216                                HISTORY OF
 

CHAPTER VIIL
 

How the fort Goed Hoop was fearfully beleaguer^
ed—how the renowned Wouter fell into a pro¬
found doubt, and how he finally evaporated.

By this time my readers must fully perceive
what an arduous task I have undertaken—collect¬
ing and collating, with painful minuteness, the
chronicles of past times, whose events almost de¬
fy the powers of research—exploring a little kind
of Herculaneum of history, which had lain nearly
for ages, buried under the rubbish of years, and
almost totally forgotten—raking up the limbs and
fragments of disjointed facts, and endeavouring to
put them scrupulously together, so as to restore
them to their original form and connexion—now
lugging forth the character of an almost forgotten
hero, like a mutilated statue—now decyphering a
half defaced inscription, and now lighting upon a
mouldering manuscript, which, after painful study,
scarce repays the trouble of perusal.

In such case how much has the reader to depend
upon the honour and probity of his author, lest,
like a cunning antiquarian, he either impose upon
him some spurious fabrication of his own, for a
precious relick from  antiquity—or else dress up