this remark; for although the Dutch themfelves have not fur-
niffied much intelligence refpeCting the fouthern promontory of
Africa, foreigners were feldom refufed permiffion to vifn the
interior parts of the fettlement. French, Swedes, and Englifli
have publiihed accounts, and fome of them voluminous, of this
colony; yet, at the capture, fmgular as it may appear, we
were entirely ignorant of all the points that were mod material
to bt known. There was not a furvey of one of the bays that
could be depended on, except one of Table Bay, made by order
of governor V an de Graaf; not a fingle map that took in one
tenth part of the colony. Neither the direction nor the diftance
of Graaf Reynet were known to any of the inhabitants. It was
called a month’s journey, or fo many hundred hours, with an
ox waggon; but whether it was five hundred or a thoufand
miles was uncertain. That enlightened officer Sir James Craig
roughly calculated it at eight hundred miles; which is three
hundred miles more than it actually is. He obferved that he
once had received a difpatch from thence in fixteen days, but
that the journey had been done in thirteen. Before we left
the Cape, the Englifli officers and Englifli dragoons, performed
the journey in feven days, and fometimes in fix ; feldom ufing
more than two horfes upon the road. It was pretended that
the three country diftriCts could raife a militia of cavalry to
the amount of from fifteen to twenty thoufand men ; whereas
the fail is, there are little more than twenty thoufand white
inhabitants, men, women, and children, in the whole fettlement.
The country was fuppofed to be fo productive of
grain, that a Cargo of wheat was fent to England out of the
quantity found in ftore at the capture; the following year there
was a famine ; and a very ferious fcarcity has twice happened
during the ffiort period of our poffeffion.
The earlieft authors, who have written on the fubjeCt of the
Cape, are Tachard, Merklin, and Valentyn, none of whom were
a day’s journey from the town, and, coniêquently, nuft have
drawn up their relations from what they could colleCt from the
inhabitants ; which experience has found to be neither important
nor correCt. The fame remark will nearly -apply to the
work of Kolbe, who, although profefledly fent out in the character
of a naturalift, has defcribed fubjeCts that, he never faw;
retailed idle ftories of the peafantry that betray his great credulity
and imbecility of mind ; and filled his book with relations
that are calculated to miflead rather than inform. The
Abbé de la Caille had no opportunity of collecting general information,
being principally employed in the arduous undertaking
of meafuring a bafe line, of thirty-eight thoufand eight
hundred and' two feet, in order to determine the length of a
degree on the meridian ; and in afcértaming the fituations of
the principal fixed ftars in the fouthern hemifphere. His account
of the Cape is, therefore, very imperfeCt. Sparrmann,
thé Swede, followed next, and, by his indefatigable labours,
fupplied a very extenfive and fatisfaCtory account of the natural
productions, efpecially in the animal kingdom, of thofe parts
of the fettlement over-which he travelled ; but he was credulous
enough to repeat many of the abfurd ftories told of the
Hottentots by his predecefior Kolbe, with the addition of others
collected from the ignorant boors. His map is alfo fo miferably
defective, and fo incorreCt in every part, that he muft certainly
have