SUPPL. VOL. I. Part I.
dred groves, which are naturally variegated, and each more agreeable than another. Auteniqua.
The author proceeding forwards about two days journey, arrived at a bay known to navigators by the name of the Bay of Agoo, but called by the colonists Blattenberg's Bay, from its having been visited some time before by a Governor Blattenberg, who ordered his name, together with the year and day of his arrival, to be engraven on a stone column. This bay is a little beyond the limits of the country called Auteniqua; but it is not foreign from the purpose of this article to insert in this place our traveller's account of it, and of the country around it.
The bay itself, he says, is very spacious, and has a sufficient depth of water for the largest vessels. The anchoring ground is sure, and boats can sail to a beautiful part of the shore, which is not confined by the rocks, as they are all there detached from one another. By advancing a league along the coast, the crews would arrive at the mouth of a considerable river called the Quenr-Boom, where they would find water. Refreshments might be procured from the inhabitants of the environs; and the bay would supply them with excellent fish, with which it abounds.
This bay is one of those places where government might establish warehouses and repositories for timber; and it is for this reason that we have introduced it to notice in this article. The forests around it, says M. Vaillant, are everywhere magnificent, and the trees could be more easily cut down than anywhere else; for it is not to steep mountains that one must go for wood, as at Auteniqua; it is here ready at hand; and during the fine monsoon might be transported to the Cape with little trouble and no risk. The inexhaustible and fertile lands in the neighbourhood of the bay, if once cultivated, would produce abundant crops, and draw together a great number of intelligent planters, on account of the ready communication which they would have with the Cape. In a word, the Company, continues he, have nothing to do so much for their own interest as to form here a proper establishment. To the general profits of such an institution, would be added those of individuals, which could not fail to be of great importance. They might, for example, cut down a certain tree called stinking wood, and export it to Europe, where it would undoubtedly be soon preferred to mahogany and every other kind of wood employed by cabinet makers.
The Hottentots, who in scattered kraals inhabit this delightful country, our author describes as a faithful, gentle, and rather timid race. He affirms, that they have no religious impressions whatever, nor any notion of superior powers who govern the world. But this, if not a wilful falsehood dictated by the philosophy of France, is probably a mistake arising from his scanty knowledge of their language, and total ignorance of the meaning of their religious ceremonies. His great master, as well as the master of his feet, Lucretius, might have taught him, that fear, if not a better principle, will generate the notion of superior beings in the minds of of savages; and from fear, by his own account, the inhabitants of Auteniqua are far from being free. He likewise affirms, and seems to consider it as much to their credit, that this race of gentle beings, so far from being
Automaton. being a prey to the passion of jealousy (as other travellers have represented the Hottentots in general), are so obliging, as to lend their wives to travellers who visit them, and that they actually accommodated his Hottentots in this way. Auteniqua, as laid down in M. Vaillant's map, lies between and of south latitude, and between and of east longitude; and his rout through the country was from south-west to north-east, or nearly so.