4 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



These expeditions were continued by the Portuguese with little 

 result until the Dutch and English began to tread upon their heels in 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century. 



About the middle of the century Jan van Riebeek, a man of 

 ardent spirit and uncommon energy, landed at the Cape of Good 

 Hope. He seems to have had great confidence in the traditions of 

 Monomotapa, and it is known that he had before him books infused 

 with the romance of Africa. He plotted the location of Davaque, 

 the chief seat of the splendours of Monomotapa at a point 828 miles 

 N.E. of the Cape of Good Hope, and t^ii miles W. from the Indian 

 Ocean, curiously near the present Witwatersrand. Nearer still to the 

 Cape, tradition placed another El Dorado, the city of Vigiti Magna, 

 which was located on or near the 30° 11' of south latitude, and 

 not much more than 300 miles from the Cape. 



As the Cape became settled by the Dutch, expedition after 

 expedition was sent out in search of these mythical cities, only to 

 return without any tidings of good cheer to the founders of the 

 colony. 



Abraham Gabbema led the first little party into the unknown 

 land north of Fort Good Hope, to be followed by the expeditions of 

 Danckerk and Cruythof and Meerhoff and Everaert and de la Guerre. 

 One notable undertaking was the despatch of a party of expert 

 assayers and miners from the Netherland to Cape Town in 1669 by 

 the Dutch East Indian Company, with instructions to search for any 

 promising outcrops of ore in the region of the Cape. This party 

 prospected for several years, but saw nothing to inspire them with 

 the hope of finding King Solomon's mines. 



A revival of the dazzling old visions came in 1 681, with the 

 appearance at the Cape of a party of Namaquas bearing pieces of rich 

 copper ore. 



This exhibit spurred the East India Company to send out 

 another expedition ; Simon van der Stel was then Commandant at 

 the Cape. He was quick to despatch a company of thirty soldiers, 

 a draughtsman and a reporter to make the venture so often tried in 

 vain by others. Again, after months of struggle, the desert drove 

 them back. Van der Stel, nothing daunted by these continued 

 failures, formed an expedition of 42 white men with Hottentot 

 servants and guides. Olaf Bergh was put in command, and led his 

 company on to Namaqualand. But it was the same old story. No 

 strength of men or oxen availed against the desert where no rain had 

 fallen for twelve months, and the whole region was an arid waste 

 without a trickle of moisture. 



In the following ^ear Izaac Schuyver pushed over the desert a 

 little farther than Bergh, and brought back a sack of copper ore. As 

 a last resort the unflinching Van der Stel resolved to head an exploring 

 party himself. The preparations for this expedition were in keeping 

 with the dignity of his position as the head of the Dutch settlement 

 at the Cape. 



He left the castle of Good Hope August 25th, 1685, with 

 fifty-six white followers and a troop of Hottentot attendants. He 



