PREFACE. 
ing to his vanity ; and, as most readers know how to appreciate them, the 
florid descriptions of his compiler can do little harm ; but when he en- 
deavours to mislead the world on subjects that are important, and to im- 
press false notions of the people and the country he pretends to delineate, 
he lays himself open to censure, and ought, in justice to the public, to be 
exposed. 
With regard to his not having crossed the Orange River, I consider the 
information of his best friends, the Slabert family, to be decisive : " he 
" left Zwartland in July, travelled to the Orange River, and returned in 
" the beginning of the following December." I may surely then be al- 
lowed to pronounce this part of his chart as a work of fancy, and his Kora- 
quas^ Kabobiquas, and Hoosuanas, as " creatures of the brain." By the 
first he probably meant the Koras, a tribe of Hottentots dwelling on the 
banks of the said river, considerably higher than the place where he visited 
it ; and of whom he might have obtained some account from the Namaa- 
quas ; and his Hoosuanas might, perhaps, be intended for the Booshuanas^ 
whom the two above-mentioned gentlemen visited in their travels ; instead, 
however, of the Pigmy Hottentots, which the first are represented to be, 
the latter were found to be a tall athletic race of KafFers. These gentle- 
men, on comparing Monsieur Le Vail/ant's book with the country, and the 
natives beyond the Orange River, were decidedly of opinion that, so far 
from advancing to the Tropic, he had never crossed the said river. But 
enough of Monsieur Le Vaillant. As to a work lately published under the 
name of Dambergher, it would be an insult to the understanding of the 
public, to suppose that so gross and clumsy an imposition could for a mo- 
ment pass detection. 
Having thus noticed some of the defects and omissions in the works of 
the most esteemed authors who have written on the Cape, I shall beg leave 
to say a word with respect to the manner in which the general chart, in the 
second volume of the present work, was constructed. 
7 
