Of the Vicinity of the Cape of Good Rope. 235 



14. Specimen of the flinty fragments often found in the roads 

 over the plains, very injurious to the unshod hoofs of the bullocks. 

 [This is a fragment of milk quartz, verging in its appearance to- 

 wards common opal.] 



Among the rest is a shell, or collection of shells, from the sea- 

 shore near by. There are beds of shells deposited with the soil 

 upon the side of the Lion's Head, at least one thousand feet above 

 the sea, but I have not had time to chmb it and obtain some for you. 



Last of all, but I cannot think it least, I send you one of the pears 

 from George Schmit's pear-tree, from the mission station, Genaden- 

 dal. This good Moravian was the first missionary ever sent by Pro- 

 testants to the heathen in Africa. About one hundred years ago he 

 came out, settled at Genadendal, eighty miles from this, and planted 

 his pear-tree. For a long time this was his church and school room. 

 It has been very fruitful, a fit emblem of the cause he thus first be- 

 gan in this country, the cause of missions. It was originally a very 

 wide-spreading tree. The last year it bore twenty-five bushels of 

 fine large pears ; but it is withering, and will ere long die. Schmit 

 went home to remove some difficulties under which his mission la- 

 bored, was most cruelly hindered from returning by the government, 

 and at last was found dead in his closet, at the hour he had appoint- 

 ed to pray for the Hottentots. Genadendal is a most interesting 

 station. It has a population of twelve or fourteen hundred Hotten- 

 tots, and six or seven hundred are members of the church. (There 

 is an interesting history of it by Montgomery. It has been publish- 

 ed in one of the numbers of the African Repository.) 



As to our mission, we hope soon to be proceeding on our way. 

 The CafFre war which has disturbed the country, is drawing to a 

 close. We wait to know our course of duty ; wide fields are every 

 where opened and opening, and through this section there are not 

 known any obstacles towards penetrating even to the interior of Af- 

 rica. This, the cause of religion and humanity demands. 



P. S. — May 19. — I have this afternoon taken a walk to the gra- 

 nite rocks which come in sight between the Lion's Head and Table 

 Mountain. 



15, I should think tl)is mass was nearly one third the thickness of 

 all the others put together which are above it, perhaps eight hundred 

 feet. Table Mountain seems to be built upon it. [This is a coarse 



