of England brought from time to time by the female passengers bound to India, from whom they may be said to

"Catch the manners living as they rise.”

Neither are the other sex, while boys, deficient in vivacity or talent; but for want of the means of a proper education, to open their minds and excite in them a desire of knowledge, they soon degenerate into the common routine of eating, smoking, and sleeping. Few of the male inhabitants associate with the English, except such as hold employments under the government. This backwardness may be owing in part to the different habits of the two nations, and partly, perhaps, to the reluctance that a vanquished people must always feel in mixing with their conquerors. No real cause, however, of complaint or disaffection, could possibly be alleged against the English government at the Cape. No new taxes have been imposed since the conquest; but, on the contrary, some of the old ones have been diminished, and others modified. The demand and value of every production of the colony have very considerably increased, while the articles of import have fallen in their prices. More than 200,000 rixdollars of arrears in rent of land have been remitted to the inhabitants by the British government, as well as 180,000 rixdollars of dubious debts. They have preserved their laws and their religion, both of which continue to be administered by their own people. They enjoy as great a share of rational liberty as men, bound to each other, and to the whole, by the ties that a state of society necessarily imposes, could possibly expect, and much greater than under their former government. Property has been secure in every instance, and has been raised

to double its former value: and none has the loss of life of any friend or relation to lament at the time of, or since, the capture. Their paper currency, fabricated by the government in order to get over a temporary distress, but which it had never been able to take out of circulation, bore a depreciation of 40 per cent. and a silver dollar was scarcely to be seen. The former is now at par with specie, and not less than two millions of the latter have been sent from England and thrown into circulation. Every person enjoys his share of the general prosperity. The proprietor of houses in town has more than doubled his rent; and the farmer in the country, where formerly he received a rixdollar for each of his sheep, now receives three. Four years of increasing prosperity, of uninterrupted peace and domestic tranquillity, have been the happy lot of the inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope.

Scenes very different from these would, in all probability, have been exhibited here, had not the English taken possession of the colony at the very time they were ripe for execution. Jacobinism, or subversion of all order, had industriously been propagated by the ill-disposed, among the ignorant part of the colonists, both in the town and country districts. A weak and timid government, instead of crushing it in its infancy, suffered it to grow to maturity. Its principal officers were insulted with impunity. The Landrosts, or Chief magistrates of the police in the country, were driven out of their districts, and the farmers refused to pay the rents of the loan lands. Proscribed lists were actually made out of such as were first to suffer; and the slaves were anxiously waiting for the signal of a general emancipation. Even after the capture,the people of the distant district of Graaf Reynet had indignantly

H

used, and then turned away, the landrost and the clergyman that had been appointed and sent thither by Sir James Craig, who immediately ordered a detachment of light infantry with a squadron of dragoons to march to the Drosdy. Intimidated at the news of such a measure, they sent a supplicating letter, signed by some of the principal inhabitants, praying that the troops might be recalled, and promising good order and obedience to the laws.

About this time (May 1797) the Earl of Macartney arrived at the Cape to take charge of his government; and one of his first measures was that of sending back to Graaf Reynet the same landrost whom they had expelled, in order to convince them that the British government, though lenient and just in its proceedings, was not less firm in carrying them into execution. In addition to the political motives which induced his excellency to send his own secretary in company with the landrost, he thought it at the same time a fair opportunity for supplying some information respecting the distant parts of the colony, and the countries bordering upon it, hitherto so little visited, and so imperfectly known. His instructions, on this occasion, embraced a variety of objects, as well for the scientific inquirer as for the promotion of the public benefit and should the following pages be found to contain nothing conducive to the ends proposed by these instructions, the fault must rest solely on the person who had the honour to receive them. As facts locally collected, they have been thought worthy to be laid before the public. The observations and reflections upon the facts are such as occurred when the impression they made, on the spot, was strongest on the mind. Since that time they have undergone but little alteration, and are there

fore considered as sketches only, to be filled up and finished by future travellers: and they are submitted to the public more with the consciousness of truth than of any literary attainments in the writer.

CHAP. II.

Sketches on a journey from The Cape of Good Hope, across the Karroo, or Arid Desert, to the Drosdy of Graaff Reynet.

THOUGH the rains usually commence about the beginning of May, in the present year the whole month of June was a series of fine pleasant weather; unfavourable, however, to the husbandman, and not less so to the traveller, who may have before him a long journey over the uninhabited deserts of Africa, and must necessarily make daily use of the same cattle, either in the team, or to travel along with him as relays. The established mode of performing such long journies, in this colony, is in covered waggons drawn by bullocks. The carriages made for this purpose are very expensive; but they are well constructed to bear hard service, to run light, and are sufficiently commodious and spacious to contain all the necessaries that may be wanted on a long journey, and also a cot, or matrass, for sleeping upon. Such a carriage is commonly drawn by a team, or span, as it is termed in the colony, of ten or twelve oxen. Each day's journey is called a skoff, and the length of these is generally regulated by local circumstances, being from five to fifteen hours. It is customary also to travel in the night, that the cattle may have the advantage of the day to graze, or rather to brouse, among the shrubbery; for many parts of the country, particularly after a series of dry weather, produce not a single blade of grass. The