Willem Adriaan van der Stel and Other Historical Sketches

III

Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel. A History of the Successful Struggle of a few Hollanders and Huguenots against Tyranny and Corruption.

Sketch III

I — Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel

The days of John the son of Peter and Peter the son of John were passing away, though not quite entirely gone, and surnames such as are now in use were becoming generally adopted by working people, when one Adriaan van der Stel, otherwise Adriaan the son of Simon, is found among the citizens of the town of Dordrecht in the province of South Holland. He was by occupation a cooper, and like many of his energetic countrymen at that time he tried to improve his position by entering the service of the East India Company and going abroad. Accordingly he engaged as cooper and junior assistant or clerk, a combination of duties by no means uncommon in the Company’s service in the early days, and in 1623 went to India in the yacht Star. He was engaged at a salary of ten guldens or 16s. 8d. a month, besides his maintenance, but there were little privileges allowed to men in his position, which often were of greater value than the wage received.

This Adriaan van der Stel was a man of ability, and as early as the 28th of March 1624 was promoted in the service and had his pay increased to eighteen guldens or £1 10s. a month. Time went on, and by 1638, under the governor-generalship of Anthonie van Diemen, he had advanced so far that he was chosen to succeed Pieter de Goyer as commander of the island of Mauritius. This island, which was uninhabited, had recently been taken possession of by the East India Company, and De Goyer had been sent to occupy it with a small party of men. The position was not indeed a very dignified one, corresponding as it did to that of ensign in charge of a little military outpost, but his selection to fill it was proof that the high Indian authorities placed confidence in him.

Historical Sketches.

He had followed a custom prevalent in India ever since 1607, when the Dutch commander-in-chief Cornelis Matelief gave his soldiers and sailors permission to form alliances with native women, with a view of raising a class of mixed breeds who would form a link between the European and Asiatic races. The Portuguese had set the example in this, and the advantage of it to them was evident, as they could not have continued to hold a single station in the East without the assistance of the large Eurasian element in the population of their settlements. If not actually encouraged by the Dutch, this practice was by no means looked upon with disfavour in the seventeenth century, and a half-breed, if at all worthy, was as certain of employment and promotion as a white man. And as the form of marriage could not be gone through when the woman was not a professed Christian, looser alliances were regarded as throwing little or no discredit upon either father or child.

Adriaan van der Stel formed a connection of this kind with an Indian woman named Monica of the Coast, who accompanied him to Mauritius, and there on the 14th of November 1639 bore him a son, whom he named Simon. After serving for a time satisfactorily at Mauritius, where no one wished to remain long, he was removed to Batavia, and shortly afterwards was transferred to Ceylon in a military capacity as commander of a body of troops. Such changes of occupation are constantly met with in following the careers of men in the East India Company’s service, and some of the ablest officials were alike skilful as diplomatists, as traders, and as commanders in war on sea or on land.

At this time, which was shortly after Cornelis van der Lyn became governor-general, the Portuguese were making a desperate effort to retain their last strongholds on the western coast of Ceylon. Their most important possession on the island was Colombo, which they retained until May 1656, and when it surrendered the Dutch had the seaboard entirely to themselves. There was indeed peace in Europe between the Netherlands and Portugal, now independent of Spain once more, but that did not prevent the continuance of the struggle in the East. The chief Dutch stronghold was Galle, in the south of the island. The king of Kandy, Raja Singha Rajoc, was styled emperor of Ceylon, but had really lost all authority over the coast-lands, which were subject either to the Dutch or the Portuguese. His policy was to keep them pitted against each other, and occasionally to assist whichever appeared weakest, for he bore neither of them any love. And in point of fact he was able whenever he chose to fall upon one or the other with impunity, as that one was unable to retort by falling upon him. A few years later, after the Portuguese had been expelled, the condition of things was of course very different.

Death of Adriaan van der Stel.

Commander Adriaan van der Stel was directed with a considerable body of troops to occupy a certain position in territory claimed by the Dutch. On the march he was surrounded by a Cingalese army, and his whole force, only four men excepted, was destroyed, 19th of May 1646. His head was fixed on a stake and exhibited in triumph, and was then rolled in silk and sent to Joan Maatzuiker, the Dutch governor of Galle.42

Historical Sketches.

Simon van der Stel was not seven years old at the time of his father’s death. Kolbe says that he was in Ceylon and saw the head of his parent after the disaster, but nothing is more unlikely. The strong probability is that upon the arrival of Adriaan van der Stel at Batavia from Mauritius, or shortly afterwards, he sent his son to Holland to be educated, as was then the custom, though there is no actual proof of this. At any rate, at a very early age he was at school in Amsterdam, and was baptized either there or in Batavia when he was about five years old. His mother, Monica of the Coast, can no longer be traced, and whether she had died or remained in Batavia is quite uncertain. The property accumulated by his father was invested by the orphanmasters for his benefit, but it was inconsiderable, and he might have been destitute had not the directors of the East India Company regarded him as their protégé on account of his parent’s losing his life in their service. The Indian blood in his veins was no detriment whatever to him.

Early Life of Simon van der Stel.

Like most mixed breeds he was exceedingly proud of the nationality of his father, and as he advanced in stature was inclined in everything to be more intensely Dutch than anyone of pure blood born in the Netherlands could be. Yet as he possessed a large share of sound common sense, he never made such a silly display of his proclivities in this respect as most half-breeds are in the habit of doing. Who has not been irritated by the forwardness and foolish remarks of such people? At breakfast one morning recently in a London hotel, a hideous mulatto woman at one of the tables provoked the disgust of all the others seated in the same room by finding fault with everything, and asserting in very broad Scotch that “we do this very differently in Scotland.” Of such conduct Simon van der Stel was never guilty. He grew up to be a man under the medium stature, and of a dark complexion, with an open cheerful countenance, but no other indications of his personal appearance can now be found.

He married Johanna Jacoba, daughter of Willem Six and his wife Catharina Hinlopen, a respectable family of Amsterdam, by whom he became the father of six children: Willem Adriaan, prominent in Cape history, Adriaan, who became governor of Amboina and the adjacent islands, Catharina, Frans, Hendrik, and Cornelis. The last named left the Cape for Batavia in January 1694 in the Ridderschap, and was never again heard of, but it was supposed that the ship was wrecked on the coast of Madagascar and that he had perished there.

Historical Sketches.

The directors of the East India Company assisted their protégé as much as they could in Holland, and at length when the situation of head of the Cape settlement was vacant, they offered it to him. He accepted the offer gladly, for it gave him a promise of financial improvement, and with his four eldest sons he embarked in the ship Vrije Zee and reached South Africa in October 1679, when he was nearly forty years of age. His lady with his daughter and his youngest son remained behind in Amsterdam, and he never saw his wife or daughter again.

The system of the East India Company of paying its officials was a bad one, for their salaries were very small indeed, and they depended upon perquisites to put by anything. And at the Cape there were not so many opportunities of making money by perquisites as in India, so that few men of ability cared to stay here long. When Simon van der Stel arrived in South Africa he had only the rank of a commander, which carried with it a salary in money less than a junior clerk receives to-day, but he had a furnished residence, a table allowance besides ample rations of food and even delicacies, slaves provided for servants, horses and a carriage free of charge, and he had liberty to trade in certain articles on his own account. Thus he could purchase a bale of calico or a crate of crockery from the captain of one ship and sell it to the captain of another, but he was not at liberty to deal in a single nutmeg or a pound of pepper, the traffic in spices being strictly reserved for the Company itself. He was prohibited also from carrying on farming operations or speculating in cattle, as the Company was desirous of encouraging colonists.

Abuses in India.

When Simon van der Stel became commander the settlement comprised only the cultivated ground at the foot of Table Mountain, two little outposts of the Company at Saldanha Bay and Hottentots-Holland, a cattle station of the Company at the Tigerberg, and land beyond the isthmus on which seven burghers were experimenting in cattle breeding. He is almost as much entitled to be termed the founder of the colony as Van Riebeek is, for Stellenbosch, the Paarl, Drakenstein, and French Hoek were occupied under his supervision. Of course in neither case was what they did a mere act of their own will: they simply carried out honestly and faithfully the instructions of the directors of the Company, who provided the people and the means that were needed. But to those who maintain that no good can be accomplished by men of mixed European and Asiatic blood, it may be pointed out that Simon van der Stel was a model ruler, able, industrious, energetic, honest, and absolutely faithful to the trust reposed in him. The only glaring fault in his character, and even that did not become conspicuous until he was advanced in years, was an inordinate love of money and a readiness to adopt measures to obtain it that to men of the present day seem beneath the dignity of a high official. But to Netherlanders of those times it did not appear incorrect for a man of position to make money in any way not legally wrong.

