This bound volume, No. 4050 (III) in the Oppenheimer Library, comes from the Phillips Mss 1896. It contains a diary, copies of proclamations and copies of circulars and letters to officials, which cover 64 un-numbered pages in the volume.

The details are as follows:

Diary of official business at the Cape 1798 November 1-20, 24 pages: it is concerned with a variety of subjects including burgher petitions, government contracts, Land revenue, customs, taxation and extorts. At the end is a copy of an oath sworn by Lord Macartney, 1798 November 19, that he has accepted no bribes and that he has not abused his office in any way.

Proclamations: 4 items 1798 November 3-19, 8 items: they relate to defaced currency, the prohibition of the distillation of spirits from grain, the assessment of districts for repair of roads avid the appointment of General Dundas as Macartney's successor.

Circulars and letters to officials; 33 items 1798 October 28-November 20, 31 pages: subjects covered included the sale of wine and provisions to passing ships, wharfage dues, prize goods, the examination of the Vendue Masters' accounts, the maintenance of the Opgaaf Rolls and the establishment of the Customs Department.

The names of correspondents included W.A. Ackerman, A. Barnard, J.Baumgardt, F.R. Bresler, A.de Waal, J. H.Greene, J. Holland, P. Leyns,A Maxwell, J. Pringle and H. Ross.

At the end of the volume is the draft of a letter, 1p probably in Macartney's own hand, 1799 Jan, 29, written on board the "Stately" on his homeward journey and addressed to Evan Nepean, the Admiralty, London, enclosing a packet from Admiral Christian at the Cape.

(in the Oppenheimer Library).

This manuscript, No. 4050 II is from the Phillips Mss 25485 and is entitled "Cape of Good Hope 1798". It was compiled by Lord Macartney, although it is not in his own hand.

There are 203 pages, bound into a volume, and made up as follows:

"Note of possession, taken of the Bay of Saldanha by Andrew Shillinge and Humphrey Fitzherbert 3rd July A.D. 1620, in the name of the King of England. Extracted from the records of the East India Company by Mr James Cobb in December 1796 for Lord Macartney".

This describes the peaceful possession taken by Saldanha (Table) Bay, in the presence of the Dutch and explains why these two commanders of the east India took this actions without order (1) to prevent the Cape falling into Dutch hands and (2) to secure it as a refreshment station for British ships. 6p.

A general description of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope and of the 4 districts of which it is composed, Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Drakenstein, Swellendam and Graaf Rein et.

Subjects covered include geographical.features, climate, boundaries of the districts, anchorages, whale fishing, agriculture, game, goods produced at the Cape and imports into the Cape, justice and revenue.

Statistics are frequently quoted, showing, for example, how the population is increasing and how many people have suffered the death penalty. 102p.

This volume, No. 6685 in the Oppenheimer Library, consists of 14 letters bound together (and 4 loose items in a pocket at the back), with a calligraphed title page.

The letters are mainly to Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811), Secretary of State for War from 1794-1801, and are bound in the following manner:.

While the greatest part of the papers relates to the second Henry Nourse (1857-1942), reflecting his interests as a soldier, prospector and sportsman, there is also much about other members of the Nourse family and about the Cloete, Christian, Law and Norton families, which were connected by marriage with the Nourses.

In addition to being of Nourse family interest, the papers also touch on the 1820 settler, the so-called Kaffir War, the discovery of diamonds and gold, the Zulu and South African Wars, and the history of horse-breeding and horse-racing in South Africa. (Details appear in the subject index).

The papers consist 6 items probably relating to the period 1827-1834. There are prints of Lamb himself and of Christ's Hospital, a wash drawing of Lamb's house at Islington, a letter from Lamb to Thomas Pringle, page-proofs of Pringle's African sketches, London, Moxon, 1834 and a note in Lamb's handwriting attached to the proofs. The papers are of South African interest because of the Pringle proofs which contain manuscript revisions and comments by Lamb, Thomas Pringle (1789-1834) was a Scottish poet, 1820 settler to South Africa, librarian at Cape Town and co-founder with John Fairbairn of the South African Commercial Advertiser, who incurred the displeasure the governor Lord Charles Somerst because of his political writings and had to return to England in 1826. From then until his death he was secretary of the Anti-slavery Society and concentrated on his literary pursuits. Pringle is important as being the first poet to write in English on South African subjects.

