SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
21 
jumbled together with fidion and romance, that none but 
thofe who have follow^ed his fteps can pretend to feparate the 
one from the other. It is of little importance to mankind to 
know what exquifite amufement Monfieur Le Va'illant could 
derive from careffing his favourite ape, or to tell the world 
that " Kees was ftill a virgin !" It is fometimes allowable for 
a traveller to be " himfelf the hero of each little tale :" but 
Monfieur Le Vaillant is an hero on every occailon. To mag- 
nify his courage and his perfeverance, to detail the prudence 
of his meafures, and to defcribe in glowing language his fuffer- 
ings, were foothing to his vanity ; and, as moft readers know 
how to appreciate them, the florid defcriptions of his compiler 
can do little harm ; but when he endeavours to miflead the 
world on fubjeds that are important, and to imprefs falfe no- 
tions of the people and the country he pretends to delineate, 
he lays himfelf open to cenfure, and ought, in juftice to the 
public, to be expofed. 
With regard to his not having crolfed the Orange River, 
I confider the information of his beft friends, the Slabert fa- 
mily, to be decifive ; " he left Zwartland in July, travelled to 
" the Orange River, and returned in the beginning of the 
" following December." I may furely then be allowed to pro- 
nounce this part of his chart as a work of fancy, and his Kora^ 
quas^ Kabohiquas^ and HoofuanaSy as " creatures of the brain." 
By the firft he probably meant the Koras^ a tribe of Hottentots 
dwelling on the banks of the faid river, confiderably higher than 
the place where he vifited it ; and of whom he might have ob- 
tained fome account from the Naraaaquas j and his Hoofuams 
mightj 
