Over the hills and far away

One might be excused for thinking an village built by the slaves in 1830 would be a bit of a shanty town with inward looking people but the slave ancestors of Pniel were business rivals of the Dutch East India company, sent to the Cape as punishment for opposing the conditions the DEA company insisted upon. They were, in many cases, aristocratic successful business people in their own land of the Spice Islands. Far from being insular, one 'Auntie' had visited relations in Australia, another in New Zealand and even one in Tighnabruaich in the Western Highlands of Scotland. Whether the later's relationship started when the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders went to the Cape during the Napoleonic War, or at some later date when the Seaforths were there, I never found out. The picture is looking over Pniel into the valley in which it rests, Boschendal is on the left beyond the fields.

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