Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/47

IN SOUTH AFRICA. 35 onwards there are several dated proclamations, to print which Smith's materials may have been used to eke out Ritter's meagre store. While Ritter and Smith had been urging the Government to recognise their claims, a rich and important firm of merchants had sent to Europe for a press and all necessary materials sufficient to undertake business on a far more ambitious scale. These merchants, Messrs. Walker and Robertson, were men of many interests, who, in addition to being wholesale merchants on a large scale, were slave-dealers dealing in as many as six hundred slaves in a single consignment. The firm even obtained letters of marque for one of their vessels, which was sent out as a privateer to prey on French and Spanish shipping. Surely this union of slave- dealing, privateering and printing must be un- paralleled in the story of the making of books ! Mr. John Robertson spent six months in London selecting type and other materials, and engaged three printers, with a Dutchman as translator. By ist February, 1800, the press had been set up at No. 35 Plein Street, and work begun. On 1 5th July Sir George Yonge issued a proclamation stating that Messrs. Walker and Robertson had been appointed sole printers to the Government, and that the firm had his permission to publish a weekly newspaper. The sole right to undertake commercial printing was granted to these monopo- lists, and notice given that no one else would be allowed to print under a penalty of one thousand rix dollars and the confiscation of all printing materials.