At this time so many abuses had crept into the administration of the Company’s affairs in Hindostan and Ceylon that the directors considered it advisable to adopt very drastic measures to rectify them. For this purpose they appointed a commission of three members to examine into matters there, and at its head they placed the very ablest officer in their service, a man in whose integrity they could implicitly rely, to whom they gave all the powers of a dictator. His name was Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein, but he was more commonly known by his title of lord of Mydrecht.

Historical Sketches.

Before he left Europe he was requested to visit the Cape settlement also, and had supreme power conferred upon him while here. Only twice during the whole term of the East India Company’s rule in South Africa has any one with the authority of the lord of Mydrecht visited the colony: on this occasion and in 1792-3, when the high commissioners Nederburgh and Frykenius exercised an unqualified dictatorship. It was a tremendous trust to bestow upon any individual. Under the commission or general power of attorney which he held, the lord of Mydrecht could appoint or displace any officials, create any new office or dispense with any old one, suspend or alter any law or regulation, and issue new laws, with the assurance that all he might do in this respect would be confirmed and ratified by the Assembly of Seventeen.

The lord of Mydrecht was in Capetown from the 19th of April to the 16th of July 1685, and during that time he made many new laws, most of which proved to be beneficial, though a few were not in accordance with the spirit of our day.44 These, however, need not be referred to here: what is necessary to be mentioned is his making a grant of land to Simon van der Stel. He found that official performing excellent service, and throwing his whole heart into his duty, while receiving only the trifling salary and the emoluments of a commander. If he had raised his salary and increased his emoluments, every other official of similar rank in the service would have claimed to be dealt with in the same way, and he did not see fit to promote him to the rank of governor and give him the larger income which that office carried with it. Instead of doing this, he suspended the orders of the directors of the 26th of April 1668, which forbade the commander and the members of the council from cultivating more ground than a little garden and owning more cattle than they needed for their own use,45 and on the 13th of July 1685 he granted to Simon van der Stel eight hundred and ninety-one morgen and a fraction of ground just beyond Wynberg in full property. This estate the commander named Constantia, and it has been so called ever since.

Promotion of Simon van der Stel.

The circumstances of this grant were peculiar. Simon van der Stel and some of the other officials deserved encouragement, and the lord of Mydrecht regarded this as the easiest way of rewarding them, though no one but the commander availed himself of it. The Huguenot and Dutch immigrants of a few years later were still unthought of, and the demand for produce of all kinds was so much greater than the few colonists then in the country could meet that there was not the slightest fear of the officials competing with the burghers. The land granted too was so close to the castle that it could be reached in little more than an hour, so that the owner need never be absent from his duty or pass a night away from his residence. For these reasons the directors confirmed the grant, but they took the precaution of announcing a few years later that it was an exceptional one and that the law of 1668 was still in full force.

Simon van der Stel, promoted to be governor in June 1691, with a salary of £16 13s. 4d. a month, and in 1692 to be councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India, a position which added to his emoluments as well as to his dignity, remained at the head of the administration of the Cape Colony until February 1699, when at his own request, made in 1696, he retired, and he spent the remainder of his life upon his farm Constantia, where he died on the 24th of June 1712.

Historical Sketches.

As a mark of the estimation in which he was held by the directors, on the 26th of September 1697 they appointed his eldest son, Willem Adriaan van der Stel, to be his successor, with the full title, salary, and emoluments which the retiring official had earned by his long and faithful services.46 On the 31st of July 1698 the newly appointed governor received at Amsterdam his final instructions from the directors, and parted from them with their good wishes for his welfare. He and his family left Holland with the first ship that sailed thereafter for India, and in January 1699 reached Capetown, but he was not installed in office until the 11th of February.

What kind of man Willem Adriaan van der Stel was in person cannot be ascertained from any document in the archives of the Netherlands or of the Cape Colony, or from anything contained in the vast mass of printed matter of the period concerning him. He may have been tall and stout or he may have been small, he may have been darker coloured than his father, for atavism sometimes plays curious freaks in this respect, or he may have been as light skinned as a pure Netherlander: there are no means of getting information on this now. But one thing can be said of him with certainty: that before he became governor of the Cape Colony he had borne a good character, and had not displayed those vices which at a later date made his name infamous. There is a Dutch proverb De gelegenheid dieven en moordenaars maakt, Opportunity makes thieves and murderers, and in his case the opportunity was wanting as long as he resided in Amsterdam. He had been an official in that city for ten years, had even been a schepen, and if his conduct had not been upright—outwardly at least—he would not have secured the favour of the directors of the East India Company, men who knew him well personally.

Condition of the Settlement.

The condition of the settlement was at this time very different from what it had been when his father arrived. The Huguenot refugees had come from Europe and been located in the lovely valleys where so many of their descendants still reside. An even greater number of Dutch families and orphan girls had migrated to South Africa, and had been located side by side with the French or by themselves around the Tigerberg, so that all the land as far as the Groeneberg beyond the present village of Wellington was occupied, though sparsely. There were three separate congregations in the settlement, though as yet there was a church building at Stellenbosch only. In Capetown divine service was still held in a hall in the castle, and at Drakenstein in a farmer’s house or under an improvised screen. Wheatfields, vineyards, orchards, and gardens were scattered over the land, each with a thatched cottage on its border, cattle and sheep grazed on the hill sides, and here and there young oaks were beginning to beautify the scene. The view was fair, but concord was wanting in the settlement. Between the Dutch and the French there was little goodwill, for national prejudices kept them from being real friends, though a few intermarriages had already taken place.

The Dutch reformed—identical with the French evangelical—was the state church, and all officials were required to be members of it. No other public worship was tolerated. But there was no inquisition, and in a man’s own house he was free to worship God in any manner he pleased. This was the system of the Northern Netherlands, and it was the system of the Cape Colony. No Roman Catholic was sent out as an emigrant, but there were some of that creed in the Company’s service, and when any of these took their discharge in South Africa they were not interfered with, provided they exercised their devotions within doors. By their fellow citizens, however, they were not favourably regarded, for their tenets were supposed to be dangerous to freedom.

Historical Sketches.

The farmers knew no want of plain wholesome food, but they were fain to be content with few luxuries. Their dwellings were in general small and to modern ideas scantily furnished, as they had not been here long enough to acquire the means to provide more than was barely necessary for shelter and the simplest needs. The picturesque and commodious houses with their ornamented gables and high stoeps, now so much admired, only made their appearance when more than half a century from the arrival of Willem Adriaan van der Stel had passed away, and with them was first seen the massive furniture still occasionally met with. Lying in the loft or on the beams of most of the cottages was a coffin, kept in readiness for its eventual purpose, but used in the mean time as a receptacle for odds and ends.47

The farming utensils were extremely crude, the plough especially, with but one stilt, being as clumsy as it well could be. Black slaves had been introduced, but were not yet numerous, and Hottentots in considerable bands still roamed over the pastures beyond the settlement, some of whom occasionally took service with the colonists in order to obtain tobacco and strong drink.

The country people were almost exclusively occupied in agricultural or pastoral pursuits. One of the Huguenot immigrants, Isaac Taillefer by name, found time from the care of his vineyard to manufacture coarse felt hats, and some of the women spun yarn and knitted socks and stockings. What leather was needed was tanned by the farmers themselves, whose womenfolk also made what soap and candles were required for home use. Here and there one acted as a blacksmith, a waggonmaker, a carpenter, or a shoemaker, in addition to looking after his farm, but as yet there was no scope for mechanical industry on a large scale. The farmers were in the habit of visiting each others’ houses frequently, and on such occasions the men were entertained with wine and tobacco and the women with coffee or tea.48 At meal times visitors were invited to partake as a matter of course.

Life in the Cape Colony.

It was a simple condition of life, not favourable to great expansion of the mind, and not free from care, but not necessarily attended with unhappiness.

Mixed with these worthy colonists was a sprinkling of men of loose habits, mostly deserters from the garrison in Capetown or from ships, or who had been discharged from the Company’s service without proper caution. These men professed to desire to take service with the farmers, but were in general vagabonds and a pest to the community. Yet no one cared to give them up to justice, for it was regarded as the duty of the government, not of the colonists, to apprehend them and punish them for crime or expel them from the country as vagrants.

Historical Sketches.

