Willem
van Reenen, of the farm Zeekoevlei on the Olifants River. This
adventurous farmer set out in 1791 with four fellow colonists and a
number of Hottentot servants, and reached on the 18th of November the
end of the trek of Captain Hop's party. Prowling Bushmen and lions
beset their camps continually, and in January, 1799, they had to beat
off a fierce swoop of a party of Namaquas. Yet they pressed on until
March 14, when they came to a little oasis which they named Modder
Fontein, or muddy spring. Then they turned back after a few days' rest,
and plodded home to the farm Zeekoevlei, which they reached on the
20th of June. They had killed sixty-five rhinoceros and six giraffes,
without reckoning their bag of smaller game, and brought back
exultantly wagon loads of copper ore, which they supposed to be gold
until their hopes were blighted by assayers at the Cape.1
The depressing reports from these expeditions were not the
least of the straws that finally broke the back of the Dutch East
India Company. For nearly a century and a half their colony
in South Africa had been a continual drain and burden. All
1 " South Africa," George McCall Theal.
