CAPETOWN 147 



where, on the first visit in March 1840, he tells his cousin, 

 Mrs. Fleming : 



We went to Simon's Bay near to Cape Town, where. the 

 Naval dockyard and stores are ; as we lay there for upwards 

 of a fortnight, many excursions were made to Cape Town, 

 distant twenty-one miles, and as we always went on horse- 

 back or in a gig, we had our full proportion of accidents ; 

 little damage was however done, except to the horses and 

 vehicles, for though some say that sailors are bad drivers, 

 I am quite of the contrary opinion, for landsmen generally 

 break their heads or limbs and the horse gets off, while you 

 never almost hear of a sailor riding or driving without an 

 accident ; that accident never affects him further than his 

 pocket, an instance of sagacity in the members of the Naval 

 profession too often overlooked, while their modesty is so 

 great that they never own to meeting with an adventure 

 of the sort, which" would infer that they had the address to 

 rescue themselves when their animals are killed and vehicles 

 smashed. 



On the second visit he writes more fully to his mother 

 (April 9, 1843) : 



The cliffs of the Mountain are here the grandest for effect^ 

 I ever saw, at least I always thought so ; perhaps from 

 coming off the sea, they quite frown down on the road 

 though 3000 ft. overhead ; the worst of them is that they 

 are essentially sterile, and there is a something in the look 

 of the empty and silent water courses which the verdure 

 and beauty of the slope below will not make up for. I 

 quite felt that I should have heard the murmur of the many 

 distant cataracts, which ought to have poured down each 

 little gully. One of the first houses on the road is called 

 Feldhausen and was of great interest to us, as there Sir John 

 Herschel 1 lived and set up the telescope with which he 

 catalogued the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. It is 

 a very nice white house with a long avenue of dark Fir trees, 

 which give it anything but an inviting appearance ; near 



1 Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) continued and expanded the astronomical 

 work of his father, Sir William. From the beginning of 1834 he spent four 

 years at the Cape mapping the southern heavens as h^e, had the northern. 



