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.