Page 43 - Bulletin 20 2016

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contest. There were concerns, however, expressed by the Hurters to the north at Olifantsbos.
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In a letter dated February 8 ,1810, the Deputy Fiscal, J. H. Brand explained to the Colonial
Secretary, H. Alexander, that at a recent site inspection:
“The son of the widow Hurter made the following objection to the grant. He said that
he had himself applied for the same piece of land for his mother some time ago and
conceived he had a claim to it as the land occupied by his mother on quit rent had
formerly been a vergunning of government which not having been able to obtain on
loan she petitioned for on quit rent and on the first of January 1809 obtained 61
morgen and 371 square roods on that tenure that if the land were granted to Rossouw
his mother would not be able to keep her cattle any longer there which she is obliged
to have for cultivating her present property” Brand further adds that;“I found upon
this land two or three reservoirs for watering cattle and a kraal which has long been
erected by said Hurter” (54) .

By “reservoirs” Brand could have been referring to the ‘Matroosdam’ (a naturally occurring
water point named after ‘sailors’ who spent a dreary night here after the nearby wreck of the
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Dutch frigate, Holland, on May 11 , 1786 (55) , and no doubt other survivors of the many
subsequent wrecks in this area of the notorious off-shore hazard, Albatross Rock). Today this
water source lies just in front of the erstwhile Skaife Environmental Education Centre and
current overnight accommodation for visitors to the present reserve. Then, moving south, one
finds another watering point known as ‘Hestersdam’ which although silted up today lay
roughly half way to a stone-walled kraal still to be found along the appropriately named
Booisekraal River – where this watercourse flows down from the escarpment and onto the
coastal plain below. This stream may well have also been impounded to create an additional
watering place in the past. (Fig. 2.15.)

Whether legally entitled to or not, it is obvious that Mrs. Hurter had continued to utilize the
grazing land around her erfpacht / quitrent grant after her request for a loan place had been
turned down. And up till now, who was there to contest this or care at such an isolated
outpost? The Fiscal noted in his report that Mrs. Hurter was an industrious woman and
needed grazing in that most of her quitrent land was under cultivation and she, “supplied the
Commissary General with 20,000 lbs. of hay from it”. On the other hand F.D. Rossouw “held
the contract to supply the troops in Simon’s Town with fuel wood and was obliged to keep 50

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