24H '/"/ meh r< . 



Overwinning : and a water wheel and engine were erected in the Cala- 

 bash Creek to pump water for the supply of these estates in the dry 

 season. The wheel was a Persian wheel, and the engine was the manu- 

 facture of the celebrated James Watt. It was in use for close upon 

 three-quarters of a century., when its owner, the proprietor of Pin. 

 Lochaber, with a dull sense of the historic and the artistic, allowed it 

 to he broken up. He might have got thousands of pounds for it 

 as a mere curio. Both the Board of Police and the Board of Superin- 

 tendence endeavoured to share in the use of the machinery and the 

 canal for supplying the town reservoirs, but the terms demanded were 

 invariably extravagant. The help of the Government had eventually 

 to be sought. The backdam of Pin. Overwinning abuts on Pin. Vryheid 

 and runs parallel to a similar dam or ketting to the upper side-line 

 of Overwinning where it meets a similar ketting dividing Pin. Providence 

 and the upper lines of Overwinning and Vryheid which lead aback 

 to the open Savannah or ungranted Crown lauds for a distance of 

 sis mile- to the Canje and Calabash creek. Appreciating this, the 

 Board of Superintendence applied t<> tin- Government to have a survey 

 made. This done, it asked for a grant of occupancy as follows :-— 1. 

 About ten acres of land on the bank of the Canje Creek below the 

 Calabash ("reek for the erection of machinery for pumping water. 

 2. For a orant of a strip of land ten roods wide through the Crown 

 Savannah to the ketting between Vryheid and Caraccas. 3. For a giant 

 of that pa»t of the ketting as far as the public road called Philadelphia 

 road. 4. Authority to occupy one of the trenches along the Phila- 

 delphia public road on the parapet of the said road to the backdam of 

 the town in order to lay pipes to the fresh water reservoir at the back 

 of the town. Before that time the water supply of the town came from 

 the canal along the backdam (Savannah road) of the town, by the aid 

 of a centrifugal pumping engine and an iron tank forty feet high, with a 

 capacity of 20.0(H) gallons. The granting of the Board's petition was 

 opposed by the proprietors of Pin. Vryheid, once the property of Wolfert 

 Katz <a godfather of the late Sir H. Katz Dayson), and of Bin. Caraccas, 

 a grant of occupancy in respect of which was held by L. Van Batenburg. 

 Replying to the objection lodged on behalf of these parties, the Board 

 pointed out that the Vryheid side-line was none other than the ketting 

 which Katz had bought from the attorney of Van Batenburg. The 

 Board further urged that there was nothing to show that the ( Town 

 divested itself of the kettings, •■ami to suppose that by becoming pro- 

 prietor of two adjoining parcel- of lamb the ketting became private 

 property cannot be maintained or proved, the Government never giving 

 up a ketting which is always reserved for ingress and egress and drain- 

 age to and from a second depth wlc n granted." In its righteous 

 remonstrance it argued that " were the Government to give up the 

 ! tting to any parties simply because they own estates abutting, it 

 would be equivalent to giviue- up the whole of the interior, there being 

 no other land way, and debarring other applicants from getting a grant." 

 The Board asserted in conclusion that "the opposers arc now seeking 1 to 



