354 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



and traversed the south coast as far as the Fish River mouth and 

 inland to Achter Bruintjes Hoogte. He distinguishes between the 

 Gonaqua on Van Staden's River, a tribe of Hottentots mixed with 

 Katir blood, their language having an aliinity with both those nations; 

 the Bastard Hottentot Caffres on the Little Sunday's River, who 

 chiefly spoke the Kafir language : and the Damaqua, also near 

 Van Staden's River, who seemed to have a greater affinity to the 

 Caffres than had the Gonaqua. His work is entitled A Voi/aye to the 

 Cape of Good Hope, towards the Antarctic Polar Circle, and rouiid the 

 World; hut chiefly into the Country of the Hottentots and Caffres 

 (1786). 



Lieutenant William Paterson in his Xarrative of Four Journeys 

 in the Cotintry of the Hottentots, and Caffraria, in the Years 1777, 

 1778, and 1779 (1789), gives an interesting account of the Strand- 

 louper Bushmen of the Orange River mouth. 



Francois le Vaillant, a French or ] )utch Creole (for he was born of 

 French parents in the Dutch colony of Surinam), cannot be trusted in 

 matters of fact where the personal element intrudes. The story of his 

 .sojourn during the years 1783-85 among the Gonaqua of the Great 

 Fish River in the Second Voyage de Monsie-nr Le Vaillant dans 

 VInterieur de VAfriqtie par le Cap de Bonne- Esperance, 1797, and 

 especially his romantic account of the dusky, yet fair, Narina, must 

 not be regarded too seriously. 



But if Le Vaillant is unreliable, what are we to say of tlie impu- 

 <lent fabrications published by one Christian Frederick Bamberger in 

 his Travels in the Interior of Africa from the Cape of Good Hope to 

 Morocco in the Years 1781-1797 (1801), and his wanderings among the 

 Tambukis and such remarkable tribes as the Kaniarukis, Gohawafer«^, 

 Birians, Kamtorrians, Muhotians and Yamatians — all situated between 

 Bruinoogte on the south and Angola on the north-west, and Mono- 

 motapa on the north-east, and speaking the most wonderful gibbei"ish? 



Of this region, so fabulously peopled by this Mlinchhausen, Dr. 

 Francesco Jose Maria Lacerda has left a veracious account in his 

 Diary of a journey in 1798, from Tete on the south bank oi the 

 Zambesi to the "Land of Cazembe." This journal, translated by 

 Captain Richard Burton and enriched b}^ his notes, was publislied by 

 tlie Roval Geographical Society in 1873. 



One of the first st(>ps of the British administration at the Cape 

 was to send an expedition to the tribes north of the Orange River in 

 hopes of bartering cattle with them. 1'he connnissioners were Pieter 

 Jan Truter, a member of the Council of Justice, and Dr. W. Somerville 

 — afterwards the husband of the celebrated ^Irs. Mary Somerville — 

 who had been successively surgeon to the garrison at the Cape, In- 

 spector of Lands and Buildings, a commissioner with Mr. Maynier to 

 report on tlie Graaff-Reinet disturbances, and Barrack Master. Messrs. 

 Truter and Somerville in November, 1801, reached the tribe known 

 by t])e Hottentots as l?ri(|ua, but properly named the Batlapin, altliough 

 it may be noted that they introduced themselves to their visitors as 

 Bechuana. The report, which is published in the fourth volume of 



