In February 1684, Schrijver, then a sergeant in the Dutch East India Company and stationed at the Cape, headed a reconnaissance expedition into Namaqualand.
Schrijver was involved in salvage operations of the Nossa Senhora dos Milagros which had run aground on the night of 16 April 1686 at Struisbaai near Cape Agulhas.
Very little of any value was returned to the governor, but rumours of theft of the treasure soon started circulating, substantiated by the attempted sale of items to Cape Town residents and the unearthing in Olof Bergh's garden of a box holding objects from the wreck.
The mission lasted more than three months and reached as far east as the present-day town of Aberdeen, returning on 10 April 1689 with about a thousand head of cattle from trading with a Xhosa-Khoi tribe and quite amazingly having suffered no loss of life.
Early travelers were obliged to cross the Outeniqua Mountains near present-day Mossel Bay so as to avoid the near-impenetrable ravines and forests to the east.
Schoongezicht's history goes back to 1692 when Simon van der Stel, Governor of the Cape, granted 17 hectares of land to freed slaves Manuel and Antonia of Angola, Louis of Bengal and Isaac Schryver.
In the 1920s a Mrs. English bought the estate, restored the buildings, and improved the vineyards, renaming it Lanzerac after a wine-growing region in France.