APPENDIX. 189 
settlement of Benguela, and which we are enabled to do from 
the report of the survey of Captain Chapman of his Majesty’s 
sloop Espeigle, prosecuted by the orders of Commodore 
Nourse, in 1824. 
The singular anomaly on the charts of this part of the 
African continent must be familiar to every reader, I mean 
that a line of coast should be protracted, on which the 
sweeping remark is placed, ‘‘ No fresh water from Fish Bay 
to St. Helena Bay,” that is for a distance of above one 
thousand miles; while at the same time, within these two 
positions, the sites of several native villages are laid down. 
Upon what sort of beverage their inhabitants depend, the 
sagacious map-framers have not at the same time conde- 
scended to inform us, whether from the dews of heaven, from 
distilled sea-water, or whether, from some peculiar physical 
constitution, they needed not liquid food: they must, how- 
ever, bea singular race of men, probably akin to those other 
monsters, imagined to be denizens of Africa, always offer- 
ing something new, “ whose heads do grow beneath their 
shoulders.” The probability of this record has long been 
suspected, and from the great currents observed by numerous 
navigators, which set out from the shores, the existence of | 
rivers of no small magnitude has been supposed. Captain 
Chapman in some measure verified these suspicions by dis- 
covering, thirteen miles to the north of Augra, [heos, or 
Walvisch Bay, in latitude 25° 53/, a fine river named by 
him the Somerset, with good water, sufficient for the supply 
of shipping ; and in lat. 17° 10’ another, which he called the 
Nourse, with a copious discharge, over the bar of which he 
brought the ship’s pinnace laden with water, and drawing 
four feet. ‘The appearance of natives and wild animals, 
observed by this expedition at various parts of the coast, is 
proof sufficient of the existence of this necessary fluid, The 
