a governor at such a distance from the fort or the castle that it could not be visited in a couple of hours. The policy of the directors recently made known was entirely opposed to such grants, and Willem Adriaan van der Stel was perfectly acquainted with that fact, as has already been shown. This policy remained unaltered ever afterwards. It was again impressed upon the governor in the strongest language in a despatch from the directors dated the 28th of October 1705, in which instructions were given that all the burghers should be permitted to tender for the supply of the beef and mutton required by the Company, that this should be regarded as a right belonging exclusively to them, and that no servant of the Company, the governor included, should be allowed to supply any meat to the ships, the hospital, etc., directly or indirectly.[59]

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The farm at Hottentots-Holland the governor named Vergelegen. He lost no time in turning it to account, for he immediately began to build upon it, to break up and cultivate the ground, and to adorn it in every possible way. The choicest plants from the Company’s gardens were removed to it, and the Company’s master gardener, Jan Hertog by name, was sent there to lay out the grounds and superintend the work.[60] Great gangs of slaves and a large number of soldiers and convalescent sailors, who were skilful agriculturists or mechanics,[61] were constantly at work there, until the farm, which he expanded to six hundred and thirteen morgen, assumed the appearance of the most highly cultivated ground in South Africa.

[Sidenote: Extensive Farming Operations.]

On it were planted over four hundred thousand vines, or fully one-fourth of the whole number in the colony in 1706. Groves, orchards, and corn lands were laid out to a corresponding extent.[62] On the estate were built a very commodious dwelling-house, 82·4 by 74 English feet or 25·11 by 22·55 metres in size and with walls 19½ English feet or 5·94 metres in height, forming a storey and a half as it is termed at the Cape, a flour mill, a leather tannery, a workshop for making wooden water pipes, wine and grain stores, an overseer’s cottage, a slave lodge, and very extensive out-buildings.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Beyond the mountains he had eighteen cattle stations or runs, on which he kept fully a thousand head of horned cattle and over eighteen thousand sheep.[63]

With the instructions of the directors before him, it is difficult to imagine how a sane man could have embarked in such an enterprise. If it should become known, he must be ruined, for his friends and connections in Amsterdam, though influential, could not support him in opposing the highest authority. His only hope must therefore have been that his transactions would never be known in Holland. No ships’ officers were likely to see, or perhaps even to hear of, Vergelegen and the cattle stations, and no one in South Africa, he must have thought, would be likely to report upon it. The burghers knew nothing of the orders that had been issued--that is very evident,--and probably he thought that they supposed he was permitted to farm on such a scale. No information was ever sent by him to the directors concerning Vergelegen, and the utmost care was taken that in no official document of any kind, of which duplicates had to be sent to Europe or India, was mention made of the place or of any of the governor’s farming transactions. Actually for more than five years the whole thing was kept secret, and it might have been so for an indefinite time if the governor had not provoked the burghers to complain of him.

His inordinate desire to acquire wealth had stifled all feeling of fidelity to the trust reposed in him by the authorities in Holland. On the 15th of March 1701 the directors wrote to him and the council that Carlos II, king of Spain, had died childless, leaving by will his crown to Philippe duke of Anjou, grandson of the king of France, that Louis XIV had thereupon sent troops into the Spanish Netherlands and garrisoned the principal cities to the very border of the republic, which had caused the greatest apprehension of danger. The country was being placed in a condition of defence, and the emperor and the king of England were preparing for eventualities. The governor and the council were enjoined to be on their guard.[64]

[Sidenote: War of the Spanish Succession.]

In another despatch from the directors, dated the 18th of February 1702, the governor and council were informed that there was every probability of the outbreak of hostilities. Spain had accepted Philippe as her king, which was regarded as equivalent to her becoming subject to Louis XIV. And on the 15th of May 1702 England, Holland, and the Empire issued a declaration of war against France, Bavaria, and Spain, when the great contest known in history as the war of the Spanish Succession commenced, in which our English Marlborough won so much renown. As far as England and Holland were concerned, the war continued until the 11th of April 1711, when the treaty of Utrecht was signed, so that nearly the whole term of office of Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel was a period of hostilities.

