8 
TRAVELS IN 
farms were at twice that diftance from each other. No land 
was granted in property except in the vicinity of the Gape. As 
the Dutch advanced, the natives retired ; andthofe that remained 
with their herds among the new fettlers were foon reduced to 
the neceflity of becoming their fervants. 
No permanent limits to the colony were ever fixed under the 
Dutch government. The paftoral life that the peafantry of the 
remote diftrids at all times adopted, required a great extent of 
country to feed their numerous herds ; and the imbecility and 
eafy temper of the adjacent tribes of natives favored their avari- 
cious views ; and the government was either unwilling, or 
thought itfelf unable, to reftrain them. Having no kind of 
chart nor furvey, except of fuch diftriits as were contiguous to 
the Cape, it polTefled a very limited and imperfed knowledge 
of the geography of the remoter parts, colleded chiefly from the 
reports of the peafantry, fallacious often, through ignorance or 
defign, or of thofe who had made excurfions for their profit or 
pleafure, or from expeditions fent out by order and at the 
expence of government ; and the objed of thefe, it would 
appear, was with the view rather of carrying on a lucrative trade 
with the bordering tribes of natives, than to fupply ufeful 
information refpeding the colony. Attended with the parade 
of a military guard, furgeons, land-furveyors, burghers with 
waggons, oxen, horfes, and Hottentots without number, not 
one of them has furniflied a fingle fketch even towards aflifting 
the knowledge of the geography of the country. The only 
perfons who appear to have travelled with no other view than 
that of acquiring ufeful information, were the governor Van 
Pletten- 