The directors of the East India Company were desirous of increasing the number of colonists, as they required larger supplies of provisions than had hitherto been obtainable at the Cape, and they also wished to strengthen the defensive force here in case of an attack by an enemy. They were still sending out a few Huguenots almost every year, mixed with a larger number of Dutch, but the ill-feeling between the two nationalities in the colony, and more than this the menacing attitude of the French king towards the Netherlands, with the suspicion that perhaps the refugees might not prove loyal to a country that gave shelter and religious dominance indeed, but that in language, customs, and form of government was foreign and strange,49 caused them to alter their plans soon after the new governor was installed in office. On the 16th of June 1700 they appointed a commission to consider the matter, and in conformity with the report sent in, on the 22nd of the same month they adopted a resolution to authorise the different chambers to send out men, women, and children, providing them with free passages, but taking care that they were either Dutch citizens or subjects of a German state not carrying on commerce by sea, that they were either of the reformed or of the Lutheran faith, and that they were agriculturists or vinedressers; but not to send out any more French.50

Emigration to South Africa.

Emigration to South Africa, according to the terms of this resolution, continued until the 15th of July 1707, when it was stopped,51 and from that date onward the European population of the colony was increased only by natural means and by the discharge of servants of the Company.

On the 27th of June 1699 the directors had strictly prohibited the members of the council of policy and of the high court of justice from trading in cattle in any way,52 so that the interests of the colonists seemed to them to be firmly secured. The chief officials, forbidden to carry on agriculture or cattle breeding on their own account and to speculate in oxen and sheep, could not do any damage to the farmers by competing with them. In the large garden in Table Valley experiments were being made at the Company’s expense in the cultivation of foreign and indigenous plants, so that the colonists could learn without cost what was most proper to cultivate and how to cultivate it. More favourable terms could hardly be offered to suitable emigrants: free transport, grant of land in freehold without charge, security against competition.

Historical Sketches.

Unfortunately the colonists were ignorant of the last of these conditions, for the orders of the directors were kept concealed from them. Every member of the council of policy was sworn to secrecy, and the contents of no document were made known without the governor’s order. With our knowledge, now that the old records are open for examination, it is with a feeling akin to amazement that we observe in the struggle for justice about to be recorded that the burghers made no use of a weapon which would at once have demolished their opponent, and employed only instruments feebler in every way because they were not so capable of being handled. More than once during the administration of the Dutch East India Company in South Africa, the burghers complained, and with reason, that they did not know by what laws they were governed. Here was a case in point. A wise and salutary law, a law making provision against gross oppression and wrong, was a dead letter for years because it was kept concealed in inaccessible archives, and could therefore be violated with impunity by faithless officials.

II — Ordinary Events During the Administration of Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel

Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel.

Willem Adriaan—or Wilhem Adriaen as he wrote his given name—van der Stel, councillor extraordinary of Netherlands India and governor of the Cape Colony and its dependency the island of Mauritius, had resided here for several years after his arrival with his father in October 1679, and had held different situations in the public service, so that he was well acquainted with the condition of the country. In the proceedings of the council of policy he is mentioned on the 16th of December 1680 as receiving the appointments of secretary of the orphan chamber and of the matrimonial court, on the 19th of April 1682 as having acted as issuer of stores and as being then promoted to be a book-keeper, and on the 26th of December 1682 as being issuer of stores and then promoted to be treasurer.53 After a sojourn here of several years he returned to Amsterdam, but the exact date of his removal is unknown. He was accompanied to South Africa when he became governor by his wife, Maria de Haase by name, and several children.

Notwithstanding the pains taken by the late governor to promote tree-planting, there was a scarcity of timber and fuel at the Cape. It was a difficult matter to supply the ships with firewood. Some skippers reported that in passing by two islands, named Dina and Marseveen, in latitude 41° or 42° south, and about four hundred sea miles from the Cape, they had observed fine forests, which they suggested should be examined. The master of the galiot Wezel was thereupon instructed to proceed to the locality indicated, to inspect the forests carefully, and ascertain what quantity of timber was to be had. The Wezel sailed from Table Bay on the 31st of March 1699, but returned on the 13th of May with a report that the search for the islands had been fruitless.

Historical Sketches.

The governor had instructions from the directors to attend more carefully to arboriculture than had yet been done, and they complained that if a sufficient number of trees had been planted in earlier years there would be no necessity to send timber from Europe for housebuilding purposes and no want of fuel for the ships. These instructions he carried out, and during the first winter after his arrival twenty thousand young oaks were planted in the kloofs at Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, where the native forests had been exhausted, and over ten thousand were set out in the Cape peninsula. In the winter of 1701 a further supply was sent to Stellenbosch from the nursery in Table Valley, and the landdrost was instructed to have them planted along the streets.

On the 23rd of November 1699 the governor with a party of attendants set out on a tour of inspection of the settlement. He visited Stellenbosch, Drakenstein, and the farms about the Tigerberg, where he found some persons to whom no ground had yet been allotted. The country was inhabited by Europeans, though thinly, nearly as far as the present village of Hermon. Small Hottentot kraals were scattered about, of which the occupants were found to be very poor and very lazy.

Keeping down the Berg river, the range of mountains on the right was reported to be tenanted by Bushmen, who were in the habit of descending from their fastnesses and plundering the burghers and Hottentots below. The range was on this account known as the Obiqua mountains. The governor crossed over at a place since termed the Roodezand pass, just beyond the gorge through which the Little Berg river flows, and entered the valley now called the Tulbagh basin.

Description of the Tulbagh Basin.

Though not greatly elevated, this basin is in the second of the steps by which the mainland of South Africa rises from the ocean to the central plain. If a cane with a large round head be laid upon soft ground, the mark will give an idea of its form. The hollow caused by the head of the cane will represent the basin, the long narrow groove will indicate the valley between the Obiqua mountains and a parallel range ten or eleven kilometres farther inland. The Breede river has its source in the third terrace, and, rushing down a gorge in the interior range, now called Michell’s pass, flows south-eastward through the valley. Close to Michell’s pass the mountain retires, but shortly sweeps round and joins the Obiqua range, the keystone of the arch thus formed being the Great Winterhoek, two thousand and eighty-five metres in height, the loftiest peak visible from Capetown.

It was the basin thus enclosed that the governor and his party entered. It was found to be drained by the Little Berg river and its numerous tributary rills, whose waters escape through a gorge in the Obiqua mountains, and flow north-westward. The watershed between the Breede and Little Berg rivers is merely a gentle swell in the surface of the ground. At the foot of Michell’s pass, at the present day, a mill-race is led out of the Breede and turned into the Little Berg, and thus a few shovelsful of earth can divert water from the Indian to the Atlantic Ocean.

The basin excels all other parts of South Africa in the variety and beauty of its wild flowers, which in early spring almost conceal the ground. It was too late in the season for the governor’s party to see it at its best, still the visitors were charmed with its appearance. Very few Hottentots were found. In the recesses of the mountains were forests of magnificent trees, and although the timber could not be removed to the Cape, it would be of great use to residents. Immigrants were arriving in every fleet from the Netherlands, so the governor resolved to form a settlement in the valley, where cattle breeding could be carried on to advantage. Agriculture, except to supply the wants of residents, could not be pursued with profit, owing to the difficulty of transport. The governor named the basin the Land of Waveren, in honour of a family of position in Amsterdam. The range of mountains enclosing the valley on the inland side and stretching away as far as the eye could reach, as yet without a name, he called the Witsenberg, after the justly-esteemed burgomaster Nicolaas Witsen of Amsterdam. The land of Waveren has long since become the Tulbagh basin, but one may be allowed to hope that the Witsenberg will always be known by the honoured name it has borne since 1699.

Historical Sketches.

Several burghers who had been living at Drakenstein were now permitted to graze their cattle at Riebeek’s Kasteel, and on the 31st of July 1700 some recent immigrants from Europe were sent to occupy the land of Waveren. As it was the rainy season, the families of the immigrants remained at the Cape until rough cottages could be put up for their accommodation. At the same time a corporal and six soldiers were sent to form a military post in the valley for the protection of the colonists. This post was termed the Waveren outstation, and was maintained for many years. On the 16th of October several additional families were forwarded to the new district to obtain a living as graziers.

For a time after his arrival the Company’s garden in Table Valley was kept by the new governor in the same state of cultivation as that in which his father left it. To its former attractions he added a museum—chiefly of skeletons and stuffed animals—and a small menagerie of wild animals of the country, to which purposes one of the enclosed spaces at the upper end was devoted. Near the centre of the garden he erected a lodge for the reception of distinguished visitors and for his own recreation, which building by enlargement and alterations in later years became the governor’s town residence.

