23 Jean de Lacombe
A translation of his MS account was published in London, 1937, as ‘A Compendium of the East ...’ It is so full of ridiculous statements that one cannot avoid the suspicion that the whole thing is a fake. According to it, he sailed in Losdune (flute* Loosduynen) on December 14, 1668: this date is correct by Hague codex 4389. He claims to have been in command of the soldiers on board: he certainly was no sailor, to judge from his statement that from ‘Cap Falso’ (Hanglip) ‘we pursued our course’ to Cape Agulhas and then entered Table Bay, on ‘August 22’, actually April 25, 1669 by the DR. Mis-statements then abound: ‘the water ... is indifferent ... a little trickle ... and even then it is not very good’; ‘a fortress of stone composed of four bastions’; ‘the Lions Head forms a promontory’ and has on it ‘a stronghold’ (the two-man signal-station); the Hottentot huts composed of ‘three or four branches of trees’; their cattle ‘strangled’ for food; the Hottentots as cannibals, ‘even telling us that they do not know of any better flesh than our own’; the Table Mountain unclimbable; ‘pigmies ... not even two feet in height.’ He gives the sailing as in October: actually May 12
by the DR.
Auteursrechtelijk beschermd