vi 
PREFACE. 
accounts of this colony are, which have been published at various times 
and in various languages, I may safely venture to say that, taken indi- 
vidually or collectively, they do not afford such satisfactory information as 
would enable the most diligent inquirer after truth to form a just estimate 
of the Cape Colony as a settlement, much less of the real character and 
condition of the native inhabitants dwelling beyond its limits. Had any 
such account been in existence, I should not have obtruded the present 
work upon the public ; but without being apprehensive of incurring the 
charge of arrogating to myself any superior knowledge beyond what local 
experience acquired from extensive travelling, and the opportunities of col- 
lecting information which my public situation in the colony enabled me to 
do ; and, at the same time, without derogating from the merits of other 
writers, I may venture to observe that few persons in this country are in- 
formed how far the Cape of Good Hope may or may not be considered as 
an important settlement to Great Britain. This want of information, too 
apparent both when the colony surrendered to a British force and when it 
was ceded to the Dutch at the peace of Amiens, can be attributed only to 
the imperfect and partial accounts that have hitherto been published, which 
may also, in some measure, explain the jarring and contradictory opinions 
that have been held with regard to its importance, whether as a point of 
security connected with our Indian trade and settlements, or as a territorial 
acquisition. This remarkable promontory, the doubling of which formed 
a new asra in the annals of navigation, and on that account alone ought to 
be well known, has been very variously represented. Whilst some of our 
public orators have held it out as a terrestrial paradise, where nature spon- 
taneously yielded all that was necessary, not only for the supply of the or- 
dinary wants and conveniencies, but also of the luxuries and superfluities 
of life, and some have surrounded it with deserts of thirty miles in extent ; 
others have described it as an useless and barren peninsular promontory, 
connected by a sandy isthmus to a still more useless and barren continent. 
In the instance of the Cape, as in most other cases, we may, probably, 
discover the truth to lie in the middle. It offers nothing very peculiar, 