Illegal Cattle Trade.

As the garden in Capetown was thus reduced in size, and that at Rondebosch did not produce as large a quantity of vegetables and fruit as was required for the hospital, the garrison, and the ships, in the winter of 1700 Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel caused a new one to be laid out a short distance beyond Rustenburg, and spent much money in its ornamentation. As originally planned, this garden and the plantations attached to it covered forty morgen of ground; but in course of time from twenty to thirty morgen more were added to it. A superintendent was stationed here with assistants and a strong party of slaves, by whose labour the place soon became exceedingly attractive. In this garden, which bore the name of Newlands, a small lodge was erected, which grew half a century later into the favourite country residence of the governors.

Ever since 1658 trade between the burghers and the Hottentots was strictly forbidden. The chief object was to prevent any act that might bring on a collision with the nomadic people or irritate them in any way. In opposition to the law, however, parties of deserters and other persons of loose character carried on a cattle trade, and were often guilty of conduct that cannot be distinguished from robbery. Governor Simon van der Stel thought to check this by threatening more severe punishment, and on the 19th of October 1697 he issued a placaat in which the barter of cattle from Hottentots was prohibited, under penalty of whipping, branding, banishment, and confiscation of property.

The directors disapproved of this. They wished to encourage the colonists, and for that purpose they had already, on the 14th of July 1695, issued instructions that their own farming operations should be gradually discontinued, and that the cultivation of the vine and wheat together with the rearing of cattle should be left entirely to the burghers. They were now disposed to allow the colonists to purchase cattle from the Hottentots and fatten them for sale to such persons as would contract to supply the hospital, the garrison, and the ships with beef and mutton. They therefore annulled the placaat, and on the 27th of June 1699 issued instructions that the cattle trade should be thrown open, care being taken that the Hottentots suffered no ill-treatment in connection with it. Servants of the Company having seats in the council of policy or in the court of justice were excluded from this trade, and forbidden to supply meat for the public service.54

Historical Sketches.

This order reached Capetown by the flute De Boer on the 24th of November, but the governor, who paid little regard to the instructions of the directors when they clashed with his own interests, did not make it known at the time. After long delay tenders were called for, and in February 1700 the burgher Henning Huising entered into a contract to supply the garrison, hospital, and Company’s fleets with beef and mutton at 5½d. a kilogramme, he to have the use of the Company’s slaughter houses, and as a cattle run the whole of the district of Groenekloof that was not occupied by Hottentots. The contract was signed provisionally for ten years, but the directors reduced it to five. With this transaction the Company designed to relinquish sending out expeditions to purchase cattle, as had been the custom for nearly half a century; and henceforth it was only when working oxen were needed in greater numbers than the burghers could supply that military bartering parties went out. By a placaat of the council of policy presided over by the commissioner Wouter Valckenier, on the 28th of February 1700 the trade was thrown open to the burghers, with such restrictions as were considered necessary to prevent its abuse.

Training of the Colonists.

From this date cattle-breeding became a favourite pursuit with yearly increasing numbers or colonists. There was as much to be made by it as by agriculture, and it was attended with less expense and less anxiety. The government gave permission to applicants to use land for grazing purposes at some defined locality north or north-east of Stellenbosch, but if the pasture failed or did not prove as good as was anticipated, the occupiers did not hesitate to seek other and better places. East of the Hottentots-Holland mountains permission was not given to the burghers in general to graze oxen and sheep until after the governor’s recall in 1707, as he kept the pastures there as far as the Ziekenhuis in one direction and Zoetendal’s Vlei in another for his own use and that of one of his brothers. In defiance of the instructions or the 27th of June 1699 and of the avowed policy of the Company at the time, he himself was rapidly becoming a cattle farmer on a very extensive scale.

Many men and women were thus undergoing a special training for pushing their way deeper into the continent. They were learning to relish a diet of little else than animal food, and to use the flesh of game largely in order to spare their flocks and herds. They were becoming accustomed also to live in tent waggons for months together, so that the want of houses soon ceased to be regarded as a matter of much hardship by these dwellers in the wilds. They were acquiring a fondness for the healthy life of the open country, with its freedom from care and restraint, and its simple pleasures. For the town, with its government officials and law agents and tradesmen and speculators of many kinds always seeking to take advantage of their simplicity, they acquired such a dislike that they never visited it when they could avoid doing so. They took with them no other books than the bible and the psalms in metre, so their children came to regard education in secular subjects as entirely unnecessary. In self-reliance, however, they were receiving the most complete training possible. The tastes and habits which were thus formed were transmitted to their offspring, and in a few generations there was a body of frontiersmen adapted, as no other Europeans ever were, for acting as the pioneers of civilisation in such a country as South Africa.

Historical Sketches.

To encourage the cattle breeders, no rent for ground was charged until 1714, and no other tax than the one for district purposes was laid upon their stock. A little experience proved that occasional change of pasture was advantageous in the rearing of oxen and sheep, and the authorities made no objection to the graziers going yearly for three or four months to a tract of land far from that on which they lived at other times. This grew into a custom for each one to select as winter grazing ground a particular part of the karoo on the third terrace upward from the sea, his right to which was respected by all the others, though it was not directly recognised by the government.

With the enlargement of the settlement, fresh troubles arose with the Bushmen. In March 1701 a band of those people drove off forty head of cattle from Gerrit Cloete’s farm at Riebeek’s Kasteel. A commando of ten soldiers and thirty burghers was sent after the depredators, but was unable to find them. A temporary military post was then established at Vogelvlei, at the foot of the Obiqua mountains.

This protection soon proved insufficient. In April Gerrit Cloete was again robbed, and eleven head of cattle were lifted from the Waveren post. A commando of twelve soldiers and fifty burghers was then organised to clear the country of Bushmen, but did not succeed in effecting its object. It was hardly disbanded when one hundred and thirty-seven head of cattle were lifted within sight of the Vogelvlei post. Upon this a reinforcement of six mounted soldiers was sent to each of the two posts already occupied, and twelve men were stationed at Riebeek’s Kasteel.

Strife with the Bushmen.

The Goringhaiqua and Cochoqua Hottentots now tendered their services to assist the Europeans against the Bushmen, and requested that the captain Kees, who was then living at Groenekloof, might be recognised as their leader in the expedition. But it was discovered that Kees, who had suffered severely from the Bushmen, had already joined a commando of Gerrit Cloete’s friends, and that the joint force was scouring the Obiqua mountains. On receipt of this information, the governor sent instructions to the landdrost of Stellenbosch to have Cloete arrested and brought to trial for waging war without leave, and to ascertain and send in the names of those who had joined him in the expedition.

The prosecution fell through, and the governor thought it best after this to send out only parties of soldiers against the robbers. In September one of these parties recovered a hundred and twenty head of cattle belonging partly to burghers and partly to Hottentots; but in the following month more than two hundred head belonging to the contractor Henning Huising were lifted at Groenekloof, and a patrol of thirty-five soldiers was obliged to fall back from Piketberg, where the Bushmen made a resolute stand.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Boucq55 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 2s. 6d. to £4 3s. 4d. the legger, and selling it to English and Dutch ships at £28 15s. 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Historical Sketches.

The governor thus became acquainted with the nature and terms of the charges against him. On the 4th of March a number of ships’ officers were invited to assist in the deliberations of the council of policy, and some of the retired and acting burgher councillors were summoned to give evidence. These answered a few questions put to them by the governor, in a manner favourable to him. The broad council then consented to the issue of a placaat, in which all persons were forbidden to take part in any conspiracy or to sign any malicious or slanderous document against the authorities of the country, under pain of severe punishment. The ringleaders in such acts were threatened with death or corporal chastisement. The fiscal and the landdrost were authorised to seize persons suspected of such offences, and to commit them to prison. This placaat was on the following Sunday affixed to the door of the Stellenbosch church.

Within the next few days the governor caused the burghers Wessel Pretorius and Jacobus van der Heiden to be arrested and committed to prison, the retired burgher councillor Jan Rotterdam to be banished to Batavia, and the burghers Pieter van der Byl, Henning Huising, Ferdinandus Appel, and Jan van Meerland to be put on board a ship bound to Amsterdam. Jan Rotterdam was seventy years of age, and afflicted with diabetes, a disease that made it difficult for him to rise quickly from his seat. He was respected by every one, but the governor had taken a dislike to him because he did not rise in church when his Excellency entered, and only saluted by taking off his hat and bowing when seated on a stoep and his Excellency passed by. This was termed by the governor insolence, malice, and disrespect, and formed the principal complaint against him.74 To this offence he had added, as had the others named, by signing the memorial. These men had no time given to them to arrange their affairs, but were hurried out of the country as if they had been malefactors. They were informed that they must answer before the supreme authorities at the places of their destination to the charges of sedition and conspiracy that would be forwarded by the Cape council, and if they had any complaints they might make them there also.

