Part 16

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical Matters.]

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

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

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical Matters.]

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

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

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

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

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