I20 CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 



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 Roggefeld, 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 steep slopes behind it, buried more or less in different 

 places in glistening white sand. 



The hills about the Cape district have all an exactly similar 

 appearance as far as their clothing with vegetation is concerned. 

 They look not unlike Scotch moorland, being covered every- 

 where with low bushes without trees. The vegetation has 

 a general brownish or greyish tint ; there are no bright greens 

 in the landscape. This arises from the fact that the plants 

 are nearly all evergreen, and have, as a rule, either narrow 

 needle-like leaves, like the pines, or leaves covered with grey 

 downy hairs ; in fact, all sorts of contrivances for resisting their 

 great enemy, the drought. 



The most characteristic feature, however, in the landscape 