Illegal Imprisonment of Burghers.

By these high-handed proceedings, which were hardly ever equalled by the most despotic monarch in Europe, and which were in direct opposition to the laws and customs of the Netherlands,75 though indeed more than once violated there in times of popular uprisings, the governor hoped to terrify his opponents into signing the certificate in his favour and denying the truth of the charges against him. But not one of those who were confined on board the ships in the bay faltered for a moment. Their wives petitioned that the prisoners should be brought to trial at once before a proper court of justice, which was their right as free-born Netherlanders, and when it was hinted that if they would induce their husbands to do what was desired, release would follow, these true-hearted women indignantly refused.

The arrest and committal to prison of Nicolaas van der Westhuizen, Christiaan Wynoch, Hans Jacob Conterman, and Nicolaas Meyboom followed shortly. The governor felt sure now that the complaints of the burghers would reach Holland by some means or other, and therefore on the 31st of March 1706 he and the council addressed a letter to the directors, in which a very unfavourable description of the burghers who signed the memorial was given, and their conduct in doing so was styled conspiracy, sedition, mutiny, and rebellion.76 With this letter was sent an attested copy of the certificate in his favour, as if it had been a voluntary and spontaneous act on the part of those whose names or marks were attached to it.

Historical Sketches

In the meantime the memorial had been committed to the care of Abraham Bogaert, a physician in the return fleet, who was refreshing himself on shore, and who had warm sympathy with the oppressed burghers. He afterwards wrote a history of these events, which is one of the best ever published, and which agrees in all respects with the records in the Cape archives. The Ceylon ships did not reach Table Bay until the 5th and 6th of March, and the two from Batavia only on the 24th and 26th of that month. The last arrival required a few days’ delay for refreshment, but at length all were ready for sea, as were the English ships that had been waiting to sail in their company. On Sunday, the 4th of April 1706, the anchors were raised, and the fifteen Dutch and nine English Indiamen stood out to sea with a favouring breeze. What a gallant sight it must have been for all but the four banished men, who were forced to leave all that was dear to them here in Africa, and their farms to be looked after by their wives alone! When the fleet was at sea and all fear of search was over, Bogaert delivered the memorial to Henning Huising.

The anchors of the ships were being raised and the topsails being sheeted home when the governor must have reflected that he was making a mistake in sending four of the burghers to Europe. In great haste he embarked in a galiot and followed the fleet as far as Robben Island. In the official records it is stated that he did this to show respect to the admiral, but no such method of showing respect was practised here before or since, and his opponents were probably right when they asserted that his object was to overtake the ship in which the burghers were, and release them. He did not succeed in doing this, however.

Treatment of Imprisoned Burghers.

Within a week or two further arrests were made, when Jacob de Savoye, Pierre Meyer, Jacob Cloete, Jacob Louw, and one or two others were placed in detention. The health of some of the prisoners broke down under the rigorous treatment to which they were subjected: one—Jacobus van der Heiden—was confined for twenty-seven days in a foul dungeon, with a black criminal as his companion. Thirteen of them then, with a hope of obtaining liberty and the companionship of their families as an inducement on one side, and the horrible suffering of confinement on coarse and scanty fare in dark and noisome dungeons and debarred from the visits of relatives or friends on the other, gave way to the temptation, and replied to questions put to them disowning the truth of the assertions in the memorial and expressing contrition for having signed it. Among these thirteen was Adam Tas, and the circumstance of his having done so is certainly a blemish upon his reputation, though it would not be fair to speak harshly of him, considering the position in which he was placed. His recantation, however, was of no service, for the governor was devoid of anything like compassion towards him. These declarations, as they were termed, which were really of no more value than the confessions of men on the rack, were obtained at different dates from the 8th of March to the 7th of May 1706. The men who made them excused themselves afterwards for so doing by stating that it could not affect the charges against the governor and the other officials, which would be brought before the directors by those who were then on the way to Europe. And so, after an imprisonment varying in duration from a few days to a few weeks, all were released except Adam Tas and Jacob Louw.

On the 24th of June 1706 the governor and council of policy wrote again to the directors, vilifying in very strong language the burghers who had signed the memorial, enclosing copies of the declarations of those who had been terrified into denying the truth of their former assertions, and asking that a special commissioner should be sent out to inspect matters of every kind and report upon them. This request must have been made with the object of gaining time, for the governor knew well that his conduct would not bear such an inquiry.

Historical Sketches.

For a short time matters were now quiet, but on the governor coming to learn the names of some more of his opponents, Willem van Zyl, François du Toit, Guillaume du Toit, Hercules du Pré, Cornelis van Niekerk, Martin van Staden, Jacobus van Brakel, Jan Elberts, and Nicolaas Elberts were cited to appear before the court of justice. These came to a resolution not to obey the summons before the decision of the directors should be known, and so they failed to attend. They were cited by placaat, but in vain. In consequence, on the 9th of August, by a majority of the court of justice sitting with closed doors each of them was sentenced for contumacy to be banished to Mauritius for five years and to pay a fine of £41 13s. 4d., half for the landdrost as prosecutor and half for the court. They were at the same time declared incapable of ever holding any political or military office in the colony.

This sentence was made public on the 23rd of August, and it tended to increase the hostility to the government. The whole of the Stellenbosch and Drakenstein district was now in a state of commotion. Work on the farms practically ceased, for no man or woman could tell what might not happen from hour to hour, and no one considered himself safe. The military outposts, excepting those at Waveren, Klapmuts, Groenekloof, and Saldanha Bay, at which twenty-four men in all were stationed, had been broken up before this date, so the burghers felt free to act. In the early morning of the 18th of September the farmers of Waveren, Riebeek’s Kasteel, and Drakenstein rode armed into the village of Stellenbosch, and at beat of drum drew up near the landdrost’s office. Starrenburg went out to them, and requested the drummer to be still; but that individual, who was a Frenchman, kept on beating, only observing that he did not understand Dutch. Some persons, to show their contempt for the landdrost, began to dance round the drum. Others inquired why there was to be no fair this year, such as there had always been since 1686. Starrenburg replied that the Indian authorities had prohibited it; but they would not believe him, and laid the blame upon the Cape government. Yet it was correct that the Indian authorities were solely responsible in this matter, as with a view to save expense, on the 29th of November 1705 they had instructed the council of policy not to contribute longer towards the prizes or to furnish wine and ale at the cost of the Company. There was thus no kermis or fair in 1706 and later.

Disorder at Stellenbosch.

After this the women expressed their views. The wives of Pieter van der Byl and Wessel Pretorius, speaking for all, informed the landdrost that they had no intention of submitting to his tyranny, but were resolved to maintain their rights. The spirit of the women of the country districts was thoroughly roused, and their opposition was as formidable as that of their husbands.77 Starrenburg was obliged to return to his house in humiliation. The burghers remained in the village the whole day, setting him at defiance, but otherwise preserving perfect order.

A few days later two of the persons sentenced to banishment appeared in Stellenbosch without any support, and jeered at the landdrost, who dared not attempt to arrest them, as he could not even depend upon his subordinates. All respect for the government was gone.

It was now arranged between the governor and the landdrost that during the night of the 28th of September, after the closing of the castle gate, a party of mounted soldiers should march secretly to the Kuilen. At two o’clock in the morning of the 29th the landdrost was to meet them there, and was then before daylight to arrest those who were believed to be the leaders of the defiant party. But a petty official at the Kuilen, who sympathised with the burghers, managed to detain the party for a time, and when they at length left to try to seize Cornelis van Niekerk in his bed, the alarm had been given.

Historical Sketches.

Daylight broke, no one had been captured, and there was nothing left for the landdrost and the soldiers but to retire to the village of Stellenbosch. No one there would give any information or sell a particle of food to the troops, and the landdrost was obliged to kill his own goats for their use until provisions could be sent from Capetown. Starrenburg having now soldiers at his back, the burghers sentenced to exile fled to Twenty-four Rivers, where they concealed themselves. The landdrost did his best to capture them, and on the 4th of February 1707 succeeded in arresting Hercules du Pré and Jacobus van Brakel, who were sent on board the Mauritius packet then lying in Table Bay. A month later Guillaume du Toit was arrested also and sent on board the same vessel. During this time the governor dismissed the heemraden and other officers who had been elected in the legitimate manner, and arbitrarily appointed creatures of his own to the vacant places.

