Note 69 — III. Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel. A History of the Successful Struggle of a few Hollanders and Huguenots against Tyranny and Corruption.

For these statistics see the sworn depositions of men who had worked for him, printed in the Contra Deductie. The charge of not paying the Company its legal dues he took no notice of in his attempt to excuse his conduct, and there is not the slightest trace of such a payment being made in the accounts or other records of the time. The names of over sixty of the Company’s soldiers and sailors who worked for him for considerable periods are given under oath in the Contra Deductie, and of them he only accounted for twenty-eight as being paid by him. There is positive proof of his using the Company’s slaves on his farm, but the charge of taking twenty-five for himself and causing them to be written off in the Company’s books as having died must be regarded as doubtful. That the Company’s master gardener, Jan Hertog, was the overseer at Vergelegen, that the workmen there were under his direction, and that he was not away from the place for eight months at a time, was fully proved.