Le Vaillant judged rightly, that on proceeding on such an expedition it would be imprudent to have any associate of equal rank. Few men are calculated by nature to become travellers, though every person whose constitution will endure fatigue may perform a journey; but there are still fewer who are gifted with those happy qualities which render men desirable companions in an undertaking whence fame is expected to be derived. Some, from feebleness of purpose, desert you almost at the outset, and, to conceal their own pusillanimity, represent you in their coteries as feeble, or selfish, or impracticable; others, more mischievous still, proceed so far that they cannot return, but, clinging to your skirts, contrive on every trying occasion to impede your movements, or cast a damp upon your energies; while a third class, too brave to feel alarm, too consistent to shrink from an enterprise begun, too honest to misrepresent you, will yet thwart your designs through obstinacy, or through the pardonable but fatal desire to follow a plan of their own. For these reasons our traveller, though solicited by many who would have gladly borne him company, steadily refused to admit of an associate, and determined to proceed on his journey alone. His preparations being at length completed, he took leave of his friends, and departed from Cape Town on the 18th of December, 1781. Whatever be the natural condition of man, his mind never so powerfully experiences the emotions of delight as when, escaping voluntarily from the restraints of society and civilization, he finds himself his own master, and trusting to his own prowess for protection, on the virgin bosom of the earth; for of all the enjoyments which Heaven bestows upon mankind perfect liberty is the sweetest. Something of this Le Vaillant now tasted; for, although still within the pale of the laws and the purlieus of government, he saw himself on the way to the freedom of the woods, and partook by anticipation of those pleasures which to the savage are, perhaps, an ample equivalent for the gratification which letters and refinement afford.