460 
NAMACQUA LAND. 
[1813. 
in her 75ih year. While speaking of Vaillant I may 
venture to say thus much, that though his account has 
much of the romantic in it, yet he gives the best 
account of the manners and customs of the Hottentots 
I have seen. 
Mrs. Vandervesthuis has a very clever Mosambique 
slave, who is a kind of manager of her concerns. He 
was formerly a slave at Cape-town, but ran off from 
his master, and came to her at Klipvalley, giving out 
that he was a Damara. After he had worked some 
time with them for wages, they observed an advertise- 
ment in the Cape paper, describing a slave who had 
absconded from his master. The description being 
answerable to him, he was apprehended. He acknow- 
ledged that he was the person, and had nothing to say 
against his master, but complained that he had too 
easy access to liquor, which he could not help drinking, 
which made him drunk and good for nothing, where- 
fore he thought it best to run away from the liquor. 
He begged that they w^ould buy him off from his 
master — accordingly one of her sons went to the Cape 
and bought him from his master for nine hundred 
rix-doUars. Like Joseph in the house of Potiphar he 
has charge of all the sUves and Hqttentots. 
Though it blew a gale of wind all the day, the ther- 
mometer at noon was 94, and at sun-set S6. Mrs. 
Vandervesthuis assisted us with sixteen oxen for the 
next stage, which w^as both hilly and sandy. We left 
Klipvalley at four P.M. and after a tiresome journey 
