Visit to the actual Cape of Good Hope. 257 



whence the Novara was already preparing to sail. The 

 several weeks* stay of the frigate at the little settlement of 

 Simon's Bay, together with a certain quantity of repairs, had 

 called forth a most unwonted briskness of business. Amid 

 so circumscribed a population, the sudden influx of more 

 than three hundred additional consumers, with their varying 

 wants, speedily made itself perceptible in every class of the 

 community, the more so as most of the heavy stores for the voy- 

 age were bought here, so that the sum set in circulation during 

 these few weeks amounted to some £2,000. At the same time 

 the Expedition were readily permitted to contribute a mite 

 towards building the Catholic Church in Simon's Town, and 

 to present some priests' garments, altar cloths, and church 

 fittings, which had been intended by the Austrian Govern- 

 ment for distribution among four Catholic Missionaries in 

 the various quarters of the globe visited. 



Some members of the Expedition also set out on an excursion 

 some thirty nautical miles, to where the peninsula of the Cape 

 stretches out to the real Cape of Good Hope itself — a longer, 

 more difficult, but also more interesting expedition, which gave 

 fresher impressions, and conveyed a pretty accurate and more 

 just idea of the physical features of the Peninsula of the Cape, 

 its vegetation, zoology, and geological structure, than could be 

 obtained by a cursory examination, of the natural features of a 

 large portion of South Africa. For whoever has clambered up 

 the torn, broken, rocky masses of Table Mountain, worn out 

 and eaten away by the atmosphere, and has scrambled among 



