CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 139 



washed directly by the sea, but at the head of False Bay a wide 

 extent of flat sandy plain extends right across the head of the 

 bay and round the foot of Table Mountain northwards. This 

 plain is known as the " Cape Flats." 



The Cape of Good Hope is at the tip of the promontory, 

 and is not, as I used to think, the southernmost point of Africa. 

 Cape Agulhas to the eastward is far south of it. 



The mountains are entirely composed of a hard metamor- 

 phic sandstone, passing in many places into a white quartzite 

 which is disposed in perfectly horizontal strata. This perfect 

 and remarkably uniform horizontality of the rock-beds is the 

 cause of the peculiar form of the Cape land surface and forms 

 the chief feature in the landscape. 



Everywhere the mountains rise by a series of steps with 

 flat intervening surfaces. Table Mountain itself derives its 

 name from its horizontal flat top, bounded by perpendicular cliffs 

 rising straight up from the flats ; and the same formation being 

 continued for hundreds of miles inland, the country continually 

 rises in steps forming successive table lands, known as the 

 Karroo Plains, about 2,000 feet above sea level, and beyond these 

 the Eoggefeld, 3,500 feet in elevation. 



We steamed into False Bay past the Cape Point lighthouse 

 up to Simons Bay, where is the dockyard. The long range 

 of mountains extending from Hangklip along the eastern shore 

 of False Bay in the district known as Hottentots' Holland, seen 

 in the distance was strikingly beautiful, with soft and delicate 

 outlines, and lighted up with beautiful pink and violet tints as 

 in an Italian landscape. I was astonished at the beauty of the 

 scenery, as I had been led from the accounts of Simons Bay 

 to expect nothing but a desert of sand. 



Simons Bay lies on the east side of the Cape promontory, 

 and about half way up the west side of False Bay. There is a 

 dockyard, houses for the dockyard officials and workmen, a 

 small barrack, a naval hospital, a small town of one street 

 stretching along the shore, and a few houses scattered on either 

 side of the road which leads in one direction towards Cape Town, 

 in the other towards Cape Point. The town stands on a narrow 

 tract of land composed of talus from the hills which rise in 