In 1828 Pringle published Ephemerides: occasional poems written in Scotland and South Africa, Smith, Elder & Co. London.?.

Out of the 6 poems in the page proofs, 4 had been published in this volume. It appears that even after publication Pringle was willing to polish up and revise his poems. Not only did he submit them to Lamb for criticism but also to S.T. Coleridge. In the Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library - Vol. 23 No. 3, March 1969; p. 68, -? Dr Lewin Robinson describes the Pringle page proofs, with manuscript revisions and corrections by Coleridge, which had been acquired by the South African Library at a Sotheby's auction in 1968.

The Lamb papers were bought in May 1972 by the Library from Francis Edwards, the London dealer. According to Dr Lewin Robinson the Lamb papers cane up for auction at Sotheby's in 1968 at the same time as the Coleridge papers. The provenance prior to this is lost, other than that Pringle's widow gave the proof sheets to Adam White (1817-1874), the British naturalist, according to notes by White in the papers.

The De Souza papers consist primarily of copies of telegrams which were kept by Louis de Souza in his capacity of Secretary for War in Krugers cabinet. When the British captured Pretoria in June 1900, he took the telegrams to a place of safety. For many years they lay in a tin trunk of the garage of his son Cyril Webley Lovell de Souza. They were re-discovered in 1950 when the tin trunk was opened and 7 cardboard files were found in it, containing tissue-thin copies in perfect condition. C.W.L. de Souzas first attempt to have a selection published came to nothing and the papers were replaced in the trunk. In 1966 a reporter from The Star visited Mr de Souza at Pafuri on the Mozambique border and asked permission to publish a few. These articles aroused the interest of Professor Marais of the Department of History at the University of the Witwatersrand, who spent some time going through the telegrams and said they were a most valuable treasure of Africana. The papers were subsequently purchased by the University of the Witwatersrand, 16 April 1972, from F.C.L de Souza and J.J.L de Souza, the sons of C.W.L. de Souza, who died in 1967 before the publication of a selection of the telegrams under the title No charge for delivery, Cape Town, Books of Africa in 1969.

The papers consist of 7118 items, of which 7049 were telegrams and 69 other miscellaneous items. They cover the years 1899-1900, from the beginning of the War to the capture of Pretoria in June 1900. They are mostly in High Dutch and a few are in English. The telegrams consist of 6999 flimsy copies and 19 originals. From them, a very clear picture emerges of the difficulties of fighting a war with volunteer commandos, the members of which were not amenable to discipline. The senders and recipients included the Presidents of the Boer republics, the Boer generals, other civilian and military officials and a few from the British officials and military officers. Subjects covered included descriptions of skirmishes and battles, requests for reinforcements, news of enemy troop movements.

The British blockade prevented supplies reaching the republics. There is much concerning the treatment of prisoners, the cutting of railway lines, the effect of the war on the civilian population and differences between the Boer generals.

In addition to the telegrams, there are 69 miscellaneous items of correspondence, notes, count summonses, proclamations and notes. They refer mainly to the treatment of British prisoners in Pretoria and to the Boer and British casualties. Of there the most interesting are 3 drafts of telegrams apparently in the handwriting of W.S. Churchill, describing his capture and giving his impressions of the Boers and the possible length of the war. They were attached to a letter from Dr. J.W.B. Gunning, a member of the Board of Management which administered the officers prisoner-of- war camp in the State Model School, Pretoria, to L. de Souza (also a member of the Board), in which Gunning recommends the censorship of certain words as likely to persuade the Imperial government to send more troops from India and Britain to fight against the Boers. He also accuses Churchill of continued jingoism and says he doesnt trust him. It appears that the telegrams were never sent. This is substantiated by Churchills own account of the armoured train incident in which he was captured, published by The Morning Post on 1 January 1900 and later reprinted in his book. London to Ladysmith via Pretoria was dispatched by him from Durban in late December (see R. Churchill Winston Churchill v.1, p.461). The handwriting of these drafts has been compared with real and facsimile versions of Churchills script and the similarities are so great that it seems certain that they were written by Churchill.

Papers relating to the publication of the book of Clements Kadalie, trade union leader and General Secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), entitled "My life and the I.C.U.".

The Book was intended to be published under the editorship of E. Roux. It was eventually published in 1970 by Cass, London, and edited by Stanley Trapido.