Volume 1

Travels into the interior of Southern Africa / [Sir John Barrow].

  • John Barrow
Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Travels into the interior of Southern Africa / [Sir John Barrow]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in his closet from recollection, otherwise errors of two and even three hun- dred miles in latitude, as we shall presently see, could not have happened. Thunberg, another Swede, travelled a great deal within the limits of the colony, and made many valuable additions to the discoveries of Sparrmann in the natural history of the country ; and although he describes, in an artless manner, objects as they presented themselves before him, and touches on a variety of subjects, yet his book, being made up of a collection of incom- plete and unconnected paragraphs whose juxta-position are sometimes whimsical enough, conveys neither accurate topography nor even a general idea of the colony. The work of our countryman Mr. (now lieutenant-colonel) Patter- son is amere journal of occurrences, with descriptions of a few subjects in natural history, some of which, at that time, were new ; but the informa- tion it contains, with regard to the extent and population of the colony, the character of the settlers and of the natives, is very slight; and he has republished the very defective map of Sparrmann, There are, also, two modern publications of travels made by Dutchmen. The one is by Hoppe, who attended an expedition that was sent from the Cape to the northward, in search of a nation that were reported to wear linen cloathing. This expedition made very little progress, on account of the want of water, and the failure of their cattle. The nation, in all pro- bability, was the Portugueze colony on the southern part of Angola ; or, perhaps, some seamen belonging to a whaler that had touched at Angra Pequena, a small bay in latitude 26° 36’ south, might have been seen by the Damaras, or the Great Namaquas. ‘The other publication is a journal of Van Reenen, who, with some of the Dutch peasantry, proceeded through that was wrecked on the coast a little to the southward of De la Goa Bay. This journal was published by Captain Riou in England, with the addition of a map, constructed from the materials contained in the journal, and the VOL. Ie a
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