Francis Le Vaillant

Originally published in volume 19, Birds of Western Africa, Part II.

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Francis Le Vaillant, a celebrated traveller and ornithologist, was born in the year 1753 at Paramaribo, the chief town in Dutch Guiana, where his father, a rich merchant and a native of Metz in France, held at that time the office of consul.

The passion for foreign travel, which he evinced at a very early age, was imbibed, as he himself informs us, chiefly from the example of his father, who had visited many parts of the world in course of his commercial negociations. His taste for fowling, which the extensive forests in that country enabled him to gratify, even when a boy, to the utmost limit of his wishes, was likewise acquired from his father.

When only ten years old, he was brought to Holland; soon afterwards, he was removed with the family to France; he then spent two years in Germany, and seven in Lorraine. During that period his principal amusement was bird-shooting, but it was not pursued as a mere recreation. It turned his attention to the study of ornithology, by leading him to observe the character and habits of the feathered tribes. He likewise accustomed himself to stuff the various species which fell under his notice, until by degrees he became a proficient in that art.

In 1777 some accidental circumstance brought him to Paris, where he had an opportunity of inspecting the numerous cabinets of natural history in that city. Not satisfied with examining the inanimate forms of the many strange and beautiful birds he had seen in these collections, he conceived an irresistible desire of visiting, for the purpose of further observation, the countries where they were to be found in their native state.

Africa, which was then much less known to European science than it is now, appeared to him to be that quarter of the world best calculated to increase his stock of new information, as well as to rectify old errors, in that peculiar department which was the great object of his journey. France and England were then at war; but this did not in the slightest degree damp the enthusiasm of M. Le Vaillant; he embarked at the Texel on the 19th December 1780, and arrived at the Cape of Good Hope on the 29th of March 1781. In order to collect as much new information as possible, he proceeded in one of the Dutch Company’s vessels, which were then taking their departure from Saldanha Bay; and it was while he sailed on board this ship that the fleet was attacked by an English squadron. Unfortunately the vessel which carried the whole of his effects and travelling materials was blown into the air; leaving him entirely destitute in that distant country, beset with native savages on the one hand, and a hostile armament on the other. He says,

My only resource was in my fowlingpiece, with only ten ducats in my purse, and the light dress which I wore.

In this perplexing dilemma, without knowing whither to betake himself, or what steps to adopt, he had the good luck to meet with an unexpected friend in Colonel Slaber, who received him as his guest, and treated him with the kindliest hospitality. M. Von Boers, secretary for the colony, likewise took a warm interest in his fate, and became a valuable benefactor.

After having spent nearly three months at the Cape, or in the neighbouring districts, adding occasional specimens to his ornithological stock, M. Le Vaillant determined to prosecute his journey farther to the eastward. In general he did not penetrate far into the interior, but kept along the coast; he made an excussion, however, into Caffraria as far as the 30th degree of longitude, and almost the 29th of latitude. His reception by the native tribes was friendly; but as hostilities were then declared between them and the colonists, his progress was interrupted, and he was obliged to return by a more northern route across the mountainous regions of Sneeuwe and Cambedon to the Cape, which he reached in safety after an absence of about sixteen months.

This first excursion, however, did not altogether satisfy his curiosity; he undertook several others even into more distant regions, and at length formed the project of traversing the whole African continent.

On the 15th of June 1783, he set out from the Cape and directed his course towards the north. This second journey was much more troublesome and fatiguing than the first. The greater part of his equipage, which consisted of oxen, perished in consequence of the excessive aridity of the country through which he passed; another part of his train he was compelled to abandon on the left or south bank of the Orange river. In these discouraging circumstances, and with only a small retinue of Hottentots, who had faithfully accompanied him since his outset, he prosecuted his enterprise, advancing into regions then wholly unknown to Europeans, and taking as his guides those successive hordes of savages through whose territories he wandered, and whose friendship he had the good fortune to propitiate by the frankness and affability of his manners.

