The party crossed the Orange, passed the hot springs now known as Warmbad, pushed along the western base of the Karas Mountains; and penetrated to the borders of Damaraland. Some valuable prizes were secured in the shape of several giraffes, animals that were among the rarities at the time. Governor Tulbagh sent the skin of one of these animals to Leiden, the first of its kind to be sent to Europe from South Africa. Hop did not succeed in reaching the country of the Damrocquas, as he was compelled to turn back owing to the loss of cattle and the failure of water. The Orange River, placed on the map from hearsay by the elder Van der Stel, was now definitely located, and a fair knowledge obtained of the sterile wastes of Great Namaqualand, and the mountainous region that lay to the north. Lieutenant William Paterson, a gifted botanist and explorer, next reached the Orange River; in company with Colonel Gordon, the Scotch Commanding Officer of the troops of the Dutch East India Company, and Jacobus van Reenen. “On the 17th of August, 1779,” says Paterson, “we launched Colonel Gordon’s boat, and hoisted Dutch colours. Colonel Gordon proposed first to drink the States’ health and then that of the Prince of Orange and the Company, after which he gave the river the name of the Orange River, in honour of that Prince.”[13] Up to this time the river had been known as the Braragul, the name given to it by the elder Van der Stel. We owe a debt to the gallant Gordon, who could hardly have found a more appropriate name for these yellow muddy waters; and as Pettman points out in his “South African Place Names,” this is the only royal name in the place names of the period. Le Vaillant next appears upon the scene. This romantic and picturesque traveller assures us that he journeyed “into the interior parts of Africa in the years 1783, 1784, and 1785,” leaving the house of his friend Mr. Slabert, near Saldanha Bay, in the middle of 1783; but, unfortunately, Le Vaillant was much given to romancing, and doubts have been thrown on the authenticity of his journeys. That he travelled somewhere in the regions north of the Orange River, “in search of rare birds and new hordes,” “suffering much from the reverberations of the sun,” seems clear from his descriptions of the country and people. His many adventures make delightful reading, and he was a wonderfully keen observer of objects of natural history.