Cape on her return to the Fatherland, and was treated while here with all possible respect and attention.

On the night of the 8th of June 1682 the English East Indiaman Joanna, from the Downs bound to Bengal, was wrecked twelve miles to the westward of Cape Agulhas. One hundred and four of her crew saved themselves on a raft, the remainder were drowned. Those who reached the shore found themselves destitute of provisions, and were beginning to suffer from hunger when some Hottentots made their appearance who conducted them to the kraai of Captain Klaas. There they were supplied by this hospitable native with abundance of milk and meat as long as they remained, and were provided with food for the journey and guides to conduct them to the Cape, The master of the Joanna, who was too infirm to walk any further, stayed behind as the guest of Klaas until a waggon could be sent for him. The shipwrecked seamen met with equal kindness from the Company's officers. They were comfortably lodged and furnished with provisions until they could get away. The Joanna had a large amount of specie on board, and as the wreck could be reached with a boat in calm weather a party of men was sent from the Cape to try to recover it. They succeeded only in getting coin to the value of twenty-nine thousand Aorins, but a considerable quantity of cargo and wreckage which was washed ashore was also secured.

With the growth of the settlement, it was found that too much of the time of the Council of Justice was taken up with hearing petty civil cases, and it was therefore decided to establish an inferior court to have jurisdiction within the Cape peninsula. This court was to be composed of four members, two of whom were to be servants of the Company and two burghers. It was to sit at least once a week, and had power to adjudicate in all cases wherein the amount in. dispute was less than three hundred gulden as current in India, equal to twenty pounds of English sterling money. For convenience sake it was arranged that the last retired burgher councillor could at any time take a seat instead of one of the burgher members. The body thus constituted was termed the Court of Commissioners for Petty Cases. It was first established on the 31st of August 1682.

The specimens of copper ore brought to the Cape by the Nama

qua visitors in 1681 excited the curiosity of the Directors to know more about the country in which the metal was found, and instructions were sent out to Commander Van der Stel to cause it to be carefully explored. At the end of October 1682 an expedition consisting of thirty soldiers, a journalist, and a chartmaker, under command of Ensign Olof Bergh, was dispatched for that purpose, but after a month's absence it returned with a report that the country was so parched with drought that it was impossible to proceed.

The attempt was renewed on a larger scale in the following year. On the 27th of August 1683 an expedition better equipped than any that had previously left the Cape set out for the Namaqua country. It consisted of forty-two Europeans, among whom were draughtsmen, miners, and journalists, and ten Hottentots, all under command of Ensign Olof Bergh. It was provisioned for four months. It had a train of waggons and carts to convey its supplies as far as possible, two boats so that no delay need be caused by swollen rivers, and a herd of pack oxen and five horses for use when the waggons could get no further. The expedition proceeded by the way of Riebeek's Kasteel to the Berg River, which was found too deep to be forded. The boats were then brought into service, and after Everything was ferried over the march was resumed. At the Elephant River it was the same. There a camp was formed, as the boats would not be needed again. Across this river a party of Grigriquas was encountered, and with them were four or five Namaquas who offered to ac: as guides. Soon after this a sterile district was entered, but they pushed on until they reached the nearest of the Namaqua kraals. Close to the kraal was a high mountain, from the top of which the Atlantic could be seen at no great distance. Beyond it to the northward the whole country was a desert without grass or water, for rain had only fallen once within the preceding tweive months. It was impossible to get any further. The Ensign was obliged to retrace his steps, and on the 24th of October he reported at the castle that the expedition had failed.

In February 1684 a party of Namaquas visited the Cape, and when they returned Sergeant Izaak Schryver with fifteen soldiers and three miners was sent with them. The sergeant succeeded very little better than Ensign Bergh, though he managed to proceed somewhat further and to collect from the people he visited a number of pieces of copper ore which he brought back on a pack ox, This ore was melted in crucibles, and the pure metal was sent as a specimen to the Directors.

The Commander had been informed by the Directors that they would gladly send out families of agricultural labourers if it were possible to find such people willing to emigrate, but that it was rarely any were to be had, owing to there being no lack of employ · ment at home for all who could work. There was therefore no way of obtaining colonists except by discharging servants of the Company. In the past this system had entailed heavy expense without any compensating good result. Fully nine out of every ten discharged soldiers and sailors who had been assisted by the Company to commence farming failed in that occupation, and either returned into the service in debt or found their way to some other country. Commander Van der Stel tried to improve upon this plan of obtaining settlers. Instead o waiting until the men's term of service had expired and then giving ground indiscriminately to all who offered to take it, he was willing at any time to release individuals of good character and industrious habits, especially if they had families. Stili the proportion of those who became permanent colonists was very small compared with the whole number discharged.

