AFRICAN EXPLORERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 87 
logical harvest ? The districts near the Cape had been 
explored by botanists, and by a scientific man who had 
made quadrupeds his chief study ; but no one had as yet 
traversed them to collect birds. 
Le Vaillant arrived at the Cape on the 29tli of 
March, 1781, after the loss of his vessel in an explosion, 
with nothing but the clothes he wore, ten ducats, and 
his gun. 
Others would have been disheartened, but Le Vail¬ 
lant did not despair of extricating himself from his 
painful position. Confident in his skill with the gun 
and the bow, in his strength and agility, as well as in 
his skill in preparing the skins of animals, and in 
stuffing birds so that their plumage should retain all its 
original gloss, the naturalist had soon opened relations 
with the wealthiest collectors of the Cape. 
One of these, an official named Boers, provided Le 
Vaillant with every requisite for a successful journey, 
including carts, oxen, provisions, objects for barter, and 
horses. Even servants and guides were appointed, free 
of cost, to the explorer. The kind of researches to which 
Le Vaillant intended to devote himself influenced his 
mode of travelling. Instead of seeking frequented and 
beaten tracks, he tried to avoid them, and to penetrate 
into districts neglected by Europeans, hoping in them 
to meet with birds unknown to science. As a result he 
may be said always to have taken nature by surprise, 
coming into contact with natives whose manners had 
not yet been modified by intercourse with whites ; so 
that the information he gives us brings savage life, as it 
really is, more vividly before us than anything told us 
by his predecessors or successors. The only mistake 
made by Le Vaillant was the entrusting of the trans¬ 
lation of his notes to a young man who modified them 
to suit his own notions. Far from taking the scrupulous 
care to be exact which distinguishes modern editors, he 
exaggerated facts; and, dwelling too much on the per¬ 
sonal qualities of the traveller, he gave to the narrative 
of the journey a boastful tone very prejudicial to it. 
After three months’ stay at the Cape and in its 
