SOUTHERN AFRICA. 317 
The house of Slabert, the Tea fonteyn^ is the next usual 
stage beyond Groene kloof. As this fan)ily holds a distin- 
guished phice in the page of a Frencli traveller in Southern 
Africa, the veracity of whose writings has been called in 
question, curiosity was naturally excited to make some in- 
quiries from them concerning this author. He was well 
known to the family, and had been received into their house 
at the recommendation of the fiscal ; but the whole of his 
transactions in this part of the country, wherein his own 
heroism is so fully set forth, they assert to be so many fabri- 
cations. The story of shooting the tyger, in which his great 
courage is contrasted with the cowardice of the peasantry, I 
read to them out of his book. They laughed very heartily, 
and assured me that, although the story had some foundation 
in fact, the animal had been shot through the body by a 
stell-roar or trap-gun, set by a Hottentot, and was expiring 
under a bush at the time they found it, v/hen the valiant 
Frenchman discharged the contents of his musquet into the 
tyger and dispatched him. The first book Avhich he pub- 
lished, of his Travels to the Eastward, contains much correct 
information, accuratedescription, and a number of pointed and 
just observations. The sale of the copy of these travels encou- 
raged, it seems, the making of a second, the materials of which, 
slight as they were, seem to have chiefly been furnislied by 
the publication of an English traveller, whom he pretends to 
correct; and by an account of an expedition to the north- 
ward, sent out by the Dutch government of the Cape in 
search of a tribe of people reported to wear linen clothing. 
The family of Slabert assert that he left Zwartland in July, 
travelled to the Orange river, and returned at the beginning 
