SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
SIS 
Peter Kolben ; which, after being for nearly half 
a century received as perfectly authentic, has for 
some time past fallen into total discredit. This 
last judgment is perhaps somewhat too severe. It 
will not, perhaps, on examination, appear to exhi- 
bit much more than those exaggerations and mis- 
takes, to which a traveller is always liable at the 
first view of an unknown country. He saw the 
colony, besides, in a very different state from that 
in which it has been viewed by recent travellers. 
Its limits were then comparatively narrow ; and 
the tribes, who have since been either extirpated 
or reduced to slavery, were then unbroken and in- 
dependent. This may have produced a discre- 
pancy between his reports and theirs ; and it gives 
a considerable value to his narrative, as painting 
the manners of savage communities, which are no 
longer in existence. 
The colony, it appears, did not, at this time, ex- 
tend beyond the narrow plain, included between the 
sea and the two mountain chains of the Zwarte- 
berg and the Bokkeveld ; nor was there an ac- 
curate knowledge of any thing farther. On the 
north, the boundary appears to have been formed 
by the Berg, or Mountain River, which falls into 
the Bay of St Helena. Pretty accurate notices, 
however, had been obtained of the Namaquas, and 
even of the deserts of sand which lie beyond them. 
On the east, the limit appears to have been Mossel 
