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A Bosjeman. (Fac-simile of early engraving.) |
On the 12th of April, 1776, on his way back to the Cape, Sparrman heard that a large lake, the only one in the colony, had been discovered to the north of the Schneuwberg district. A little later, the traveller got back to the Cape, and embarked for Europe with the numerous natural history collections he had made.
About the same time, between 1772-1775, Thunberg, the Swede, whom Sparrman had met at the Cape, made three successive journeys in the interior of Africa. They were not, any more than Sparrman's, actual journeys of discovery; and we owe the acquisition of no new geographical fact to Thunberg. He did but make a vast number of interesting observations on the birds of the Cape, and he also ascertained a few interesting details respecting the various races of the interior, which turned out to be far more fertile than was at first supposed.
Thunberg was followed in the same latitudes by an English officer, Lieutenant William Paterson, whose chief aim was to collect plants and other objects of natural history. He penetrated a little further north than the Orange River, and into Kaffraria a good deal further east than Fish River. To him we owe the first notice of the giraffe; and his narrative is rich in important observations on the natural history, structure, and inhabitants of the country.
It is a curious fact that the Europeans attracted to South Africa by zeal for geographical discovery, were far less numerous than those whose motive was love of natural history. We have already mentioned Sparrman, Thunberg, and Paterson. To this list we must now add the name of the ornithologist Le Vaillant.
Born at Paramaribo, in Dutch Guiana, of French parents, who traded in birds, Le Vaillant visited Europe with them as a mere child, and traversed Holland, Germany, Lorraine, and the Vosges, on his way to Paris. It will readily be understood that this wandering life awoke in him a taste for travelling; and his passion for birds, early excited by the examination of private and public collections, made him eager to enrich science by descriptions and drawings of unknown species.
Now what country would afford the richest ornithological 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 29th 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 Vaillant 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 translation 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 personal qualities of the traveller, he gave to the narrative of the journey a boastful tone very prejudicial to it.