On the 20th of February 1707 the frigate Pieter en Paul arrived in Table Bay. She had left Texel on the 2nd of November, and brought letters to some of the burghers, in which they were informed that their case had been decided favourably by the directors. She brought no official despatches, however, and the governor, who affected to disbelieve the assertions of the burghers, continued his tyranny as before.

Return of Jan Rotterdam.

On the 3rd of March five ships from Ceylon dropped their anchors in Table Bay, and were followed, 31st of March to 6th of April by six others from Batavia, forming the return fleet of that year, under Admiral Meynderts de Boer. In one of the ships from Batavia was Jan Rotterdam, who returned to South Africa in triumph. Upon the receipt of the complaints from the Cape concerning him and the governor’s comments upon what had occurred, the governor-general and council of India appointed a commission consisting of the ordinary councillor Pieter de Vos and the councillor extraordinary Hendrik Bekker to investigate the matter, and take Rotterdam’s evidence. On the 18th of September 1706 these gentlemen sent in a report, of which there is a copy in the Cape archives. On this the governor-general and council decided, on the 5th of October, to send all the papers to the Netherlands, that the directors might take what action they chose in the matter. On the 31st of August they had decided to give Rotterdam a free passage to Holland, with liberty on his arrival at the Cape to request permission to remain here to attend to his affairs, if he chose to do so.78 There was no necessity for him to make any request, as before the fleet left Table Bay the tyranny of the governor was at an end.

IV — Proceedings in the Netherlands Regarding Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel

Historical Sketches.

While these events were taking place in South Africa, a commission in Amsterdam was actually making inquiries into the conduct of Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel. He knew nothing of this, nor did the burghers know how information concerning his conduct had reached the Netherlands.79 By some means, however, which cannot be ascertained now, the directors had obtained an inkling of the state of affairs, and on the 26th of October 1705 they appointed the members of the chamber of Amsterdam a commission to inquire into the matter and report upon it. This commission had the official correspondence from the Cape before it, but no mention could be found in that of either Vergelegen or the governor’s movements. It would seem from it as if everything was going on smoothly and satisfactorily at the Cape, and the governor was doing his duty as an honest man.

Other tidings reached Amsterdam, however, in the course of the next few months which caused the directors to become alarmed. What these reports were exactly it is not now possible to discover, nor can the channels be ascertained by which they were conveyed, but it cannot be far wrong to conclude that they referred to the governor’s frequent visits to Vergelegen and his long sojourns there, when the castle and the garrison were left to take care of themselves. With a governor so faithless, if what they heard was true, they might lose the half way house to India any day, and so on the 8th of March 1706 they appointed a special committee representing all the chambers and including their two advocates to devise measures for the security of the settlement.80

Examination into the Governor’s Conduct.

Meantime, on the 15th of February 1706 the chamber of Amsterdam had appointed a committee, consisting of Messrs. Bas, Van Castricum, De Witt, Lestevenon, and Trip, with Advocate Scott, to examine thoroughly into the complaints against the governor and bring up a report on the subject.81 So there can be no doubt that even if the charges drawn up by Adam Tas and sent to Holland by the return fleet of 1706 had not reached the directors, the circumstances connected with Vergelegen would have become known, and the faithless and rapacious governor have met with his deserts. But as the material upon which to form a judgment was not as perfect in Holland as could be wished, the arrival of the fleet then on its way from India to Europe was looked forward to with some anxiety by both the committees, as it would probably bring despatches from the governor and council of policy that would assist them to come to a decision.

On the 27th of July 1706 that fleet which, as has been recorded, sailed from Table Bay on the 4th of April under Admiral Jan de Wit, reached Texel in safety. There was then no lack of evidence as to what had transpired at the Cape, it was to hand in fact in superabundance. As soon therefore as the directors had read the official despatches from the governor, including the testimonial in his favour which he had caused to be drawn up and which must have excited their contempt for a man who could adopt such a measure in face of his treachery that could no longer be concealed, they sent the whole to the chamber of Amsterdam. Of the four burghers exiled to Europe, one, Jan van Meerland, died on the passage. The others, as soon as they could do so after their arrival in Amsterdam, presented to the directors the memorial that Tas had drawn up, with the various documents attached to it. After being read by them, it also was sent to the chamber of Amsterdam.

Historical Sketches.

But now a great change in the attitude of the East India Company towards the nature of the various offences committed by the governor took place. His defiance of their orders not to cultivate ground or own cattle, his treachery in leaving his duty and residing frequently at Vergelegen, thus exposing the colony to the utmost danger, and his use of their materials and their workpeople at Vergelegen and elsewhere, robbery as it was, was permitted to fall into the background, and his lawless violence towards the burghers who had complained of his misdeeds became the most prominent subject enquired into. The whole of the tyranny displayed by him was not indeed known, but sufficient had transpired before the departure of the fleet from Table Bay to rouse the indignation of the free Netherlanders, and the directors, even if they had not been disposed to do justice themselves, dared not provoke an outcry that one of the most cherished rights of a citizen was being violated in their dependency at the Cape. The opponents of the Company, the men who wanted something in its place in which they should have a personal interest, would certainly make use of such an outcry to attack it in the States-General, and therefore this charge must be attended to before any other.

Lame Excuses of the Governor.

The committee of the chamber of Amsterdam investigated the matter very thoroughly. Unfortunately the debates were not recorded, and only the resolutions were preserved, just as in the proceedings of a legislative body to-day. But these resolutions show that all possible trouble was taken to arrive at the truth, and notwithstanding the urgency of the case, there was no undue haste, for it was only on the 11th of October 1706 that a report to the chamber was sent in.82 In addition to the documents examined by the committee, it had taken the evidence of the exiled burghers and of the ships’ officers who had been two months at the Cape. Some of these had lived on shore during that time, and had witnessed the violent acts that had put the whole settlement into confusion and the manner in which signatures to the certificate in the governor’s favour were obtained, so that document was held as of no weight whatever. The governor’s comments upon the charges against him also were so weak that they were utterly valueless.83

For instance, his only excuse for his possession of Vergelegen was that if the Company’s servants had no land they, himself included, would be obliged to buy what grain, cattle, wine, vegetables, fruit, and other necessaries they required from unreasonable farmers at whatever rates might be demanded, and might even be at the mercy of those farmers to be supplied or not. This would surely, he said, be intolerable to officials of rank. That was the best and indeed the only excuse he could make for having in his possession, in opposition to the direct orders of the directors, a thousand head of horned cattle and eighteen thousand eight hundred sheep, for producing eleven hundred muids of wheat and fifty-six leggers of wine yearly. And that too when he was provided by the Company with rations84 on an exceedingly liberal scale, when he was legally and honestly entitled to whatever vegetables and fruit he needed for his own family’s use out of the Company’s gardens in Capetown, at Rustenburg, and at Newlands, when he had an adequate table allowance in money to purchase anything else that was needed, as may be seen in the yearly accounts, and when he was provided with twenty slaves as domestics, who were entirely maintained by the Company.

Historical Sketches.

As for the woolled sheep that he was accused of taking from the farmers without payment, his defence was that he had sent out two men to obtain them either in exchange for others or for money, that they had returned with one hundred and seventy-eight, and that he thought he had paid for them. He denied positively that he had taken bribes for giving title-deeds to ground, but it was proved conclusively that he had received large presents and had made extensive purchases without payment from those whom be favoured. The whole defence was as weak as these examples, except in a few particulars, and with the oral evidence against him, the committee could only come to one conclusion.

Report of the Chamber of Amsterdam.

The chamber of Amsterdam approved of the report of its committee, and requested the members to go over it again carefully and draw it up in such a form that it could be presented in the name of the full body to the assembly of seventeen. On the 25th of October accordingly the report was brought before the full chamber and adopted, when it was signed by all the members present, sixteen in number, and was then forwarded to the directors. Among those who signed it was the same Wouter Valckenier85 who had granted Vergelegen to Van der Stel, who was then a member of the chamber of Amsterdam, and immediately afterwards was elected to a seat in the directorate.

In this report the burghers who signed the complaints against Van der Stel and others were acquitted of sedition, conspiracy, or treason, and the action of the governor towards them was consequently declared to have been unjust.

It was recommended

That all those banished from the Cape should be restored to their homes at the Company’s expense, and all those imprisoned be liberated.