He was entrusted with the care of what was rightly regarded in Holland as the frontier fortress of India. He was directed to reflect every night when he retired to rest that when he awoke in the morning he might find an enemy ready for attack before the gate of the castle, if due precautions were not taken. The officer in command of the garrison, Olof Bergh, was only a captain in rank, and was required to carry out his instructions. Every evening after prayers it was his duty to give the password and countersign for the night, to issue directions where sentries were to be placed, and to ascertain that everything connected with the military department was in proper order. He only could call out the burghers to aid in the defence of the colony. It was a post of extreme importance, which required the strictest attention to the obligations of duty. Tidings frequently came of English or Dutch ships being captured by French men-of-war and privateers in the Indian sea as well as in European waters, and although the captures of French ships by the allies were more numerous, there was nothing extravagant in the supposition that a few men-of-war with a strong body of troops on board might sail from some port of France or Spain and attempt to get possession of the castle of Good Hope. The temptation to do so was very great. The colony was not thought of, for that was of small importance in the great war. But if the castle of Good Hope was occupied by a French garrison, the ships of the Dutch East India Company could be all seized as they came with their rich cargoes from the East, and one of the sources of that wealth which enabled the Netherlands republic to supply the funds for carrying on the war would be cut off.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Avarice is the blindest of vices, and the eyes of Willem Adriaan van der Stel were closed to everything except the money that flowed into his coffers from an estate built upon and cultivated almost entirely at the Company’s expense,[65] and from flocks and herds practically pillaged from the Hottentots. The trust confided to him the governor disregarded to such an extent that he was frequently absent at his farm Vergelegen for two to six weeks at a time as the burghers asserted, six or seven days he himself admitted in his _Korte Deductie_,[66] surely the weakest attempt as an excuse for such conduct that ever was penned. It was a journey of twelve hours by a single span of horses from the castle to Vergelegen, but by keeping relays of fresh teams along the road, as he did, it could be done in six hours. What might not have happened in even six hours if a French fleet had sailed into the bay? Fortunately for the colony, none appeared. But the burghers were certainly justified in the fear which they expressed that the governor was imperilling the very existence of the settlement and exposing it to foreign conquest by absenting himself from his duty.

[Sidenote: Faithlessness of the Governor.]

If there were no other charges against him than this one alone, an honest historian, whose duty it is to expose to scorn the evil deeds of ignoble men as well as to hold up to admiration the good deeds of the upright, would be compelled to pronounce Willem Adriaan van der Stel one of the most faithless and contemptible men of whom the records of any nation, ancient or modern, furnish an example. Many a governor has lost his head for crimes less glaring than his reckless neglect of duty for the sake of private interest.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The governor was not the only official of the Company in South Africa who was farming on his own account, though he was the most prominent of them all, and his operations were far more extensive than those of any of the others. The secunde, Samuel Elsevier, an old and somewhat weak-minded man, had obtained a grant of the farm Elsenburg, near Klapmuts, from Governor Simon van der Stel,[67] which brought him in about £250 yearly after all expenses were paid. He might have cultivated it without reproach from the burghers if he had not always submitted his will to that of the governor. In the council he was regarded as a nonentity, simply giving his vote in accordance with the wishes of the head of the government. Two other members of the council of policy, the fiscal Johan Blesius and the military captain Olof Bergh, had also obtained grants of land, but were so moderate in their use that the burghers did not complain of them.

The reverend Petrus Kalden, clergyman of Capetown, had also obtained a grant of a farm, Zandvliet, between Stellenbosch and the head of False Bay. He spent a good deal of time there, but he afterwards proved to the satisfaction of the authorities in Holland that his object in doing so was not purely mercenary, but was mainly a wish to acquire a perfect knowledge of the Hottentot language, in order that he might attempt to teach those people the doctrines of Christianity, and so improve their condition.[68] The yearly income he derived from it cannot be ascertained, but the ground with the buildings which he erected upon it realised £1424 by public auction after his recall.

[Sidenote: Spirit of the Country Districts.]

