26o Voyage of the Novara. 



seemed on this occasion much more home-like and habitable. 

 All of us, indeed, carried with us in our breasts the most cor- 

 dial and agreeable reminiscences of the Cape of Good Hope. 



In spite of many drawbacks and deficiencies of physical 

 requisites, which oppose the rapid development of its natural 

 resources, Cape Colony possesses in its healthy climate its 

 valuable indigenous products, and its free political institutions, 

 a guarantee for its perhaps gradual, but on that account more 

 substantial, progress. It is a favourable specimen of a pros- 

 perous agricultural colony able to maintain itself, whose 

 inhabitants, seeking in the peaceable cultivation of the soil 

 their sole reward, are exposed to none of those ruinous reverses 

 of fortune, which make life in those lands that are rich only in 

 a metallic currency so stormy and uncomfortable, and render 

 their future so problematical. 



A colony, which already employs annually, in its commerce 

 all over the world, a thousand ships, which has a trade valued 

 at nearly £2,000,000 sterling, and before long will be in a 

 position to export 30,000,000 lbs. of wool a year, besides an 

 unlimited quantity of wines already in great demand, whose soil, 

 owing to its prolific nature, returns, under human cultivation, 

 crops of one hundred-fold, while in its unexplored districts 

 as many additional vegetable and mineral treasures lie unavail- 

 able as yet — such a colony carries in itself the germs of a 

 splendid development into a great and most enviable future. 

 Provided with laws of a most liberal scope, and institutions 

 corresponding to the spirit of our times, which leave each 



