Discovery in tht African Cuntlntnt. 167 



prize of the Colonists, or their necessities, I shall resume that 

 part of the subject, and for the sake of perspecuity, even ai 

 the risk of the charge of employing " vain repetitions," col- 

 lect, in one point of view in this place, the history of all that 

 has been effected from the earliest period up to our own times 

 upon the Eastern line of march. 



As far back as the year 1683, a party of wrecked sailors are 

 reported to have reached the Cape from Port Natal, an ex- 

 traordinary occurrence if we take into account the distance 

 from the Colony, at that time not extending- far beyond the 

 present Cape District, and the interval populated by aggra- 

 vated, hostile and unknown tribes. 



The Caflfers were accidentally discovered by a party of Boeri 

 on a hunting expedition in 1G84; and, four years later, the 

 inhabitants of Natal were visited by the celebrated Captain 

 Woodes Rogers, whose name is immortally blended with that 

 delightful and dangerously seductive, half fact and half roman- 

 tic tale, which " hath made many " sailors, — " The History 

 of Robinson Crusoe," whose prototype, Alexander Selkirk, 

 Rogers had rescued at the Island of Juan Fernandez, from an 

 unknown grave, and a solitude of which the genius of Defoe 

 has almost made an envied Paradise ; Who amongst us, calling 

 back the recollections of our boyish days, cannot remember 

 wishing to be the hero, or even the humble Friday, of that 

 exquisite story ? 



In 1719, Captain Gerbranttz van der Sciielling is said, 

 upon the authority of the generally accurate Kolben, to have 

 reached the Cape over land from Delagoa Bay, where he had 

 lost his ship, and in 1727 a Lieut. Monas is recorded to have 

 visited Natal from the last named Settlement. - 



Lieut. Patterson, the friend of the discoverer of the Orange 

 River, Colonel Gordon, in 1779, made the Colonists ac- 

 quainted with the country occupied by the advanced posts of 

 the Gaffers, then rapidly encroaching on the Hottentot nations, 

 who, pressed upon from the east by those invaders, and on 

 the west by the whites, were destined soon after to relinquish 

 their existence as an independent community. 



In 1783 a few sailors from the memorable wreck of the East 

 India vessel, the Grosvenor, effected their escape from near the 

 Omsemcaaba river, above 1000 miles by land from Cape Town, 

 and in consequence of their representations, the sources of 

 the Kei river were explored during the same year, by a party 

 sent out to rescue the remainder of the survivors from that 

 tremendous catastrophe. 



In 1790 the Colonist, William van Reenen, a man of un- 

 daunted spirit, great curiosity, and determined courage, whose 

 frequent travels into the Interior, and discoveries, have never 



