SOUTHERN AFRICA. 341 
state of entire servitude. Such are the effects of an encroach- 
ing peasantry, sanctioned by the low policy of a government 
that could descend to employ agents to effect the purchase of 
whole herds of cattle for a cask of brandy. To this govern- 
ment was so little a concern of such great magnitude, that it 
authorized those agents, for the greater convenience of trans- 
porting their brandy, to make an expensive road across a 
point of the Khamies berg, which still bears the honorable 
name of the Company's road. The government having fixed, 
no limits to their colony, nor their subjects to their avarice, 
the latter found it still more convenient to settle themselves 
in the midst of the harmless Namaaquas, who considered 
them as the most acceptable neighbours in the world. For a 
bottle of brandy, which cost sixpence, they willingl}^ exchanged 
an ox ; and such is still the infatuation of this people for the 
noxious liquor, that they will even now exchange a sheep for 
the same quantity of it. 
How great soever may have been the avaricious designs of 
the first settlers of the Khamies berg, and the degree of blame 
imputable both to them and the government, it is but Justice 
to remark, that the present inhabitants have much the ap- 
pearance of being a harmless and honest set of people. Those 
heroes in infamj', whose characters, as drawn in the page of 
the French traveller before alluded to, seem not to be in the 
smallest degree overcharged, have most of them met the fate 
the}' so v/ell deserved. Pinaar, and Bernfnj, the Bastaards 
Fiet and Klaas, and many others of the same stamp, have 
murdered one anotlier, or Iiave fallen by the hands of their 
own Hottentots. 
