SOUTH AFRICAN 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL, 



SECONB SSB.ZES* 



No. 3. APRIL— JUNE, 1834. Fart 1. 



A Sketch of the Progress and present State of Geographi- 

 cal Discovery in the African Continent, made from the 

 Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. — By J. C. Chase. 



[Continued from page 168.] 



A fresh, and by far the most important, impulse was now 

 given to discovery in this quarter, by the Settlement of the 

 British Immigrants in 1820, in the District of Albany, upon 

 the immediate borders of Caffraria, whose continued failures 

 for several years, in their agricultural pursuits, drjve them into 

 a tiading intercourse with their barbarous neighbours. The 

 policy of the Dutch government, which was persevered in by 

 their successors the British, from their conquest of the colony 

 up to this period, was to prevent all connection between the 

 Colonists and Caffers, and death was the penalty held out in 

 terrorem for passing over the proclaimed boundary, or being 

 detected in trafficking. The urgent calls of an imperious neces- 

 sity, the fear of actual starvation on the one side, and 

 the promise of a lucrative trade on the other, however, broke 

 through the absurd and impolitic restraint, and an extensive 

 but illicit commerce was soon established. After several in- 

 effectual attempts on the part of the Colonial Government to 

 maintain their antiquated system, they were obliged in 1824 

 finally to give way, first authorizing a Fair at one of their 

 border fortsj on the Keisikamma, and subsequently, in 1830, 

 allowing the Traders to wander as they listed through the Caffer 

 country, by which permission the whole territory from the 

 Eastern Frontier to Delagoa Bay has now been traversed and 

 described, and a number of traders have settled themselves in 

 the CaflTcr coiintrv as permanont residents, whose example 

 must lead to the civilization of the natives. Tliis trade, at first 

 despised, has already brought into the British Settlement above 

 £200,000, and its annual value (which has progressed from 

 year to vcar) is now stated as worth £ 34,000 sterling;. 



flb 



