A survey diagram and deed of grant for land in the Grahamstown district signed in 1825 by Governor Lord Charles Somerset.

John Barrow, who traveled to the Cape Colony in the 1790s, had provided the first English account of the area of settlement, praising the Zuurveld as representing a gentlemen's park in England'. Yet in the same breath, he had cautioned against extravagant hopes.

Further, than these vague reports, the settlers had to rely on the information given by the Governor, Lord Charle Somerset, and his officials at the Cape. And this information, they soon found out, was often exaggerated.

'When you go out to plough, never leave your guns at home,' Colonel Jacob Cuyler, the resident landdrost of Uitenhage, warned the settlers while escorting them to their land not far from the Great Fish River. It was only then that settlers became aware that they were also expected to form a civil defense force and supplement the military might of the imperial forces against the indigenous population of the area.

This was not the only shock:

• because officials at the Cape were afraid that slave raiding might get out of hand and threaten a precarious peace between Xhosa and Europeans, settlers were forbidden to own slaves.

Neither could they travel freely to a more populous section of the colony to further their commercial interests. Movement between Bathurst (founded by acting Governor Sir Rufane Donkin as the Administrative center for the settlement community) and Grahamstown required written permission from local authorities while travel beyond the Albany district was even more strictly regulated, and could be undertaken only on receipt of a 'District Pass" countersigned by Donkin himself.

All this might have been accepted had the settlers been able to reap benefits from the land they farmed. But the area described as the 'Zuurveld' (Literally, sour country), by Boer stock farmers was not suitable for agriculture. The soil was unyielding, the rainfall irregular, and the lack of experience of many of the newcomers made their task an arduous one.

After three unsuccessful harvests and a disastrous flood, a large section of the community was up in arms. Most of them had run short of both capital and labour, and they were forced to mortgage land, stock, and buildings to get further government rations. Increasingly frustrated by these curbs and controls, many aspirant farmers began to show their displeasure.

In 1823, two separate petitions were sent to the Home Government. In one, containing 171 signatures, a group described by Somerset as the 'Albany Radicals' protested at inadequate land grants, the lack of markets, and a free port. the removal of the seat of magistracy from Bathurst to Grahamstown, and the loss of cattle to the Xhosa.

But long-simmering tensions among settlers burst into the open two months later when another group sent a counter-petition to the Secretary of State in support of Somerset. However, a Commission of Inquiry found against the Governor and forced him to reserve many of his hard-line policies.

Within four years of their arrival at the Cape, more than 60 percent of the settlers had moved on to other parts of the country (in defiance of the Donkin' District Pass). Nevertheless, as others moved in to take their places, the settlement at Albany thrived and Grahamstown became the hub of commercial activity. But by far the biggest contribution of the region to the Cape Colony's economy was the introduction of settlers of merino sheep farming, which led to wool becoming the Cape's biggest export money spinner by the 1830s.

To sell their labour to the highest bidder. Another blow to the settler community and a triumph for the missionaries was a British Government decision in 1834 to disallow the passage of a vagrancy law designed to neutralize Ordinance 50.

Although measures to prevent excessive abuse of black servants were often half-hearted and seldom understood or appreciated by the people they were meant to help, they were angrily criticized by farmers:

• Dutch frontiersmen had long considered it a fundamental right to punish errant labourers and they believed they knew better than any magistrate how to handle workers. To them, a thrashing swiftly delivered seemed much more certain to bring the offender into line than a trial, a jail sentence or a fine. On the other hand, the strong community spirit and sense of familiarity which existed among white inhabitants often forced magistrates to identify with the interests of employers anyway.

In one instance a woman was said to have called out from the gallery in court to a magistrate trying a servant of hers for desertion:

• Punish her Percy.'