Page 95 - Bulletin 14 2010

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Muijsenberg and was known both as the Grote Weg na de Caap (Frederici, 1787) and Die
Kaapsche Wapad (Sleigh, 1993). Some limited improvements were made in 1792 to the link to

Simon’s Bay but that section remained more of a track than a road. A journey from Table Bay in
those times took five hours to Muizenberg and a further two hours to Simon’s Town.

In 1772, the Swedish botanist Carl Thunberg, describing the commencement of a journey from
the Cape to the Gamtoos River, lamented the absence of milestones and was able to measure

distance only by reference to the time elapsed since starting out.

“My equippage consisted of a saddle-horse, a cart covered with sail-cloth like a baggage
waggon, and three yoke of oxen, by which it was to be drawn through the whole of the journey.
th
Thus equipped I set out with my company from the Cape on the 7 of September for Jan
Besis Kraal, [today’s Milnerton] a small grazing farm belonging to the Company, and situated by
the sea-side, where we arrived at eleven o’clock. ……. we came to Groene Kloof (the Green
Valley), [today’s Mamre] a considerable grazing farm belonging to the Company, at the distance
of eight hours journey from the Cape.
The country has indeed been much inhabited and cultivated by the European colonists,
but as yet no mile-stones have been set up, nor have the farms and rivers every where received
suitable names.”

Thunberg, pp. 53-55.

No evidence has been found on the dozens of DEIC maps, or in the detailed DEIC records, of

milestones ever having been quarried, inscribed, and erected along Main Road, or any other road.
(Sleigh, pers. comm.) The particular milestones that stand along Main Road today have “Miles

from the Town House” inscribed on their faces, and this clearly places them in the post-DEIC

British era. Similar-looking ones on the road to Bellville were erected only in 1845, long after
DEIC rule had ended.

Louis Michel Thibault: 1806-15, and John Chisholm: 1814-17

The introduction of milestones awaited the arrival of the British who gave attention to the
condition of strategically important roads, one of which was that from Table Bay to Simon’s