But the farther he proceeded, the more did he become convinced that his original design was impracticable. At length he arrived among the Housuanas or Bushmen, who subsisted by plunder, and whose very name spread terror among all the adjacent tribes. Happily for our traveller he succeeded in conciliating their good will; and judging from their hardy and daring character, he conceived the idea that with their assistance he might be able to accomplish the bold enterprise which he had so long meditated. But this illusion he soon found himself obliged to renounce; and after having prosecuted his ornithological researches among them as far west as the 14th degree, and north to the tropic of Cancer, he resumed his journey towards the Cape, which he reached, not without escaping innumerable perils, within sixteen months after his departure.

His health having suffered from fatigue and the effects of the climate, he determined on returning to Europe. Accordingly, on the 14th of July 1784, he embarked for Holland, and in a few months landed at Flushing. In January, the following year, he repaired to Paris, where his time and attention were entirely engrossed in arranging the materials and ornithological observations he had collected in his travels, and in preparing his journals for publication.

At that unfortunate period the French capital was the bloody scene of those revolutionary storms which were then preparing to spread devastation and ruin over the Continental kingdoms. Obscure and peaceful as were the occupations of Mons. Le Vaillant, he did not escape the calamities of that terrible era. The jealous rivalry and hatred of contending factions fixed upon. him as an object of suspicion. He was thrown into prison in the year 1793, and must inevitably have added another to the thousand victims of the guillotine, had not the overthrow of the notorious Robespierre paved the way for his liberation. To the downfal of that sanguinary tyrant he owed the preservation of his life.

Quitting these wretched scenes of turbulence and assassination, he retired to a small property which he possessed at La Nouè, near Sezanne, and which became his favourite residence during the remainder of his life. In this agreeable retirement, his time was divided between the composition of his works and the gratification of his inextinguishable passion for bird-shooting, which led him to make frequent excursions into the fields and woods in his vicinity. Here he spent the last thirty years of his life, seldom leaving his retreat unless when occasionally obliged to visit Paris for the purpose of superintending the printing of his works. He died on the 22d of November 1824, at the age of seventy-one.

M. Le Vaillant wrote a considerable number of volumes, the greater part of which were devoted to the illustration of his favourite department of Natural History. The first work which he published was entitled “Travels in the Interior of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope.” It appeared in 1790 at Paris, in 1 vol. 4to., or 2 vols. 8vo., with engravings. His next publication was “A Second Journey into the Interior of Africa, by the Cape of Good Hope, in 1783–84–85,” which also appeared at Paris in 1796, in 2 vols. 4to., embellished with maps and figures.

As has often happened with travellers and navigators, who are generally better qualified to make discoveries than to write books, M. Le Vaillant was under the necessity of employing the pen of an amanuensis, M. Casimir Varon, to revise and amend the style of this second publication. Varon was himself a traveller and a poet; and it was very currently believed at the time that he had performed the task of editing M. Le Vaillant’s Second Journey. This, however, is a mistake, and the error has been satisfactorily explained. Being a foreigner by birth, and having spent the years of his boyhood among the forests of Guiana, Mons. Le Vaillant never had a very pure or classical acquaintance with the French tongue. The early age at which he visited Africa, and his long separation from all European intercourse, tended still more to obliterate his recollections of the language, which in fact he had nearly altogether forgotten. And although he afterwards recovered his knowledge of it, so far as to speak it with facility, yet it was hardly to be expected from one in his circumstances that he could write it with elegance or correctness. It was to remedy these defects alone that he engaged the pen of a stranger to revise his manuscripts, and take charge of them while passing through the press. There is nothing in this substitution of the preliminary aid of a friend that can be deemed discreditable to the memory of either party; and it was to this extent and no more that the services of M. Varon were rendered. The incorrectness of style here adverted to is perceptible in the other works on Natural History published by M. Le Vaillant, as well as in the letters which he wrote to his friends.

These deficiencies, however, are but trifles, and cannot in a scientific point of view derogate from the merits of the author. His travels are written in a spirited and agreeable manner; they are rather meagre of events, because his wanderings were chiefly across deserts and mountains, which do not in general afford a very rich harvest for detail; nevertheless, he has contrived to incorporate with his narratives a variety of most interesting particulars. His minuteness is sometimes more amusing than important; but what he relates of his monkey, Kees, stands in no need of the apology which he has thought it necessary to record on the subject.

