360 
TRAVELS IN 
was naturally excited to make fome enquiries from them con- 
cerning this author. He was well known to the family, and 
had been received into their houfe at the recommendations of 
the fifcal ; but the whole of his tranfadions in this part of the 
country wherein his own heroifm is fo fully fet forth, they afTert 
to be fo many fabrications. The ftory of (hooting the tyger, in 
which his great courage is contrafted with the cowardice of the 
peafantry, I read to them out of his book. They laughed very 
heartily, and alTured me that although the ftory had fome found- 
ation in fadl the animal had been (hot through the body by a 
Jlell-roar or trap-gun, fet by a Hottentot, and was expiring under 
a bufh at the time they found it, when the valiant Frenchman 
difcharged the contents of his mufquet into the tyger and dif- 
patched him. The firft book which he publifhed, of his Travels 
to the Eaftward, contains much corred; information, accurate 
defcription, and a number of pointed and juft obfervations. 
The fale of the copy of this, encouraged the making of a fecond, 
the materials of which, flight as they were, feem to have chiefly 
been furniflied by the publication of an Englifli traveller, whom 
he pretends to corredt ; and, from an account of an expedition to 
the northward, fent out by the Dutch government of the Cape 
in fearch of a tribe of people reported to wear linen clothing. The 
fadl feems to be this : that he left Zwartland in July, travelled 
to the Orange river, and returned at the beginning of the fol- 
lowing December, at v;hich time he is conduding his readers 
to the northward, as far as the tropic. The inventive faculties 
of the Abbe Philippo, who is the real author of the work, fupplied 
what he conceived to be wanting in the traveller's remarks, 
and in the two above-mentioned publications. 
From 
