"them or any other. To which may be added the practice of all men of all times and in all places "in the like cause, entitling their sovereigns to be governors where no government is already insti"tuted. Many more particulars might be alleged, "as the certain refreshing of your fleets quickly ac"quired out of your own means by plantation, and "to be hoped for from the Blacks, when there is a government established to keep them in awe. "The whale fishery besides persuades us that it "would be profitable to defray part of your charge. "The fruitfulness of the soil, together with the tem

per of the air, assures us that the Blacks, with "the time, will come in, for their ease, and of ne"cessity. Time will, no doubt, make them your "servants, and by serving you they will become "hereafter (we hope) the servants of God."

No further notice seems to have been taken by the British government of this possession, at that time; nor does it appear that any kind of interference or contravention was made by it when the Dutch East-India Company sent out Van Riebeck, in order to form a settlement there, in the year 1650. Till this period the English, the Portugueze and the Dutch had indiscriminately refreshed their crews at the Cape. The Portugueze, who were the first discoverers of the Southern extremity of the continent of Africa, at least in modern times, established no settlement nearer to it than the Banks of Rio Infanté, now the Great Fish River, and boundary of the Colony to the Eastward, which is nearly six hundred miles from the Cape of Good Hope; and this they soon abandoned for want of shelter for their shipping, which they afterwards found, farther to the Eastward, in the bay of De la Goa, still in their possession. At length, however, from the very fa

vourable representations of Van Riebeck, then a surgeon of one of the Dutch ships, the East-India Company came to a resolution to colonize the Cape; and since the first establishment to the present war, a period of near 180 years, it continued in their hands. The progress of the population and the extent of territory have been tolerably rapid. The former, like some of the provinces of North America, has nearly doubled itself in every twenty years. It was first settled in 1650 by a hundred male persons, to whom were shortly afterwards sent out, from the houses of industry in Holland, about an equal number of females; and the present population exceeds twenty thousand whites: many of these, however, have since been imported from Europe.

The difficulties that for a time impeded the extension of the settlement, were principally occasioned by the number of wild beasts of various kinds that swarmed in every part of the country. In the private journal of the founder of the colony it is noticed, that lions and leopards, wolves and hyænas, committed nightly depredations, for some time after the first establishment, under the walls of the fort. The opposition of the native Hottentots seems to have given them little interruption. They soon discovered the predominant passion of this weak and peaceable people for spirituous liquors, and that a bottle of brandy was a passport through every horde. With this and tobacco, iron, and a few paltry trinkets, they purchased a part of the country and of their stock of cattle, and then took the rest by force. A cask of brandy was the price of a whole district; and nine inches in length of an iron hoop the purchase of a fat ox. Deprived, by their passion for intoxicating liquors and baubles, of the only means of existence, the numbers of the natives be

gan rapidly to decline; and the encroachments of the settlers were in proportion to the diminution of the obstacles. Finding it unnecessary to limit the extent of their possessions, the policy of the Government kept pace with the propensity of its subjects to spread themselves wide over the country. It foresaw that a spirit of industry, if encouraged in a mild and temperate climate, and on a fertile soil, might one day produce a society impatient of the shackles imposed on it by the parent state. It knew, that to supply to its subjects the wants of life without the toil of labour or the anxiety of care; to keep them in ignorance, and to prevent a ready intercourse with each other, were the most likely means to counteract such a spirit. It granted lands, therefore, on yearly leases, at the small fixed rent of twenty-four rixdollars (not five pounds sterling) in any part of the country. A law was also passed, that the nearest distance from house to house was to be three miles, so that each farm consisted of more than five thousand acres of land, and consequently was rented at the rate of something less than a farthing an acre. From a scarcity of water, it frequently happened that many farms were at twice that distance from each other. No land was granted in property except in the vicinity of the Cape. As the Dutch advanced, the natives retired; and those that remained with their herds among the new settlers, were soon reduced to the necessity of becoming their servants.

No permanent limits to the colony were ever fixed under the Dutch government. The pastoral life that the peasantry of the remote districts at all times adopted, required a great extent of country to feed their numerous herds; and the imbecility and easy temper of the adjacent tribes of natives favoured

their avaricious views; and the government was either unwilling, or thought itself unable, to restrain them. Having no kind of chart nor survey, except of such districts as were contiguous to the Cape, it possessed a very limited and imperfect knowledge of the geography of the remoter parts, collected chiefly from the reports of the peasantry, fallacious often, through ignorance or design, or of those who had made excursions for their profit or pleasure, or from expeditions sent out by order and at the expense of government; and the object of these, it would appear, was with the view rather of carrying on a lucrative trade with the bordering tribes of natives, than to supply useful information respecting the colony. Attended with the parade of a military guard, surgeons, land-surveyors, burghers with waggons, oxen, horses, and Hottentots without number, not one of them has furnished a single sketch even towards assisting the knowledge of the geography of the country. The only persons who appear to have travelled with no other view than that of acquiring useful information, were the governor Van Plettenberg and the late colonel Gordon. These two gentlemen fixed, upon the spot, the boundaries of the colony, as they now stand, to the eastward. To complete the line of demarcation, through the heart of the country to the western shore, was one of the objects of the several journies that supplied the materials of the following pages. The chart that accompanies them, was undertaken and executed by the order of the Earl of Macartney, in the years 1797 and 1798, when these journies were made. It was constructed entirely from actual observations of latitude and of bearings, estimation of distances, and frequent angular intersections of remarkable points and objects.

the cultivated plant of India is now on trial. Different species of the cactus, the plant on which the cochineal insect feeds, grow just as well here as on the opposite continent. The tea-plant has long been in the country, but totally neglected. It is a hardy shrub, which when once planted is not easily eradicated; and the soil, the climate, and general face of the country, bear a strong analogy to those provinces of China to which it is indigenous. Three years ago a small coffee plant was brought from the island of Bourbon, and is now in full berry, and promises to succeed remarkably well; the sugar cane equally so. Flax will give two crops in the year; and hemp, called by the Hottentots Dacha, is produced in great quantities; not, however, for the purpose of being manufactured into cordage or cloth, but merely for the sake of the leaflets, flowers, and young seeds, which are used by the slaves and Hottentots as a succedaneum for tobacco. The dwarf mulberry grows here as well as in China; but the common silk worm is not in the colony. Several species of wild moths, however, spin their coccoons among the shrubby plants of Africa. Among these there is one species, nearly as large as the Atlas, and answers to the description of the Paphia of Fabricius, which feeds upon the Protea argentea, the witteboom or silver tree of the Dutch, and might probably be turned to some account by cultivation. Dr. Roxburgh is of opinion, that it is precisely the same insect which spins the strong silk known in India by the name of Tussach. The palma christi, from the seed of which is expressed the castor oil, and the aloe, whose juice produces the well-known drug of that name, are natives of the country, and are met with almost every where in great plenty; as is also the cape olive, so like in habit and appearance to the cultivated plant of Europe, that

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