102 Progress and present State of Geographical 



at the discovery of this people, he made the unexpected one 

 of the beautiful, the placid, the niaguificent Gariep, to which 

 he ifave the name of the Orange River, iu honour of the family 

 of Nassau, under whom he served. 



Lieutenant Paterson, who had accompanied Colonel Gordon 

 in the just-mentioned journey, succeeded him as a discoverer, 

 and in 1/79 he made an excursion to the eastward, and 

 visited the Beka River, now within the boundary of the Ter- 

 ritory called Neutral, (where Sir Rufane Donkin's Military 

 Settlement of 1821 was pitched,) and v/hicli Lieutenant Pater- 

 son distinguished by the name of Becha-cum or Milk River. 

 This country was then peaceably occupied by the Caffer tribes, 

 from whom he received the kindest treatment. It was the fate 

 of this writer to meet the usual meed from his fellow labourers 

 iu the field of science, and Tluinberg runs him down with 

 the observation, that he professed to travel at the expense of 

 certain individuals, and possessed some small knowledge of 

 botany, hut was in fact a mere gardener; a late instance of 

 similar kind is that of the talented and accomplished Burchell, 

 whose Reviewer fin the Quarterly chose to designate him as 

 " a culler of simples," and to state after the publication of his 

 intelligent and scientific work, that " simples he had indeed 

 culled," thus, 



" Through all the graddtions of life 



" Each neighbour abuses his brother." 



The celebrated, almost notorious, Le Vaillaut, who well knew 

 how to decorate his descriptions with 



" a heavenly hue 

 Of words, like sun-beams dazzling as they pass 

 The eyes." 



was the next to add some trifling tribute to our stock of in- 

 formation of the country, and although he basso blended fiction 

 with truth, that it is diificult to separate them, and almost a 

 pity to attempt it, still much more credit is due to him for 

 accuracy than is generally accorded ; his travels in 1781, there 

 is every reason to believe, are fully authentic, and the acquisi- 

 tions he proffered to natural science were of considerable value. 

 That awful and tremendous catastrophe which has continued 

 to excite an extraordinary interest c\en up to the present 

 moment, the wreck of the Grosvenor East-Indiaman on the 

 second point of Natal, occurred in the next year, when a small 

 number of the survivors, in two separate parties, succeeded 

 after almost incredible hardships, in reaching the Cape in 

 1783. The description given by these sufferers, of the 

 countries through Avhich they passed, as might be expected 

 from uneducated persons, exposed to every kind of peril, ex- 

 hausted by the severest privations, and without the proper 

 means of recording their impressions, is very vague and greatly 



