1812. 
FOR MUTINY. 
469 
and do, as well as the conduct of one of my men, might have some 
credible witnesses and pass before impartial judges whose opinion I 
wished to have : and that Berends more especially, who was a captain 
acknowledged by the Cape government, should take notice of the 
proceedings. 
I then, with the aid of a light, read aloud the written agree- 
ment by which he, and Cornells, had legally bound themselves in 
the obligation to go with me wherever I should think advisable, and 
punctually to obey every order, under penalty of all his wages, and 
of legal punishment. 
After this I called on my men to declare freely, and without 
any apprehension of gaining my displeasure by giving an opinion 
against me, whether I had ever issued to Van Roye or any of them, 
orders to which they were not bound, or not able, to conform : their 
answers I wished to be directed rather to Berends than to me. They 
replied that it could not with truth be said that I had ever given a 
harsh order. I then required them to declare whether they were of 
opinion that I had, or had not, just cause of complaint against that 
Hottentot for having done so much less work than any of the rest of 
my people, that he might be considered as having done nothing. 
All immediately answered, that it was not to be denied that he had 
done very little. 
When Platje was called forward to give his evidence, he made 
attempts at prevarication, and would have given answers different 
from those which I received when interrogating him at the moment 
of his return home with the oxen. 
On being questioned where Van Boye was during the day, or 
if he had been with the cattle, he replied that he did not know, 
but believed him to have been passing his time with some of the 
Hottentots of Berends's party. Philip followed his example in of- 
fering a statement very contradictory to that which he had made to 
me in the morning ; at which time he told me that, on the previous 
evening, in answer to the orders communicated by him. Van Roye 
said that he would never attend the oxen. 
Van Roye, on being applied to for his defence, asserted that he 
