Rondebosch. — Delightful Landscape. 201 



plain, intersected by long shady paths, the vistas terminating 

 with elegant villas built in the Dutch or English style. Here 

 are Cape waggons, drawn by ten to twenty oxen, side by side 

 with elegant two or four-horse carriages and densely-packed 

 omnibuses, such as one may see in Cheapside. We have now 

 arrived in the charming Rondebosch, a village that might 

 well aspire to the dignity of a town, chiefly inhabited as a 

 summer residence by the wealthier inhabitants of Cape Town. 

 The impression made by this beautiful road will never 

 be obliterated from the memory of any one who has ever 

 ridden over it in the spring. We were as much delighted 

 by the sight of this smiling and verdant landscape as we had 

 been depressed by the sandy plains of Simon's Bay. There, 

 extended in charming variety before the fascinated eye, lay 

 Table Bay with its ships, Cape Town, and the gigantic rocky 

 wall of the Table Mountain resting on its granite base, and 

 rising nearly perpendicular to an altitude of 3500 feet, toge- 

 ther with the Lion's Head and the Devil's Peak, The distant 

 background on the other side of the plain is bounded by the 

 precipitous face of high, rugged, and broken mountain walls, 

 the summits of which were covered with snow. 



Convenient and comfortable quarters were found in the 

 Freemasons' Hotel, situated in the Parade, a large square 

 planted with pines. Here, to our surprise, we met an Austrian, 

 attending as waiter, who had been driven by the wild waves of 

 the late revolution into the wide world, until he met with a 

 peaceful existence at the Cape of Storms ! 



