230 - Topography, Scenery, Geology, ^-c 



Art. VI. — Remarhs on the Topography, Scenery, Geology, ffc, 

 of the vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope ; in a letter to the 

 editor from Rev. George Champion, a Missionary In Southern 

 Africa—dated Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, May 18, 1835. 



TO PROF. SILLIMAV. 



\ 



7 



Dear Sir, — As a very small tribute of regard for the instructions 

 once given me,*! send you these specimens of African mineralogy. 

 I regret that I could not send you larger specimens; but in my 

 walks and rides I have been so situated that I could not carry them. 

 I regret too that 1 have not more time to devote to this interesting 

 study, being, as you know, directly engaged in other, and to me 

 more engrossing subjects. 



Beino^ detained here by. unforeseen circumstances from our field, 

 three of us early took an opportunity of ascending Table Mountain. 

 The ascent is gradual from the town for at least two miles. The 

 ascent of the rest of the three thousand five hundred and eighty-two 

 feet, is at an angle of about fifty degrees. As you approach it, the 

 perpendicular walls, perfectly level at the summit, and stretching along 

 for a distance of two miles, to compare great things with small, some- 

 what like the Palisades upon the Hudson, rise up before you like the 

 battlements of some huge fortress. At first, you think it impossible to 

 climb it ; but on proceeding, you enter a ravine, which leads you at 

 once behind one of the projecting cliffs of the mountain : the town is 

 out of sight, walls of rock rise up on either side to the clouds, and be- 

 fore you is, to appearance, an almost perpendicular path, some parts o 

 which are to be climbed upon the hands and knees, while at the end 

 of it the walls of rock seem to converge to a width just sufficient lor 

 one or two to pass at once. We reached that spot in two and a hal 

 hours, having enjoyed the advantage of the cool of the morning. 



And then what a scene ! in a northerly direction lay Cape Town, 

 with a population of twenty-five thousand, appearing as if seen 

 through a magnifying glass in a museum ; its church steeples , i 

 blocks of white-washed, flat-roofed houses, contained within the 

 squares of streets, all intersecting each other at right angles ; its pa- 

 rade ground, fringed with a triple row of firs ; its park of oaks, a roi 

 long; and the numerous verdant spots in the suburbs, with "^^_"' 

 las of gentlemen — all giving an air of coolness to the town. ^ 

 harbor seemed like a neatly defined basin, containing twenty or thirty 



♦ Mr. Champion was educated in Yale College. 



