1812. 
DISAPPOINTMENTS. 
527 
sionaries ; and I therefore could not but naturally conclude that 
he really believed that a journey, such as I had planned, was 
neither so perilous, nor so impracticable, as it was now repre- 
sented to be. 
In the afternoon, the other missionaries called on me, for the 
purpose of adding arguments to the same effect as those which I 
had heard in the morning. 
Ath. On examining deeper into this affair, and coming to a 
fuller explanation with the people lately hired, I found it too true, 
that they were not by any inducement to be persuaded to go beyond 
the country of the Bachapins ; and that the understanding they had 
had with my own men, was, that it was not my intention to venture 
farther into the interior. 
I confess that, at first, I could not help giving way to some 
depression of spirits, the effect rather of anxiety, when I felt myself 
assailed on all sides by teazing obstructions, and my plans defeated 
in every quarter. 
5th, As the missionaries had told me that Klaas Berends was 
to set out, in the course of the week, for the Roggeveld, it struck 
me as practicable that Gert might be sent, under the protection of 
that party, back to Cape Towti, with a commission to my friends 
thereto hire men, and dispatch them with the utmost expedition to 
the Roggeveld, in order that they might be in time to cross the 
Bushman country in company with the men and horses which were to 
leave the colony on the first of May ; which, with the assistance 
of horses, and using all diligence, there would have been sufficient 
time for accomplishing. 
Satisfied with the practicability of this plan, I repaired directly 
to the village to communicate it to Mr. Anderson, and consult with 
him, in order to make the arrangements for carrying it into effect. 
But in an instant he threw cold water upon it, by informing me that 
Klaas would not take his departure within three weeks ; from which 
delay it followed, that there could not be time for my men to reach 
the Roggeveld by th lay appointed. He, however, as it proved, 
