Discovery in the African Continent. 101 



commerce of the country over which fortune and Providence 

 had called him to preside, dispatched a large party to the 

 North-west, in consequence of a farmer having reported the cir- 

 cumstance of his being informed by a Hottentot neighbour, of a 

 people who lived beyond him, " who wore Linen, were of a yellow 

 complexion, and went in and out of the mountains there, near a 

 large river." From this representation it was supposed that 

 some Portugueze Settlement had been established on the 

 western coast, " which Government ought to find out," but the 

 expedition, after suffering great privations from want of water, 

 and the death of their cattle, were obliged to return without 

 satisfying their curiosity, and there is every reason to believe 

 that the people referred to were whalers, who had touched at 

 Ang-ra Pequena or some other adjacent part of the coast, 

 rather than a party from the Angolese Settlement, which some 

 persons have imagined. 



Among the several European travellers in, and writers upon 

 the colony, up to the year 1777, Colonel Gordon appears to be 

 the next who increased the limits of our geographical know- 

 ledge, most of the preceding visitors and residents who made 

 journies, or recorded the information collected respecting the 

 country up to the period of their respective literary labours, 

 having either gained their information in Cape Town or re- 

 stricted their excursions within the limits of the already known 

 discoveries. Breyer, Ten Rynne and La Caille, are com- 

 prehended in tlie former ; the suspected but really honest and 

 accurate Pieter Kolben, made a few trifling journies ; Thun- 

 berg reached the Zondag's or Sunday's River, in the present 

 district of Uitenhage ; and Sparrman did not penetrate so far. 



The discovery of the existence of the Gariep, Great or 

 Orange River, is ascribed to Colonel Gordon, in the year 1777 ; 

 but if any truth is to be attributed to the descriptions left of 

 the Expedition of 1685, under Van der Stell, and of that of 

 1761, sent out by Ryk Tulbagh, this stream must have been 

 crossed by each of these parties, but in the records existing of 

 the journies, it is impossible to detect the circumstance of their 

 bavins: passed so considerable a river, and which it is hardly 

 possible tJiey would have omitted to mention. 



Colonel Gordon's expedition was made in search of a people, 

 then and since known under the appelation of Briquas (^Goat 

 Men), of whose existence some vague information had been 

 received at the Cape, and whose national designation had 

 already appeared, although without geographical precision, 

 upon Sparrman's very defective map. This people is the same 

 as the more-than-semi-civilized Bichuana, who have since been 

 frequently visited, and with whom we now have a most ex- 

 tensive intercourse. In Colonel Gordon's unsuccessful attempt 



