198 Voya(/e of the Novara. 



of which belongs to Roman Catholics), and two tolerably 

 large hotels. 



It is hardly possible to conceive any town occupying a more 

 dreary dismal site, with the exception^ perhaps, of some of the 

 Peruvian settlements on the west coast of South America. 

 While the eye, below this row of houses, beholds nothing but 

 granite rocks thickly strewn with shells, the main street is 

 overhung by steep sandstone rocks, which, despite the marvel- 

 lous richness of the blooming flowers, that well repay the re- 

 searches of the naturalist, have a naked gloomy aspect, \dewed 

 from a distance, and are environed right and left by waste 

 patches of white sand. 



The favourite walks of this small place seem to be along the 

 shore, or on the road to Cape Town, into the soft sand of which 

 the foot of the traveller is continually sinking. A number of 

 ladies and gentlemen whom we met walking appeared to be some- 

 what surprised at the unusual appearance of an Austrian man- 

 of-war, the flag of which was gaily fluttering in the gloomy bay. 

 The residents in Simon's Town, amounting to about 800 souls, 

 are mostly Malays, descendants of those numerous compulsory 

 emigrants, who, during the period of Dutch ascendency at the 

 Cape, had been transported from Java and other islands of the 

 Indian Archipelago, owing to the want of labour or for political 

 causes. For the Dutch used to send to the Cape Colony, as a 

 place of banishment, many wealthy and influential Malay fami- 

 lies, by whom the first germs of Mohammedanism were intro- 

 duced into South Africa. It would even seem that the religious 



