PREFACE. 
ix 
in his closet from recollection, otherwise errors of two and even three hun- 
dred miles in latitude, as we shall presently see, could not have happened. 
Thunberg, another Swede, travelled a great deal within the limits of the 
colony, and made many valuable additions to the discoveries of Sparr?nann in 
the natural history of the country ; and although he describes, in an artless 
manner, objects as they presented themselves before him, and touches on a 
variety of subjects, yet his book, being made up of a collection of incom- 
plete and unconnected paragraphs whose juxla-position are sometimes 
whimsical enough, conveys neither accurate topography nor even a general 
idea of the colony. 
The work of our countryman Mr. (now lieutenant-colonel) Patter- 
son is a mere journal of occurrences, with descriptions of a few subjects 
in natural history, some of which, at that time, were new ; but the informa- 
tion it contains, with regard to the extent and population of the colony, 
the character of the settlers and of the natives, is very slight ; and he has 
republished the very defective map of Sparrmann. 
There are, also, two modern publications of travels made by Dutchmen. 
The one is by Uoppe., who attended an expedition that was sent from the 
Cape to the northward, in search of a nation that were reported to wear 
linen cloathing. This expedition made very little progress, on account of 
the want of water, and the failure of their cattle. The nation, in all pro- 
bability, was the Portugueze colony on the southern part of Angola ; or, 
perhaps, some seamen belonging to a whaler that had touched at Angra 
Pequena, a small bay in latitude 26° 36' south, might have been seen by 
the Damaras, or the Great Namaquas. The other publication is a journal 
of Van Reenen, who, with some of the Dutch peasantry, proceeded through 
the Kaffer country, in search of the passengers and crew of the Grosvenor 
that was wrecked on the coast a little to the southward of De la Goa Bay. 
This journal was published by Captain Riou in England, with the addition 
of a map, constructed from the materials contained in the journal, and the 
VOL. I. a 