That recompense should be made to the banished men for the damages sustained by them, either by giving contracts to them or allowing them to take anything they needed to the Cape free of charge for freight.

That the governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel, the secunde Samuel Elsevier, the clergyman Petrus Kalden, and the landdrost Jan Starrenburg should be recalled at once, but be permitted to retain their salaries and rank, though without any authority.

That Frans van der Stel should be required to remove from the Company’s possessions.

Historical Sketches.

That the estate Vergelegen at Hottentots-Holland, as acquired wrongfully and without proper authority, and for the possession of which approval was never obtained, should be restored to the Company with all the plants on it, and that the buildings should be taken over on a valuation.

That enquiry should be made into the manner in which the retired governor Simon van der Stel became possessed of his landed property, especially of the Great Rietland or Zeekoe Valley, and a report thereon be sent to the Assembly of Seventeen.

That thereafter no servant of the Company should be permitted to hold any land in property or on lease, or possess any cattle, or traffic in cattle, corn, or wine, directly or indirectly.

That every colonist should be free to slaughter and sell cattle, and that contracts should be made to supply the Company’s passing ships with flesh at thirteen duiten a pound.

That the license to sell wine should be disposed of in four parts.

And finally that emigration to the Cape should cease.

This report was adopted by the assembly of seventeen on the 26th of October, and four days later, 30th of October 1706, a letter signed by the directors was delivered to the master of the ship Kattendyk, then lying at Texel ready for sea, with orders to deliver it to the governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel in presence of witnesses.86 The Kattendyk with four other Indiamen left Texel on the 25th of December 1706 under convoy of four ships of war, but after leaving the Channel she lost sight of the rest of the fleet, so she came on alone, fortunately without falling in with French cruisers, and anchored in Table Bay in the morning of the 16th of April 1707. The skipper took the letter on shore, and delivered it to the governor as directed.

Recall of the Governor.

On Sunday the 17th the council of policy assembled, when the despatch of the directors was read. It announced that the governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel, the secunde Samuel Elsevier, the clergyman Petrus Kalden, and the landdrost Jan Starrenburg were removed from office and ordered to proceed to Europe with the least possible delay. That everything might be conducted fairly and justly with regard to them, however, they were allowed to retain their rank and pay until they should have an opportunity of clearing themselves from the charges against them, if that was possible. The governor’s brother, Frans van der Stel, was to betake himself to some place outside of the Company’s possessions. The burghers were acquitted of the absurd charge of conspiracy, sedition, mutiny, and rebellion, they were reinstated in all their former rights and privileges, the three sent to Europe were restored to their homes at the Company’s expense, and orders were given that if any were in prison in the colony they should immediately be released. The governor was ordered to pay out of his own pocket at the rate of 6s. 8d. each for the woolled sheep he had acquired, and the wine and slaughter licenses were to be issued at once in the same manner as had been the custom before he altered them to suit his own purposes.

It was announced that Louis van Assenburgh, who had previously been an officer in the army of the German emperor, had been appointed governor, and Johan Cornelis d’Ableing, recently commander at Palembang, secunde. In case neither of these should arrive in the colony at an early date, the administration was to be assumed by the independent fiscal Johan Blesius and the other members of the council of policy acting as a commission.87

The Mauritius packet had not yet sailed, and the fiscal, who was directed by the assembly of seventeen to carry out their instructions, at once set at liberty the five burghers Adam Tas, Jacob Louw, Jacobus van Brakel, Hercules du Pré, and Guillaume du Toit. Tidings that they were to be released and that the tyranny of the governor was at an end had reached the townspeople, and the principal inhabitants assembled on the open ground before the castle to welcome their countrymen as they landed on the jetty or came from the dungeons in which they had been confined, and great was the joy and sincere were the thanks poured out to the God of heaven, mingled with gratitude to the directors, that justice had triumphed and oppression and misrule were things of the past. Of what occurred at Stellenbosch and Drakenstein when the glad tidings reached those places no information is given in our archives, but it may be taken as certain that the joy there was at least as great and deepfelt as it was in Capetown. To the men of those districts it was due that tyranny and corruption had been overthrown, and from that time forward Stellenbosch and Drakenstein have been the centres of Dutch South African thought and action to a much greater extent than any other parts of the country.

Historical Sketches.

There is a legend that the man who suffered most from violence henceforth called his farm Libertas, to signify that freedom had been won, or, as he wittily explained to inquirers as to the meaning of the term, to denote that Tas was free. The place is still so called.

The council resolved that the administration should be transferred to the fiscal and others on the 15th of May, if the newly-appointed secunde, who was on his way out, should not arrive before that date. It was Sunday, and the reverend Mr. Kalden preached twice in the church.

During the week an arrangement was made by which the reverend Messrs. Le Boucq and Bek should conduct the services on alternate Sundays in Capetown, and Mr. Kalden ceased to officiate. Starrenburg, whose last report was that the mutineers were constantly reviling him and that only a Masaniello was wanting to produce an open outbreak, was sent by the fiscal on board a ship in the return fleet. An officer named Samuel Martin de Meurs was appointed to act provisionally as landdrost.

Views of the Directors.

Johan Cornelis d’Ableing, the newly-appointed secunde, arrived on the 6th of May 1707. He was a nephew of the recalled governor Van der Stel, and, under pretence that the books required to be balanced, postponed taking over the administration until the 3rd of June. The recalled officials could not then leave for Europe before the arrival of the homeward bound fleet of the following year.

From the vast quantity of contemporaneous printed and manuscript matter relating to the conduct of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, the views of the directors and of the colonists concerning the government of the country and the rights of its people can be gathered with great precision. In the Netherlands at that period representative institutions, such as are now believed to be indispensable to liberty, were unknown. Yet the people were free in reality as well as in name. There is not a word expressing a wish on the part of the burghers for an alteration in the form of government, what they desired being merely that the administration should be placed in honest hands, and that their rights should be respected.

The directors desired to have here a large body of freemen in comfortable circumstances, loyal to the fatherland, ready and willing to assist in the defence of the colony if attacked, enjoying the same rights as their peers in Europe, and without much diversity of rank or position. They stated clearly and distinctly that the closer the equality between the burghers could be preserved the more satisfactory it would be to them. Positive orders were issued that large tracts of land, upon which several families could obtain a living, were not to be granted to any individual.

In giving directions concerning Vergelegen, they stated that as its grant by the commissioner Valckenier to the governor was improper and had never been reported to them and much less had their approval been requested or given, they resumed possession of the ground. The large dwelling-house upon it, being adapted for ostentation and not for the use of a farmer, must be broken down. The late governor could sell the materials for his own benefit. The other buildings could be fairly valued, and the amount be paid to Mr. Van der Stel, or he could break them down and dispose of the materials if he preferred to do so.

Historical Sketches.

An estate such as Vergelegen would by many people to-day be considered useful as a model. Van der Stel had laid it out with the choicest vines, plants, and trees, and was making extensive experiments there. The ground was the most skilfully tilled in the whole country. But the directors held that such a farm as this, owned by one individual and cultivated chiefly by slave labour, could not be of the same advantage to the infant colony as a number of smaller ones, each in possession of a sturdy European proprietor. It was therefore not to be sold as a single estate, but was to be divided into several farms, each of which was to be disposed of by public auction separately from the others.

Frans van der Stel was required to sell his property and remove to some country not included in the Company’s charter. The former governor Simon van der Stel was left in possession of his farm Constantia, but directions were given that upon his death the other land which he held should revert to the Company.

Emphatic instructions were issued that for the future, in accordance with the orders of the 26th of April 1668, no servant of the Company, from the highest to the lowest, was to own or lease land in the colony, or to trade directly or indirectly in corn, wine, or cattle. Those who had landed property could sell it, but if they should not do so within a reasonable period, it would be confiscated. The burghers were not to be molested in their right to dispose of their cattle or the produce of their ground in any way that suited them. They were to be governed in accordance with law and justice.

Views of the Colonists.