Some writers have reproached our traveller with vanity, especially with regard to his shooting exploits, which he is accused of introducing too often upon the scene, and to the results of which he is alleged to attach too much consequence. These little peculiarities, however, as well as his occasional indications of self-importance and professional enthusiasm, may be accounted pardonable infirmities in a man who had made so many personal sacrifices to enlarge the bounds of Natural Science, by bringing home several rare specimens from the unexplored deserts of Africa. The same excuse may be urged in vindication of the whimsical compliments which he pays to savage life at the expense of civilized society. His views, however, of men and manners are liberal, generous, and humane; and he never fails to speak with gratitude of the services he received, or the simple attentions he experienced, even in the kraals of the Hottentots.

Certain travellers, among others Barrow and Lichtenstein, who visited the same regions at a subsequent period, have called in question some of his statements, especially as having mentioned. the names of tribes that are no longer found to exist. But it is quite clear that both parties may be correct. A few years would be sufficient to work a considerable change in the state of society in a country inhabited by hordes of wandering savages; and it is neither impossible nor improbable that between the year 1782, of which M. Le Vaillant speaks, and 1797, the period referred to by Mr. Barrow, some of these migratory tribes might have been dispersed, and their very names entirely forgotten.

In other respects, his relations as to the fierce and implacable hatred between the colonists and the natives, are corroborated by future travellers. The Rey. John Campbell of Kingsland Chapel, near London, who twice visited South Africa as a missionary, mentions that he saw, near the Raven mountains, a female who recollected perfectly of M. Le Vaillant having sojourned in her house. Campbell says, indeed, that our traveller sometimes mixes too much of the romantic in his narratives; but he admits that he has described with great accuracy the manners and habits of the Hottentots. Monsieur Le Vaillant was the first that made the giraffe known in France, the descriptions of which before his time were very imperfect. The one which belonged to the collection of the king was brought by him from Africa. To him also his countrymen were indebted for the discovery of a great number of mammiferous animals, insects, and particularly new species of birds. He was likewise the first European writer that took notice of that singular protuberance or deformity, a tergo, peculiar to some of the African hordes, of which a specimen was afterwards exhibited in Europe in the celebrated Hottentot Venus.

The personal appearance and characteristic habits of some of these tribes are very graphically described by our author. Speaking of the Hottentots, he says,

A physiognomist or modern wit would assign to the Hottentot, in the scale of being, a place between a man and the ouran-outang. I cannot, however, consent to this systematic arrangement; the qualities which I esteem in him will never suffer him to be so far degraded; and I have found his figure sufficiently beautiful, because I have experienced the goodness of his heart. It must indeed be allowed that there is in his features something peculiar, which in a certain degree separates him from the generality of mankind. His cheek-bones are exceedingly prominent, so that his face being very broad in that part, and the jaw-bones extremely narrow, his visage continues still decreasing, even to the point of the chin. This configuration gives him an air of lankness, which makes his head appear very much disproportioned, and too small for his full and plump body. His flat nose rises scarcely half an inch at its greatest elevation, and his nostrils, which are excessively wide, often rise higher than the ridge of his nose. His mouth is large and furnished with small teeth, well enamelled, and perfectly white. His eyes, beautiful and open, incline a little towards the nose like those of the Chinese; and to the sight and touch, his hair has the resemblance of wool; it is very short, curls naturally, and is black as ebony.

Their general character M. Le Vaillant delineates in favourable colours. After mentioning their natural timidity, their phlegmatic reserve, and profound indifference to the affairs of life, he says,

they are the best, the kindest, and most hospitable of men. Whoever travels among them may be assured of finding food and lodging; and though they will receive presents, they never ask for any thing. If the traveller has a long journey to accomplish, and if they learn that there are any hopes of his soon meeting with other hordes, the tribe which he is about to quit will supply him with provisions as far as their circumstances allow, and with any thing else necessary for continuing his journey until he reach the place of his destination.

