576 



CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 



June, 1836. 



four, six, and eight horses in hand, go trotting about 

 the streets. I have as yet not mentioned the well-known 

 Table Mountain. This great mass of horizontally stratified 

 sandstone rises quite close behind the town to a height of 

 3500 feet: the upper part forms an absolute wall, often 

 reaching into the region of the clouds. I should think so 

 high a mountain, not forming part of an extensive platform, 

 and yet being composed of horizontal strata, must be a rare 

 phenomenon. It certainly gives the landscape a very pecu- 

 liar, and from some points of view, a grand character. 



June 4th. — I set out on a short excursion to see the 

 neighbouring country, but I saw so very little, that I have 

 scarcely any thing to say. I hired a couple of horses, and a 

 young Hottentot groom to accompany me as a guide. He 

 spoke English very well, and was most tidily dressed ; he wore 

 a long coat, beaver hat, and white gloves ! The Hottentots, 

 or Hodmadods as old Dampier calls them, to my eye look 

 like partially bleached negroes. They are of a small stature, 

 and have most singularly-formed heads and faces: the 

 temple and cheek-bones project so much, that the whole 

 face is hidden from a person standing in the same side 

 position in which he would be enabled to see part of the 

 features of a European. Their hair is very short and 

 curly. 



Our first day's ride was to the village of the Paarl, 

 situated between thirty and forty miles to the N.E. of Cape 

 Town. After leaving the neighbourhood of the town, where 

 white houses stand as if picked out of a street and then by 

 chance dropped on the open country, we had to cross a 

 wide level sandy flat, totally unfit for cultivation. In the 

 hopes of finding some hard materials for making a road, the 

 sands had been bored along the whole line to the depth of 

 forty feet, but without any success. Leaving the flat, we 

 crossed a low undulating country, thinly clothed with a 

 slight green vegetation. It was not the flowering season, 

 but even at this time of the year there were some very 

 pretty oxalises and mesembryanthemums, and on the sandy 