In 1683 a tract of ground at Klapmuts was turned into a stockfarm for the Company's use, so that the cattle kept at Hottentots Holland might have a change of pasturage. In the same year the burgher Willem Looth obtained a grant of ground at the Paarl, and became the pioneer settler there. In 1684 the Company discontinued sending trading expeditions into the interior to purchase cattle, and handed over that business entirely to Captain Klaas, who bought up large herds at very low rates upon receiving one head for himself out of every five. By this agency so many oxen and sheep were obtained that it was necessary to select fresh stock-farms. The Company, therefore, formed outposts at the Kuilen, Diep River, Visser's Hoek, and Riet Vlei. At each of these places four or five soldiers and a few slaves were stationed, the saine as at Hottentots Holland, Tigerberg, and Klapmuts.

In October 1684 Ryklof van Goens the younger, Ordinary

Councillor of India, and previously Governor of Ceylon, arrived in South Africa, on his way from Europe to the East, and assumed authority here above that of the Commander. He remained in this Colony until the following May, but as he was an invalid during the whvie of that period he exercised very little influence. It was seldom that he left his room in the government country house at Rustenburg, where he resided. By him the office of Secunde, which had been for some time vacant owing to Hendrik Crudop having been advanced to a higher post in India, was again filled. He promoted the Fiscal Andries de Man to be Secunde, the Junior Merchant Albert van Breugel to be Fiscal, the clerk Johannes Willem de Grevenbroek to be Secretary of the Council, and the bookkeeper Cornelis Linnes to be Chief Salesman. To all the officers in the Company's service who desired it he allotted ground for cultivation, but titles were not to be issued until the Directors should approve of the measure. To Adriaan van der Stel, a son of the Commander, he granted several exclusive privileges. This young man had been Issuer of Stores, but he now became a burgher and obtained a grant of land in full property. The right to put up a fowling net, within five hundred roods of which no one was to be permitted to shoot, nor was any one else to put up another within a distance of five hours' journey ; the right to catch fish in False Bay without payment of any taxes; the right to shoot all kinds of game and birds, were privileges granted by Mr Van Goens to his favourite and at his instance approved of by the Council.

These monopolies naturally caused dissatisfaction to the other burghers. The Commander Van der Stel himself was beloved by all and no one would have thought of offending him, but from this time it began to be freely said that the sons were not likely to follow in the father's footsteps. The privilege of shooting game at any time and in any quantity was regarded as particularly unfair to other farmers, because they were all bound by stringent regulation; to kill nothing without special permission, and no one of them was ever allowed to shoot more in a year than a single rhinoceros, a hippopotamus, an eland, and a hartebeest, for his own family's consumption.

In the year 1684 the first exportation of grain from South Africa took place. The crops of that season were very good, and the insect scourge had been less destructive than usual. To encourage the growth of grain, the Governor General Van Goens had relieved the burghers from payment of tithes for two years, and this had the desired effect. In February and March, after the harvest was gathered, fifteen hundred muids of wheat were brought by the farmers for sale, so that there was more than sufficient for the supply of the garrison. A quantity of rye was also stored in the magazines, and of this grain twenty-five muids were sent to India. This export, small as it may seem, shows, as the Commander exultingly wrote, that the settlement was no longer dependent upon foreign countries for its food.

THE LORD OF MYDRECHT AT THE CAPE. In the year 1685 a very distinguished man arrived in South Africa on his way from the Netherlands to the Company's possessions in the East. His name was Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein, but he was more commonly known by his title of Lord of Mydrecht. Of all the adventurous characters who were brought into prominence by the spirit of enterprise that then reigned in the Low Countries, no one had been more successful than he. Certainly no one possessed greater versatility of genius. He had shouldered a matchlock and fought as a private soldier for the defence of the Fatherland. He had commanded a fleet of merchantmen. He had studied law. And now, clothed with all the power of the Chamber of Seventeen, he was proceeding to the East as a Dictator over every dependency of the Company. Ir the administration of affairs there various abuses had crept in, which the Directors considered could only be rectified by some one on the spot possessing unbounded authority and without any interests to serve other than those of duty.

The Lord of Mydrecht had power to make or displace Governors and Admirals as well as officers of lower rank, to proclaim new laws, to issue new regulations concerning trade, to create new offices and to abolish old ones, to enter into treaties with native rulers, in