Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa since September 1795, Volume 1 (1908).pdf/140

116 with the history of his country. This gentleman formed a plan of colonising a tract of land in the neighbourhood of Plettenberg's Bay, by which means he hoped to benefit both the mother country and the dependency.

The design was a large one. Mr. Van Hogendorp was to receive from the government a grant in freehold of an extensive district, comprising forests as well as ground adapted for tillage and pasturage. The government was to provide free passages from the Netherlands for such persons as he should send out. These persons were to be farm labourers and artisans, who were to enter into a contract to serve him after their arrival in South Africa for a stated time at fixed wages, after which they were to have plots of ground from thirty to one hundred acres in extent assigned to them. He was then to provide them with stock to farm with, for which he was to receive interest in produce for twenty-five years, at the expiration of which period they could either repay the capital or continue as before.

He intended to have a portion of the land cultivated on his own account, and it was for this purpose that he required the services of the people. A magazine was to be erected for the storage of produce until it could be exported, and for the sale of clothing and other goods. There were to be no slaves in the new settlement.

A saw-mill, with the best appliances then known, was constructed and made ready to be forwarded to South Africa, for he intended to prepare timber for exportation. The production of wool was another of his objects, and with this view he purchased a flock of choice Spanish sheep, which he kept under his own eye in Holland, that he might be able to send out rams yearly.

Mr. Van Hogendorp took as an associate a retired military officer named Von Buchenroeder, who had a very high opinion of his own abilities, but who—as General Janssens said—succeeded in nothing, because he was a mere theorist. In Holland there had been living for some time a colonist named Hermanus Vermaak, who had been banished for corresponding