The wild Hottentots, he says, are remarkably fond of hunting, and in this exercise they display great dexterity. Besides gins and snares, which they place at convenient spots to catch large animals, they lie in wait for them also, attack them as soon as they appear, and kill them with their poisoned arrows, or with their assagays, a kind of long lance, which is generally a feeble and not very dangerous weapon in their hands. They pay little attention. to agriculture, and are more addicted to pasturage and the rearing of sheep and oxen.

Another tribe of Southern Africa mentioned by M. Le Vaillant are the Gonaquas, which he thinks are of a mixed breed between the Cafirs and the ordinary Hottentots. Their dress resembles that of the latter; but as they are taller, they make their mantles of the skins of calves instead of sheep. Several of them wear, hanging from their necks, a piece of ivory or very white sheep-bone, and this contrast of hue produces a good effect and is very becoming. When the weather is hot, the men lay aside every part of their dress that is superfluous, and retain only what they term their jackals, which is a small girdle made of the skin of the animal so called, tied round their middle. The women are fonder of dress than the men, and employ greater care in adorning their persons. They wear a kross or mantle like the latter, but the apron which conceals their sex is larger than that of the Hottentots. Girls below the age of nine go entirely naked.

The two hues for which they show the greatest fondness are red and black. The former is composed of a kind of ochrey earth, which they mix and dilute with grease; it has a strong resemblance to brick-dust, or tiles reduced to powder. Their black is nothing but soot, or the charcoal of tender wood. Some women are content with painting the prominence of their cheeks, but in general they daub over the whole body in compartments, varied with some degree of symmetry; and this part of their toilette requires no small length of time to complete. These decorative materials are always perfumed with the powder of the bowghou, which is not very agreeable to the smell of a European; but it has the advantage over our rouge and pastes, of not being pernicious to the skin or injuring the lungs; and the female Hottentot, who is unacquainted with amber, musk, or benzoin, never knows what it is to be oppressed with vapours, spasms, or headache. The men never paint their faces; but they use a preparation made of both colours mixed, to pain the upper lip as far as the nostrils. Young girls sometimes favour their lovers so far as to apply this paint for them under the nose: and on this point they display a kind of coquetry which has a powerful influence over the heart of the enamoured swain.

Of the Cafirs M. Le Vaillant remarks, that they are taller than the Hottentots of the colonies, or even than the Gonaquas, although they greatly resemble the latter; but are more robust, and possess a greater degree of pride and courage. Their faces are more agreeable, with sparkling and expressive eyes. They are much tatooed, but do not disfigure themselves by daubing their eyebrows; so that if we set aside our prejudice with regard to colour, there are many women among them who might be thought handsome by the side of a European lady. They wear cloaks or krosses made of the skins of calves or oxen, which reach to the feet. or ornaments and finery they care very little, not even wearing copper bracelets; their aprons, like those of the Gonaquas, are bordered with small rows of beads—the only vanity which they exhibit Wives, instead of bringing dowries to their husbands, are usually purchased with cattle. When the bargain is adjusted, the chief of the tribe publicly gives the nuptial exhortation, by desiring the bride to be a dutiful and industrious helpmate, and recommending the bridegroom to labour zealously for the support of his family, not forgetting to remind him to pay his taxes, and provide an occasional entertainment for his chief.

The Travels of M. Le Vaillant have been translated into most of the European languages. Of his scientific works, we may mention his “Natural History of the Birds of Africa,” which was published in Paris in 6 vols. 4to. between the years 1796 and 1812. His “Natural History of Parroquets” was published in 1801–5 in 2 vols. 4to., and his “Natural History of the Birds of Paradise” appeared at the same time, also in quarto. He produced one or two other works on his favourite subject of ornithology, which are not so well known to the English public as the preceding. His drawings are distinguished for their fidelity to nature, as he had seen in their native habitats almost every bird which he describes. They were executed under his own eye by an eminent artist, M. Barraland. His observations on the character and habits of the various species of which he treats, are often extremely curious, and always interesting. He was an enemy to systems, although he recognised the existence of distinct families as clearly defined by nature. Although that branch of science has made great advances since his time, it cannot be denied that he made important contributions to it; and his works still maintain a high rank, in the esteem of our best Naturalists, in that peculiar department to which his life and labours were most assiduously devoted.