This Latter Is Twelve Or Thirteen Leagues
From The Cape, Nearly As In The Text, While That Now Called Saldanha Bay
Is Twenty-Seven Leagues Distant.
The near neighbourhood of False bay is
incontestible evidence of the fact, being only three leagues distant;
while our modern Saldanha bay is more than twenty leagues from False bay
as the crow flies.
- E.]
In former time, Saldanha bay was very comfortable to our navigators,
both outward and homeward-bound, yielding them abundance of cattle and
sheep, by which their weak and sick men in former voyages were easily
recovered and made strong. These used to be brought down by the savage
inhabitants, and sold for mere trifles, as an ox for a piece of
hoop-iron fourteen inches long, and a sheep for a much shorter piece. It
is now quite otherwise; but, from my ignorance of the language of the
natives, I have not been able to ascertain the cause. Whether it may
have proceeded from the too great liberality of the Dutch, spoiling
the trade, which indeed they are apt to do in all places where they
come, as they only consider their present occasions; or whether it may
have been that the cattle formerly brought down in such abundance were
plunder taken from each other in wars then raging, which made them
greedy of iron to make heads for their lances and darts, which now by
peace or reconciliation they have little need of. However this may have
been, all our bribes or contrivances should only procure at this time
four old lean cows, for which they would not take iron in payment, but
thin pieces of copper six inches square.
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