The governor’s brother, Frans van der Stel, who was not in the Company’s service, had a farm at Hottentots-Holland. He was intensely disliked by the other burghers, on account of his assuming an air of superiority over them, and, depending upon his relative’s support, doing pretty much as he liked. He was in the habit of requiring them to plough his land, to convey his produce to town, and perform other work for him, under threats that if they did not he would see that they should regret it.

There have never been people less inclined to submit quietly to grievances, real or imaginary, than the early colonists of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein. Even at this infant stage of the settlement’s existence they showed that great difference from the inhabitants of Capetown which is observable to the present day. They did not know it then, but it was they who were destined to impart that spirit of hostility to oppression and wrong which has ever since marked the country people of South Africa. It is not without reason that the farmers of the distant north and east to-day regard Stellenbosch and Drakenstein as the mother settlements of the country, and look upon Capetown almost as a foreign city. The spirit of the town is widely different from that of the country. And in 1705, when the first great struggle against tyranny and corruption commenced, the very best men of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, those who had filled the posts of elders and deacons in the church, of heemraden in the district court, and of officers in the militia, were those who threw themselves into it. Among them was Jan Willem Grevenbroek, the most learned man in South Africa at the time, who had retired from the Company’s service, and had recently been an elder at Stellenbosch. His name should command the respect of students of ethnology, though his work has been to some extent distorted by a later writer. He took as active a part in the movement against the governor as was consistent with his character as a modest and godfearing student, though his name does not appear on the principal memorial that will presently be referred to.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The farmers did not know that instructions in their favour had been sent out by the directors, which the governor had disregarded, but they saw plainly that nothing but ruin was before them if matters went on longer as they were then going. The governor was turning every possible source of profit to his own account and that of his relatives and friends. He had eighteen different cattle stations or enormous grazing farms beyond the mountains, and would allow no one but himself and his brother to use the pasture there. His horned cattle numbered, as afterwards ascertained, fully a thousand head, and his sheep were eighteen thousand eight hundred all told. He had a vineyard sixty-one morgen and a half in extent at Vergelegen, and besides his plantations and cornlands there, he had taken possession of another tract of land nearly a hundred and nineteen morgen in extent, upon which he was growing wheat. His expenditure was very small, for he made use of the Company’s servants largely to do his work, and he paid no tithes of his grain to the Company, as the burghers were obliged to do.[69]

The governor had the first entry into the market, and high prices from foreign ships went into his pocket. Then his brother Frans at Hottentots-Holland, his father at Contantia, and the secunde at Elsenburg followed, and by the time all their produce was disposed of little indeed was left that the burghers of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein could sell to good account. In another way too the governor’s conduct was believed to be such as to forfeit the respect of the burghers, who were godfearing men. In his domestic life he was said to follow closely the example of our Charles II, and it was asserted that he had given strict orders that the ten commandments were not to be read in the church when he was present.[70] There is no way of either proving or disproving these charges against him, but the fact that they were made shows in how little esteem he was held.

[Sidenote: Grievances of the Burghers.]

In 1705 some of the farmers determined to complain to the Indian authorities, and they succeeded in forwarding to the governor-general and council at Batavia a list of charges against him. It was a dangerous thing to do, for if their names should become known, and no redress be afforded, they knew, that they would be made to feel the governor’s vengeance. The council was not regarded as any check upon him, and the military power was entirely at his disposal, so that to brave his anger was an act requiring more than ordinary moral courage. It was the commencement of the struggle against corruption and tyranny by the burghers of Stellenbosch and Drakenstein.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

At Batavia no immediate action was taken in the matter, but a copy of the complaints, without the signatures to the document, was forwarded to the governor, who was required to answer to them. While the complainants were awaiting a reply from the Indian authorities, one of them, Adam Tas by name, a respectable burgher and a deacon of the Stellenbosch church, drew up a memorial to the directors in Holland. Tas was a native of the city of Amsterdam, who had received a good commercial education, and had come to Capetown in the capacity of bookkeeper in the service of the contractor Henning Huising, whose wife, Maria Lindenhof, was a sister of Tas’s mother. After serving as a bookkeeper for some time, Tas married a widow named Elizabeth van Brakel, whose former husband had left her a well-cultivated farm in the Stellenbosch district, and he then went to reside there. He had thus the qualifications and much of the knowledge necessary for the task he had taken in hand, but as he was ignorant of the instructions of the directors, the document which he drew up was in some points very much weaker than it might have been made if the official documents had been open for his inspection as they are now for ours. On the other hand, for the same reason some of the charges were perhaps slightly overdrawn, but the governor was subsequently unable to prove that the most serious of them were without solid foundation.