On their part, the colonists claimed exactly the same rights as if they were still living in the fatherland. They held that any restrictions to which the early burghers had agreed were of a temporary nature, and affected only those who had consented to them. In their opinion they had forfeited nothing by removal to a dependency, and the violence displayed by the governor towards Adam Tas and his associates was as outrageous as if it had taken place in the city of Amsterdam. They asserted their undoubted right to personal liberty, to exemption from arrest unless under reasonable suspicion of crime, to admission to bail, to speedy trial before a proper court of justice, to freedom to sell to anyone, burgher or foreigner, whatever their land produced, after the tithes had been paid and the Company’s needs had been supplied, except under special circumstances when restriction was needed for the good of the community. And these claims, made in as explicit terms as they could be to-day by an Englishman living in a crown colony, were not challenged by the directors or the Indian authorities, but were accepted by every one as unquestioned. They were the ideals of the proper working and spirit of government held by the great bulk of the people of the Netherlands at the beginning of the eighteenth century, before democratic principles or socialistic views had gained ground among the labouring classes or were even dimly foreshadowed in the minds of men who toiled with their hands for their bread. Such a system answered admirably in the fatherland, and the Cape burghers desired to maintain it unimpaired in South Africa.

Mr. Van der Stel retired to Vergelegen, and began arranging matters so that he could leave the country with as little pecuniary loss as possible. His friends and connections in Amsterdam were numerous and influential, and he cherished the hope that through their agency the directors might be induced to leave him in possession of the estate. He does not seem to have realised how serious his offences had been and how impossible it was that he should be forgiven. But as he had now only his own servants and slaves to work with, it was necessary to contract his farming operations, and under any circumstances it would be wise to dispose of his great flocks and herds with the least possible delay. For this, so unlike the case of the men whom he had hurried out of the colony, he had ample time. There is very little information in the archives of occurrences at Vergelegen during those months, though several commissions visited the place, so nothing beyond what is here mentioned can be related.

Historical Sketches.

On the 25th of January 1708 Governor Louis van Assenburgh arrived. He had been eight months on the passage from Holland, and had been obliged to put into a port on the coast of Brazil. In the same ship with the governor was Henning Huising, one of the deported burghers, who had entered into a contract with the directors for the supply of half the meat required by the Company at the Cape during the next three years, the object of dividing the contract being to secure competition in purchasing cattle from the burghers. Pieter van der Byl and Ferdinandus Appel had reached the colony seven months before.

When the arrival of the governor was known at Vergelegen, Mr. Van der Stel sent a petition to the council of policy requesting that he might be allowed to retain the estate a few months longer, as he had hopes that by the next fleet from Europe intelligence would be received that the directors had mitigated their decision. As compliance with this request would have been directly opposed to the orders of the 30th of October 1706, a matter which he seemed to regard as of little importance, but which the new governor decidedly objected to, the council refused to entertain it, and the utmost that he could obtain was permission to press the grapes then ripening and dispose of half the wine on his own account, the other half to be for the Company. The quantity pressed was fifty-six leggers of five hundred and seventy-six litres each.

Dismissal of the Governor.

On the 23rd of February 1708 Henning Huising summoned Mr. Van der Stel before the court of justice for £3,056 in addition to the value of nine thousand sheep. This gave the late governor an opportunity to request the council of policy to allow him to remain in South Africa another year, in order to get evidence to defend himself in this case; but upon Huising stating that he preferred bringing the action in Holland to being the means of keeping Van der Stel longer in the colony, the council declined to accede to his request.

On the 23rd of April 1708 the return fleet of this year sailed from Table Bay for Europe, having on board the late governor, secunde, and clergyman of Capetown with their families. Upon their arrival at Amsterdam Van der Stel and Elsevier were dismissed from the Company’s service. They had left agents in the colony to wind up their affairs and to transmit the proceeds to them. Mr. Kalden was more fortunate, for, though his possession of a farm was not approved of, he did not come in the same category as members of the council and of the court of justice, and he was able to make a good defence as far as his motives were concerned. He was retained in the service, and several years afterwards was sent as a chaplain to India.

Vergelegen was divided into four farms, which were sold by auction in October 1709. The cultivated land was found on measurement to be six hundred and thirteen morgen in extent. The large dwelling-house was broken down, and the material was sold for Van der Stel’s benefit. The other buildings were taken over by the Company for £625, though the materials of which they were constructed were appraised at a much higher sum. The four farms brought £1,695 at public sale, the purchasers being Barend Gildenhuis, Jacobus van der Heiden, Jacob Malan, and the widow of Gerrit Cloete.

Frans van der Stel returned to Europe in the same fleet with his brother, and took up his residence in Amsterdam. His wife, Johanna Wessels, was a daughter of one of the leading burghers of the colony. She remained behind with her parents to dispose of the property to the best advantage, and did not leave to rejoin her husband until April 1717.

Historical Sketches.

After his dismissal from the Company’s service, Willem Adriaan van der Stel was in the most unenviable position that can be imagined, though he was now possessed of considerable wealth. In the city of Amsterdam, where he had once been a magistrate and where he had numerous respectable relatives and connections, he was a disgraced man. In order to try to make his conduct appear less reprehensible in the eyes of the public, he prepared and published the volume called the Korte Deductie, in which the most serious of his offences were entirely ignored, and the certificate in his favour and the forced declarations from several burghers that have been described were set forth as proofs of his innocence with regard to others. As may well be believed, such a volume completely failed in its object. The burghers in South Africa were under no necessity to reply to it, for its weakness was evident to every one, but two of them did so, and in their Contra Deductie published such a number of depositions made under oath as utterly to destroy it.

There is one circumstance in connection with this matter that has been commented upon by several historians, notably by the late Judge Watermeyer in his Lectures, that is the lightness of the punishment inflicted on Van der Stel. Mr. Watermeyer attributed it to the assembly of seventeen not feeling aversion towards his tyranny. But that view is not borne out by the documents of the time when minutely examined, for the directors certainly did express the strongest disapprobation of his conduct in trampling on law and justice. Nor was the leniency of their treatment of him altogether due to their wish to avoid irritating his influential relatives, though that may have had something to do with it. The main cause was simply that Mr. Wouter Valckenier, who was one of the directors at the time, could not absolve himself from all blame in the matter, for he had granted part of Vergelegen to Van der Stel, without reflecting upon what the consequences might be. The governor had abused his confidence, still he was not free of blame. And so nothing but the ground was resumed, and the delinquent was not even compelled to make good to the Company the amount which he had defrauded it of.

One Effect of the Governor’s Tyranny.

The punishment of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, though mild, had the effect of securing to the Cape colonists good government, as it was then held to be, for more than half a century after his recall. The spirit of the burghers was not broken, as it would have been if he had remained in power, and a liberty loving people had time, in God’s good providence, to secure a firm foothold in South Africa.

There was an effect upon the South African colonists that these troubles produced which makes them memorable in our history. They blended the different nationalities together so firmly that thereafter they were absolutely inseparable. There is nothing that tends more to make men and women sympathise with each other than suffering in a common cause, and in this instance Hollander and Huguenot alike had resisted and felt the vengeance of the tyrant. When Du Toit and Du Pré, liberated from the vessel that was to have taken them into exile at Mauritius, met Tas and Louw, staggering from the dungeons in which they had been so long confined, can anyone doubt that they greeted each other as brothers? Our archives tell us nothing of that scene on the parade ground before the castle, but they do tell us very plainly that from that day onward there was no jealousy, no ill-feeling of any kind, between Dutchmen and Frenchmen in the colony. Thereafter all were Afrikanders.

How could it be otherwise? It is not too much for even a historian seeking only for truth to assume that the sisterhood of the women also had been cemented by their common misery, that Mevrouw Van der Byl, for instance, would feel an affection stronger far than mere sympathy for Madame Du Toit, who, like herself, had seen her husband torn from her and sent into banishment, probably for ever unless God and the directors should curb the merciless oppressor’s will. The names on the memorial show an equal number of French and Dutch, and among them are those of the heads of many of the best families in South Africa at the present day. They can look back with pride to the action of their ancestors in resisting corruption so gross and tyranny so outrageous as that of Willem Adriaan van der Stel, and in thinking of the suffering those brave men and women endured, they can thank God that it was not in vain, since it was productive of so much good.

Historical Sketches.

The Van der Stel family attained its highest point of celebrity in the time of the sons of Simon, the grandsons of Adriaan who went to India in 1623. According to Van der Aa, Willem Adriaan, after his dismissal, purchased the estates of Old and New Vossemeer, and died on the 1st of July 1723, leaving five children. Adriaan became governor of Amboina and councillor extraordinary of India, and left three children. Hendrik was warehouse keeper at Malacca in 1705, but nothing more is known of him. It is a saying in the United States that the stage from shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve is usually covered in only three generations, and the observation would seem to be correct in this case. Van der Aa could find no one of the name of Van der Stel worthy of notice after the third generation had passed away, except A. van der Stel, who drew plates for a work on natural history published in 1754, and a woman of the name who was an actress and stage dancer in the middle of the eighteenth century.88