GRAAFF REINET  , a

town of South Africa, 185 m. by rail N.W. by N. of Port Elizabeth . Pop . (1904) 10,083, of whom 4055 were whites . The town lies 2463 ft. above the sea and is built on the. banks of the Sunday river,which rises a little farther north on the southern slopes of the Sneeuwberg, and here ramifies into several channels . The Dutch church is a handsome stone building with seating accommodation for 1500 people . The college is an educational centre of some importance; it was rebuilt in 1906 . Graaff Reinet is a flourishing market for agricultural produce, the district being noted for its mohair industry, its orchards and vineyards . The town was founded by the Cape Dutch in 1786, being named after the then governor of Cape Colony, C . J. van de Graaff, and his wife . In 1795 the burghers, smarting under the exactions of the Dutch East India Company proclaimed a republic . Similar action was taken by the burghers of Swellendam . Before the authorities at Cape Town could take decisive measures against the rebels, they were themselves compelled to capitulate to the British .

The burghers having endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to get aid from a

French warship at Algoa Bay surrendered to Colonel (afterwards General Sir) J . O . Vandeleur . In January 1799 Marthinus Prinsloo, the leader of the republicans in 1795, again rebelled, but surrendered in April following . Prinsloo and nineteen others were imprisoned in Cape Town castle . After trial, Prinsloo and another commandant were sentenced to death and others to banishment . The sentences were notcarried out and the prisoners were released, March 1803, on the retrocession of the Cape to Holland . In r8or there had been another revolt in Graaff Reinet, but owing to the conciliatory measures of General F . Dundas (acting governor of the Cape) peace was soon restored . It was this district, where a republican government in South Africa was first proclaimed, which furnished large numbers of the voortrekkers in 1835-1842 . It remains a strong Dutch centre . See J .

C . Voight, Fifty Years of the

History of the Republic in South Africa 1795-1845, vol. i . (London, 1899) .