[Sidenote: Articles of Complaint.]

In this document the directors were informed of the governor’s extensive farming operations, and of his employment of the Company’s servants and slaves and of the use of the Company’s materials for his private service. He was accused of obtaining cattle by violent means from the Hottentots, who were provoked to retaliate upon innocent people for the wrongs done to them.[71] He was also accused of extorting cattle from burghers by improper means. He was stated to have been frequently absent at Vergelegen from two to six weeks at a time, when his public duties were neglected. He was charged with selecting all the best timber and staves for casks out of the Company’s stores, and paying less than the burghers had to pay for what was left; of preventing free trade in wine, and then extorting it from poor farmers at a very low price and selling it to foreign ships at an enormous profit; of monopolising all trade with foreigners; of requiring farmers to convey materials to Vergelegen without payment; of compelling the bakers, by threats of his displeasure if they did not, to buy his wheat at high prices; of defrauding the Company by not paying tithes of his wheat; of commandeering--to use an expressive colonial word--over four hundred woolled sheep from them without payment; of requiring to be bribed before he would issue title-deeds to farms; and of arranging the wine and slaughter licenses in such a manner that the holders could obtain what they needed at very low prices from the farmers by paying him very high prices for what he had to sell.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

There were some other charges against him, but they were of less importance than these, and they need not be mentioned.

The secunde, Samuel Elsevier, and the clergyman, Petrus Kalden, were charged with being occupied with agriculture to a very large extent, and of neglecting their duties in consequence. Frans van der Stel, the governor’s brother, was declared to be a perfect pest to the settlement.

This memorial was dated the 5th of January 1706, and was signed by Jan Rotterdam, Henning Huising, Abraham Diemer, Nicolaas Diepenauw, Jan van Meerland, Jacob de Savoye, Willem Mensink, Stephanus Vermey, Guillaume du Toit, Pieter van der Byl, Adam Tas, Jacob van Brakel, Jacob Plunes, Hercules du Pré, Jacobus van der Heiden, Wessel Pretorius, Jan Elberts, Hans Jacob Conterman, Nicolaas Elberts, Jean le Roux, Ary van Wyk, Pieter de Mont, Pierre Meyer, Reinier van de Zande, Jacobus Louw, Daniel Sevenhofen, Ferdinandus Appel, Matthys Greef, Willem van Zyl, Daniel Hugo, Jacques Theron, Etienne Niel, Jean du Buis, Jacques Malan, Douwe Frederiks, Christiaan Wynoch, François du Toit, Claude Marais, Arend Gildenhuis, Cornelis van Niekerk, Nicolaas van der Westhuizen, Pierre de Villiers, Paul Couvret, Abraham Vivier, Abraham Bleusel, Jacques Pienard, Pierre Vivier, Esaias Costeux, Pierre Mouy, Etienne Bruere, David Senekal, J. le Roux, Jacob Vivier, Pierre Rousseau, Salomon de Gourney, Pierre Cronje, Coenraad Cyffer, Charles Marais, Louis le Riche, Nicolaas Meyboom, Jacob Cloete, and Jan Hendrik Styger.

In a volume published by the governor some time afterwards, as well as in his statements to the directors and the Indian authorities,[72] he attempted to explain away some of these charges, and he succeeded so far that several must be pronounced not proven, while in some others he established his innocence, but in all that related to his extensive farming operations and to his making use of the Company’s servants, slaves, and materials, he failed completely in overthrowing the charges made against him. He does not refer to his not having paid tithes of his grain, for he certainly could not refute that charge.

