Remarks on Delagoa Bay. 137 



visit of six weeks, not one chief would venture on board. 

 They, however, employed a man as a sort of spy to examine 

 us, whose name was English Bill, he sairl, but his native name 

 was Shamaguara. He was a man of no great note, having then 

 only seven wives, but one of his daughters was married to the 

 king of Mapoota. This person spoke a very little bad 

 English, after the manner of the seamen of the whale ships, 

 from whom he had learnt it ; he also spoke a little Hindostanee, 

 which he had picked up from the crew of a vessel from Bom- 

 bay, about four years ago; a little Dutch he had also some- 

 where or other learnt, and Portuguese he understood well. He 

 also could converse with the Vetorahs, in whose country Iip had 

 travelled as a merchant, and could make himself intelligible 

 to our Caffres from the Keiskamma. By him the captain sent 

 presents to King Kapell and his chiefs, and invited them to 

 an unreserved intercourse, but the old Ijtkig KaptU was lately 

 dead, and the custom is that such an event is never to be pub- 

 lished for one year, by which time the succession is easily and 

 quietly settled. Our importunity to see the king, and our 

 insisting, if we did not, he must be dead, caused his successor 

 to come forth openly. As a first act of his authority he put 

 his cousin, a chief of note, to death, because he had been 

 plotting in favor of the new king's uncle, who was a son of the 

 late king. The name of the present one was Mayelt, a grandson 

 of the deceased, and a very fine young mm, not more than one 

 or two and twenty. These circumstances, added to the fever 

 with which our crews were attacked, and which proved so 

 fatal, prevented us from seeing Mayelt or any of his chiefs on 

 board, but he permitted his people to serve us in the capacity 

 of boats' crews, by which assistance they saved our own men 

 from much exposure, and were thereby very useful ; one lad 

 named Mimgatree, entered with us to go to sea. English Bill 

 and the boat's crew continued on board the Coclcbum all the 

 time we were absent, which was, three months, and on our 

 return to English River on the 1st of March, the former again 

 joined us. The captain visited the eastern chief Slangelly, 

 and a good understanding was established. By English Bill 

 they had frequently invited us to take possession of the coun- 

 try, but now Slangelly came on board in an official capacity 

 from Mayelt with the offer to cede the sovereignty of his 

 kingdom to King George, stating his reasons for so doing as 

 shewn in the deed of cession, and desiring to do so by a 

 written one. The captain did not intend to accept if :d that 

 time, but to refer the affair to Commodore Nourse, in whose 

 province it more particularly lay. A? the governor, however. 

 of the Portuguese factory was so enraged at the intimacy of 

 King Mayelt and his chiefs with the British, that he was pre- 

 paring a number of Portuguese flags to possess the country by 



