Part 20

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

IV.

_Chronicles of Two Leaders of the Great Emigration, Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys._

SKETCH IV.

I.

CHRONICLES OF TWO LEADERS OF THE GREAT EMIGRATION, LOUIS TRIEGARD AND PIETER UYS.

No history has yet been written that cannot be improved upon. In the opinion of most students the greatest work of this kind in the English language is _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, but if Gibbon were now alive he could certainly improve that masterpiece by means of discoveries that have been made since he last revised it. If this can be said of volumes prepared by a man of means, who was able to devote his whole time and thought to his work, it is infinitely more true of such a book as my _History of South Africa_, which has been produced under difficulties little short of being insurmountable.

Half a century has passed away since I commenced to gather materials for my history, but during all that time I have had to toil for my bread, and whenever I have gained a point of advantage I have found myself speedily hurled from it. In a country like South Africa, where racial prejudice has always been passionate, one who would try, as I have done, to write impartially must expect to meet with opposition from the extreme wings of both sections of the community, and unfortunately for me that opposition, or more properly speaking animosity, has frequently been sufficient to deprive me for a time of the power of making researches or continuing my work.

And so great is the quantity of material to be examined for the preparation of a history of South Africa, so scattered is it, and so disordered is the manuscript portion, that fifty years, even if devoted entirely to the work, would not be too long to master it all. Many languages have to be learned, and libraries and archive departments visited and worked in half over Europe as well as in South Africa. I am speaking now only of the period since the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese, if one wants to go further back a knowledge of Arabic and prolonged visits to many eastern towns would be indispensable. This I was prevented from even attempting. In Indian literature also much important information may possibly--even probably--be found, for beyond a doubt there was intercourse between Hindostan and Eastern Africa in ancient times. No man could grapple with all this single-handed, and if any one were to try to do it, at the end of fifty years he would find a very great deal still to be done.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Owing to this cause--the vast amount of research that was needed and the many interruptions I met with--my history, though correct, is defective, that is there is nothing untruthful or misleading in it, but there are sections that could be enlarged to advantage. Among such sections are the deeds of Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys. I commenced my study of the great emigration by getting accounts of it from numerous men and women who had taken part in it. I soon found--as every one else has done who has attempted to collect such materials--that the various relations did not agree, and that something more reliable was needed to base a description upon. I then read whatever was to be found in printed books and the newspapers of the period, and as soon as I had an opportunity of doing so I examined all the manuscripts that I could find in the Cape archives bearing on the subject.

It is a quarter of a century since I published a volume containing the history of the emigration, the first book on the subject prepared in South Africa. The facts as related by me have never been disputed, but there are some who profess to believe that they are described in a spirit too favourable to the emigrants, and others that they are just the reverse. I shall not alter a single word owing to such opinions, but when I find new and reliable materials that enable me to enlarge my former accounts, I shall certainly make use of them. Such materials have recently come to hand with regard to Louis Triegard and Pieter Uys in a collection of important documents made by Governor Sir Benjamin D’Urban, taken by him to England, and preserved in the archives of his family until 1911, when they were most generously presented by his grandson through me to the Union government.

[Sidenote: Occupation of the Eastern Districts.]

Two centuries lacking less than two decades had passed away since European farmers first made homes for themselves on the banks of the Liesbeek river, near the foot of Table Mountain, and in 1835 white men were cultivating ground and pasturing their flocks and herds as far away as the banks of the Kat and the Fish in one direction and the great plain bordering on the Orange in another. The area they had spread over was thus wide and long, though its occupation had been slower than that of any other settlement of Europeans possessing a tithe of its attractions. In most parts of the districts beyond the coast belt it was very sparsely peopled, the farms, which might with greater propriety have been termed cattle-runs, being seldom less than five or six thousand English acres in extent, and often carrying only a single family upon them.

The small district of Albany was an exception to this general statement. It was occupied chiefly by British settlers, who had originally plots of ground only one hundred acres in size allotted to them, but these had proved insufficient for the maintenance of a family, and most of them had been abandoned. Those that remained occupied had then been enlarged, though not to the extent of the great cattle-runs which the older Dutch-speaking colonists considered necessary for their subsistence.