To the note inviting the commissioner and Colonel Gordon to visit the English admiral on his ship, they courteously replied that it was impossible for these officers to leave Cape Town, and begged the admiral to send ashore a responsible representative with the promised information and dispatch. They also instructed the resident at Simonstown to permit the English to provision their ships, but to allow no armed men to land. A force of eighty-four Burghers and thirty gunners, with three field pieces, was posted at Muizenburg in a position to command the road to Simonstown. On the 13th of June the defensive works of Simonstown Bay were strengthened by additional troops, and three hundred and forty infantry and artillerymen were sent to further strengthen the post at Muizenburg. On the 14th of June there came to the castle a deputation from the Admiral, consisting of Lieutenant-Colonel McKenzie, Captain Hardy of the sloop Echo and Mr. Ross, secretary to General Craig. Mr. Ross handed to Commissioner Sluysken a communication from the prince of Orange—late the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, and supposed to be so still by the colonists. The prince’s mandate, dated at Kew on the 7th of February, 1795, ordered the Commissioner to admit the troops of the King of England into the colony and the forts thereof and to admit the British ships of war into the ports, and to treat the British troops and ships of war as the forces of a power friendly to Holland and sent to protect the colony against the French. The deputation from the admiral also delivered to the Commissioner a joint letter from Admiral Elphinstone and General Craig, in which was written their account of the then condition of affairs in the Netherlands. They informed him that the winter in Europe had been exceptionally severe; that toward the close of January the rivers had been frozen so hard as to make them passable for armies; that the French had crossed on the ice into Utrecht and Gelderland and had driven the English troops into Germany and compelled the Dutch forces to surrender. They represented that it was a matter of only a few days for the whole of the country to fall into the possession of the French by forced capitulation, without any previous terms of surrender, and that the Stadtholder only escaped capture by taking passage in a fishing boat, which carried him from Scheveningen to England. They further intimated to the Commissioner that this gloomy state of things was only temporary; that Britain and her allies were preparing to enter the field with overwhelming force, and were confident of being able to drive the French out of Holland in the next campaign.