100 Progress and present State of Geographical 



The Copper IMoiintaius near the Western Coast, were next 

 explored in 1685, by a larjje party under Governor Van der 

 Stell, consisting of 56 Europeans, 2 Macassars, 3 slaves, 6 

 burglieis, with two pieces of artillery, many wagons, and a 

 boat; and which afterwards, according to their own (evidently 

 erroneous) calculation, entered the Tropical regions, they 

 were absent fifteen weeks. 



In 1683, to which date I revert in order to connect the 

 march of discovery to the Eastward, an overland journey is 

 reported to have been made from Port Natal to the Cape, by 

 some wrecked mariners. The celebrated Capt. Woodes Rogers, 

 published a very interesting account of the people, productions, 

 and country of Natal, in 1688, which, he says, he had several 

 times visited. In 1690 that port was purchased by the Cape 

 Government, for 20,000 guilders, and possession ordered in 

 1719, but it appears never to have been carried into effect. 

 A Captain Gerbrantz van der Schelling, " a man of intelligence 

 and veracity " according to Kolben, is also stated, Tipon the 

 same authority, to have passed to the Cape through the several 

 Hottentot nations from De la Goa, where he had been wrecked ; 

 and a Lieut. JVIonas is also reported to have made an excursion 

 to Port Natal from the latter place, in the year 1727, so that 

 it appears an utibroken line of discovery between that bay and 

 the Cape had been successfully traversed at this early period, 

 and which was not retraced until the year 1829, when Messrs. 

 Cowie and Green, to whose fatal expedition we shall hereafter 

 have occasion to allude, performed that journey. 



Governor Tulbagh, justly termed the Father of the Colony, 

 in 1750 fitted out an extensive and costly Expedition, at the 

 expense of the Company, under the command of an officer 

 TidiiaeA. Beutelaar, consisting of 2 burghers, 150 soldiers, II 

 wasons, a great number of draught and slaughter oxen, ammu- 

 nition, and provisions, with orders to explore the CafFer country, 

 afterwards that of the Amatymbce or Tambookie Tribes, and 

 to return through the Snowy Mountains and Camdeboo. — 

 This extended and well ordered plan, from the haughty con- 

 duct and mismanagement of the Conductor of the Expedition, 

 failed, and all the service he performed was that of erecting 

 for the first time the arms of his employers, cut in stone, " at 

 the Harbour near Zwartkops River," now Algoa Bay. 



lu 1761 the same spirited Governor, whose memory is em- 

 balmed in the grateful recollection of the Colonists, among 

 whom his bones peacefully repose, and who, like many other 

 individuals who have risen from a private to an elevated station, 

 are remembered as the benefactors of their species (a fact 

 honourable to our nature), imbued with a determination to 

 enlarge the sphere of knowledge, and, at the same time, the 



