Discovery in the African Continent. 103 



exaggerated, and it is with much difficulty, with onr present, 

 T may almost say our intimate, acquaintance of the territories 

 they traversed, that we can occasionally recognise their route 

 as described in their narration. 



Shortly after their arrival, a party, under a Captain Mliller, 

 with two of the survivors, set out in search of the remainder 

 of the crew and passengers, and proceeded to Avi<hin five days' 

 Journey of the wreck, leaving, according to Miiller's report, 

 their wagons " at the Hye or K'ly, a very large river, full of 

 great stones, fresh, and near the Bambos berg." This is 

 evidently the source of the Kci, and doubtless then for the 

 first time visited by white people. The hostility of the Mam- 

 bookies, or Amapondas, prevented the further progress of the 

 party, which, however, fell in with three Europeans, seven 

 Lascars, and two black women. From this fearful wreck, 18 

 persons only were saved out of 142 souls, of whom 108 perished 

 by the spears of the natives, were drowned in crossing the 

 rivers, devoured by wild beasts, or starved to death in the 

 jungles to which they resorted for security, or pined for a few 

 years in a hopeless captivity, never to be redeemed unless by 

 death itself. 



In 1790, rumours having reached the Cape that several of 

 the persons who had landed from the before-named vessel, still 

 survived, especially some ladies, the Dutch Government, with 

 the most creditable humanity, dispatched the fearless and in- 

 trepid William van Reenen, who had already made several in- 

 teresting journies into the interior, in search of these unfortu- 

 nate people. Leaving the then boundary of the Colon}', the 

 Great Fish River, he took a north-eastern course across the 

 head of the Keisi Kamma, the three chief branches of the Kei, 

 the Zwart Kei, the Witte Kei, and the Somo, thence to the 

 Bashee, and came upon the coast, at the Omtata River ; he 

 then skirted the shores, and fell in with an interesting tribe of 

 Mulattoes, the descendants of Europeans wrecked at a period 

 considerably anterior to the time of the Grosvenor, of whose 

 history we have of late learned many particulars from our 

 recent traders and travellers. At the Omzimvooboo, or St. 

 John's River, he was obliged to leave his wagons, when he 

 proceeded to a considerable distance beyond it, to the scene 

 of the wreck, where he found many melancholy memorials of 

 that terrible catastrophe, but without falling in with any of 

 those saved at the time of the destruction of their vessel, 

 who were now already dead, or so far dispersed as to be un- 

 able to take advantage of this generous effort for their restora- 

 tion to civilized society. The late Capt. Riou, 

 •• The gallant good Riou," 



