SOUTHERN AFRICA. 13 
^\'hereas they grow out, and form a part, of it. It has also 
been said that their composition was totally different from 
the rocks that are found in ilne neighbouring mountains, which 
led a naturalist in Europe to observe, that these immense 
blocks of granite had probably been thrown up by volcanic 
explosions, or by some cause of a similar nature. This is 
not by any means the fact ; the sand-stone strata of the Table 
Mountain rest upon a bed of primiieval granite, and an infi- 
nite number of large stones are scattered at the feet of the 
Mountains along the sea-coast of the peninsula from the Lion's 
Head to the true Cape of Good Hope. All these are pre- 
cisely of the same nature, and the same materials, as the 
pearl and the diamond ; that is to say, they are aggregates of 
quartz and mica ; the first in large irregular masses, and the 
latter in black lumps resembling shorl : they contain also cu- 
bic pieces of feltspar, and seem to be bound together by 
plates of a clayey iron stone. All the stones of this descrip- 
tion appear to have been formed round a nucleus, as by the 
action of the air and weather they fall to pieces in large con- 
centric laminse. The Pearl is accessible on the northern side, 
but is nearly perpendicular on all the others. This sloping 
side is more than a thousand feet in length, and the per- 
pendicular altitude about four hundred feet above its 
base on the summit of the mountain, where its circum- 
ference is a full mile. Near the top it is quadrisected by 
two deep clifts, crosing at right angles, in which are grow- 
ing a number of beautiful aloes, besides several cryptoga- 
mous and other plants. A great part of the slanting side is 
covered with a species of green lichen. Down the perpendi- 
cular sides are immense rifts, as if the mass had been torn 
