320 
SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
tury 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 ex- 
hibit much more than those exaggerations and 
mistakes, 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 tra- 
vellers. Its limits were then comparatively nar- 
row 'y and the tribes, who have since been either 
extirpated or reduced to slavery, were then un- 
broken and independent. This might naturally 
produce a discrepancy between his reports and 
theirs ; and it gives a considerable value to his 
narrative, as painting the manners of savage com- 
munities which are no longer in existence. 
The colony, it appears, did not, at this time, 
extend beyond the narrow plain, included be- 
tween the sea and the two mountain chains of 
the Zwarteberg and the Bokkeveld ; nor was 
there an accurate 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 Na- 
maquas, and even of the deserts of sand which 
lie beyond them. On the east the limit appears 
to have been Mossel Bay. Kolben's map pre- 
