springs and from gradually establishing control of the land. The result was
a process of dispersal of whites from the agricultural colony: northward
toward the Orange River and eastward on either side of the arid Great
Karoo and Little Karoo. By the 1770s, however, trekboer expansion was
checked in all directions: in the north by extreme aridity 3°°miles beyond
the Cape peninsula; in the northeast by hunter-gatherers based in the
Sneeuberg Mountains 400 miles from the peninsula; and in the east by
Bantu-speaking mixed farmers 450 miles from the peninsula, beyond Al-
goa Bay.26
The company did nothing to impede this process. In fact, needing sup-
plies of meat and pastoral products, it adopted a system of land tenure that
favoredexpansion. Atrekboer was obliged merelyto pay a small annual fee
for the right to occupy a six-thousand-acre farm. In theory, he was merely a
conditional lessee of a "loan farm"; in practice, he was able to treat his
landholding as his outright property, which could be bought, sold, and
inherited.
The trekboers supplied the southwestern Cape with sheep, cattle, and
butter, but the company did scarcely anything for them. There was no
government post beyond Stellenbosch until 1745, when the company