APPENDIX, 171 
confusion inseparable to following a mere chronological detail 
of events, especially when they become numerous, and their 
points are widely separated, by which I should be obliged to. 
revert from one remote scene of enterprise to another, and 
thereby break their relative connexion, and destroy much of 
what I trust will be interesting in this abstract. I shall first 
track up the steps of our travellers and traders beyond the 
northern limits of the colony, and then follow the clue of 
those who have proceeded eastwardly through the long 
unknown countries which skirt the shore of the Indian 
Ocean. 
The ease with which the expedition under Messrs. Triiter 
and Somerville, in 1801, had entered the hitherto-closed 
regions, so distant from the colony, the treatment they had 
experienced at the hands of the Beuchuanas, a peculiarly 
mild race, and the excitement caused by the discovery of 
this amiable, courteous, and much-civilized people, induced 
Lord Caledon, the Governor of Cape Colony in 1808, to fit 
out a new expedition to follow up the interesting train of dis- 
covery so unexpectedly fallen upon, and Dr. Cowan and 
Lieutenant Donavon, along with a cortége of four waggons 
and suite composed of fifteen Hottentots, one colonist, and 
two soldiers, with every necessary, and an abundance of 
superfluities, were dispatched at an expense of Rds., 16,409, 
or above 2705I. sterling, with instructions to cross the con- 
tinent as far as the Portuguese settlement of Mosambique 
or Sofala. The last tidings heard of them, were contained in 
a letter from Dr. Cowan, dated at the residence of a native 
Chief named Makkrakka, in about 24° south latitude, as 
stated by him, but which position has since been found to 
be erroneous, as the sources of the Moloppo, which in 
Cowan’s dispatch is said to water that Chief's dominions, 
lie southward of the 25th parallel, 
