Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/44

 3 2 BIRTH OF PRINTING place.' These almanacs are twice alluded to in contemporary literature. Barrow, writing of the one issued for the year 1797, remarks ' that of the current year has somewhat suffered in its reputa- tion by having stated an eclipse of the moon to fall on the day preceding the full, and to be invisible, when, unluckily for the almanac-maker, it happened at its proper time, visible and nearly total.' Lady Anne Barnard was no less unkind in her reference to poor Ritter's experiment. Writing under the date ist June, 1800, to Henry Dundas, she says : c This page is like a newspaper. That reminds me the Governor is resolved to have one here. If it answers as the printing of an Almanac did in the Dutch time, it will be droll. The printer made a fortune of two shillings by it : each of the four districts took one at sixpence all the inhabitants read or copied out of that one.' Of these early productions the only one at present known to exist is a fragment of the Almanac for the year 1796 preserved in the South African Public Library at Cape Town. Nothing issued from Ritter's press during the first decade of its working seems to have survived. Of the three almanacs Barrow shows one to be for 1797, the fragment is part of that for the previous year, and Lady Anne's reference to c the Dutch time ' proves the remaining one to have been issued for 1795 or earlier. It is now necessary to go back a few years to examine the proposals of the Government at the Cape to import printing materials from Holland.