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]