The presence of the Dutch in South Africa did not lead to great explorations. Such journeys as were made were chiefly parallel to the coast. In 1685 Commander Van der Stel explored Namakwaland to within a very short distance of the Orange river; but it was some 60 years later before that river was actually discovered by a Boer elephant hunter. Its discovery was made known scientifically by an expedition under Captain Hop in 1761. This expedition obtained several giraffes, which were sent home by Governor Tulbagh, and were the first to reach Europe. In 1777 Captain Robert Jacob Gordon, a Scotchman in the service of the Dutch East India Company, discovered the Orange river at its junction with the Vaal. Subsequently Captain Gordon, with Lieutenant William Patterson, an Englishman, made a journey overland from the Namakwa country to the mouth of the Orange river, which they ascended for 30 or 40 miles. They christened what the Dutch had hitherto called the “Great (Groote) river” the “Orange river,” out of compliment to the Stadhouder. There is also a rumour that two Dutch commissioners, Truster and Sommervill, went on a cattle-purchasing expedition in 1801 beyond the Orange river, and penetrated through the Bechuana country to the vicinity of Lake Ngami. Fired by the news of African discoveries, Portugal awoke from one of her secular slumbers in 1798—as she similarly awoke in 1877—and despatched a Brazilian, Dr Francisco José Maria de Lacerda, to the Zambezi, to attempt a journey across Africa from East to West. The results of this first scientific exploration of Central Africa have been touched on in Chapter IV. It may be sufficient to mention here that Dr de Lacerda travelled up the Zambezi to Tete, and from Tete north-westwards to the vicinity of Lake Mweru, near the shores of which he died. He had been preceded along this route by two Goanese of the name of Pereira. In the beginning of the 19th century two half-caste Portuguese named Baptista and Amaro José crossed Africa from the Kwango river, behind Angola, to Tete on the Zambezi. In 1831 Major Monteiro and Captain Gamitto repeated Dr de Lacerda’s journey from Tete to the Kazembe’s country, near Lake Mweru; and in 1846 a Portuguese merchant at Tete named Candido de Costa Cardoso, claimed to have sighted the southwest corner of Lake Maravi (Nyasa).