194 Progress and present State of Geographical 



In May 1824, a party under Lieutenant Farewell subse* 

 quently joined by Lieut. King, both officers of the Royal Navy, 

 settled themselves at Port Natal, for the purpose of trade, and 

 although that enterprise has not realised the expectations 

 with which its originolors set out, chiefly owing to a want of 

 subordination and concert in the persons composing it (pre- 

 cautions of the first importance to be attended to in a savage 

 country by a company of adventurers, distantly removed from 

 and destitute of the support of a recognised government,) it 

 has still been of great service in extending the opportunity of 

 our inquiries into the state of the surrounding territory. 



Major Dundas, of the Royal Artillery, and Civil Commis- 

 sioner of the Albany District, with a party of colonial youth, 

 sons of the British Settlers, volunteers for the occasion, were 

 dispatched in 182S to reconnoitre the advance of the forces of 

 the Zulo Chief Chaka, then supposed to be advancing upon 

 the Colony with the intent to subdue and exterminate all the 

 intervening nations. This party penetrated nearly as far as the 

 Omzimvooboo, or St. John's river, having in their return 

 fallen in with and beaten a party of marauders, mistaken for the 

 van of the Zuloes ; and in the same year, Colonel Somerset, 

 the active and most efficient commandant of the Frontier, than 

 whom no person is so well fitted, by a knowledge of its localities 

 and of the habits of the barbarians, for that important post, 

 ■with a considerable body of troops, proceeded to the sources of 

 the Omtata river, the scene of Major Dundas' late aflair, from 

 which he dislodged the residue of that very formidable predatory 

 band, since ascertained to have been that of Matuana, a chief 

 driven out from the eastward by Chaka, and following up the 

 system of conquest and robbery which the oppressor had so 

 successfully taught him to pursue. The routes taken up by 

 these two separate expeditions, the first near the coast, and 

 the latter far inland, and both above 250 miles from the Colony, 

 have added much to our local information of the interior. 



The unfortunate travellers, Messrs. Cowie and Green, the 

 particulars of whose journey has already appeared in the 5th 

 number of your Journal, visited the Portuguese Settlements of 

 Delagoa Bay overland, from the Colony in 1829, and two years 

 previously that well-known individual John Cane, formerly a 

 mariner, had penetrated to the same position from Natal, being 

 sent there by orders of the Zulo King, Chaka ; the notes and 

 geographical sketches of the former, with the information de- 

 rived from this latter person, viva tocr:, have given an oppor- 

 tunity to fill up a map, and to give some description of the 

 people inhabiting the regions thus visited. 



These numerous expeditions, to which may be added the 

 itineraries of the manv colonial traders, who have now traversed 



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