Mr. Ross, having been supplied with a horse and a guide, reached the castle and delivered the letters in due time. They proved to be three complimentary notes from directors of the English East India Company to Commissioner Sluysken, governor of the colony. Mr. Ross also presented an invitation from Admiral Elphinstone to the Commissioner and Colonel Gordon to visit his ship, intimating that there they would receive important information and a missive from the Stadtholder of the Netherlands. It was noted that in the conversation Mr. Ross was careful to evade all questions concerning the state of affairs in Europe and the destination and business of the fleet. While the council pondered these things, Lieutenant Van Vegezak, who had visited the English admiral’s ship, arrived at the castle. He had little information to impart. There were in the fleet three seventy-four gun ships, three of sixty-four guns each, a frigate of twenty-four guns, two sloops of war carrying the one eighteen and the other sixteen guns; and there were troops on board under the command of Major-General James Henry Craig, but how many he had not been able to learn. Now, the facts which accounted for the presence at the Cape of this British naval and military force were unknown to the colonists. The Stadtholder’s government had been overthrown. The democratic party in Holland had received the French with open arms. The national government had been remodeled. The States-General had abolished the Stadtholderate. And the British ministers, alarmed for their vast possessions in India, and realizing that they must now depend upon their own exertions to keep the French from seizing the port which practically commanded the sea route thither, had fitted out and dispatched with all haste this expedition, with orders to occupy—peacefully if they could, but forcibly if they must—the castle and harbor of Cape Town. The fleet had made a rapid passage. One division sailed on the 13th of March, the other on the 3d of April. The two squadrons met off the Cape on the 10th of June and on the 11th cast anchor in False Bay. The colonial officers acted with marvelous caution, considering the fact that they were in ignorance of the late events which had led to the appearing of this formidable expedition in South African waters.