[Sidenote: Action of the Indian Authorities.]

During the night of the 3rd of February 1706 the first five ships of the return fleet of that year, which sailed from the roads of Batavia on the 2nd of December 1705, cast anchor in Table Bay, and they were followed in the morning of the 4th by five others, all under the flag of Commander Jan de Wit. They had orders to remain here until the arrival of three ships from Ceylon and two others to be despatched later from Batavia, that all might sail together for Europe. It had been arranged with the English authorities in India that their return ships should also call at Table Bay, in order to proceed farther with the Dutch fleet, so that there might be a very strong force to oppose any French cruisers in the Atlantic.

With these ships the governor received a despatch from the Indian authorities enclosing a copy of the document in which he was accused of malpractices, that had been sent to Batavia in the previous year. He immediately concluded that similar charges would be forwarded to the Netherlands, and that a memorial embodying them must be in existence; but he was unable to learn where it was, or who were parties to it. The danger of his position, which he at once realised, now drove him to acts of extreme folly as well as of the grossest tyranny. To prevent the knowledge of his farming operations reaching the directors became the object of highest importance to him. If that could be done, he might still be safe, but if it could not, it would matter little what additional charges were brought against him, for in any case all would be lost. There is no other way of accounting for the absurd and violent measures that he now resorted to, for he cannot be regarded as insane, though the remark of one of his opponents that avarice had intoxicated him was doubtlessly true.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

He now caused a certificate to be drawn up, in which he was credited with the highest virtues, and the utmost satisfaction was expressed with his administration. The male residents of Capetown were then invited to the castle, and were there requested to sign the certificate. His servants were sent out to collect in turn all the mechanics and labourers of every description in the town and all the fishermen, white and black, and to bring them to the castle to drink wine and beer and to smoke a pipe of tobacco at his expense. They mustered there party after party, and after making merry, allowed their names to be attached to the document, probably without knowing or caring what its contents were.

The landdrost of Stellenbosch, Jan Starrenburg by name, a mere tool of the governor, who had held office since July 1705, was directed to proceed with an armed band from house to house in the country, and require the residents there to sign it also. This was a much more difficult matter to effect than to get the signatures of the town’s people. Many of the farmers refused, even under the landdrost’s threats that they would be marked men if they did not. Not a few of the respectable names found on that extraordinary document are certainly not genuine, for they appear with a cross, though the men that they professed to represent could write letters and sign other papers as well as the governor himself could do. Of the two hundred and forty names found on it, less than one hundred are known in South Africa to-day, and of these, as already stated, many must have been placed there fraudulently. Surely no such means of obtaining a certificate of good conduct was ever resorted to by any other officer of rank in a colony.[73]

[Sidenote: Violent Conduct of the Governor.]

The governor suspected that a memorial to the directors concerning his conduct had been prepared to be sent to the Netherlands by some officer in the return fleet, and that Adam Tas, as a competent penman, had most likely written it. To get possession of his papers, an act of extreme violence, contrary to all law and justice, was then resolved upon. The landdrost of Stellenbosch was directed to arrest Tas, and without a warrant or any legal authority whatever, with a strong armed party he surrounded the house of that burgher at early dawn in the morning of Sunday, the 28th of February 1706, arrested him, sent him a prisoner to Capetown, searched his house, and carried away his writing desk. After this outrage there could be no truce whatever between the governor and his opponents, for if a burgher could be treated in this manner, upon mere suspicion of having drawn up a memorial to the high authorities, no man’s liberty would be safe. Bail was immediately offered for the appearance of Tas before a court of justice, but was refused. He was committed to prison, where he was kept nearly fourteen months in close confinement, without his wife or friends being permitted to see him, without writing materials, and even when his little son died, without being allowed to see the corpse.

In his desk was found the draft from which the memorial to the directors had been copied. It was unsigned, but a list containing a number of names and various letters which were with it indicated several of those who had taken part in the compilation. The completed memorial, with sixty-two names, thirty-one of which were those of Frenchmen, attached to it, was at the time in the house of a burgher in Capetown, where it was intended to be kept until it could be sent away with the return fleet.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]