SOUTHERN AFRICA. 7 
Thej are founded on observation, and are these : the plain 
that skirts the Lion's Pturap, and which is washed by Table 
Bay and the sea, usually called the Green Point, is lower, 
much lower, than the isthmus, and must consequently, at the 
same time with it, have been covered with the sea. Now 
there is not one single appearance to denote that such has 
ever been the case. The Lion's Hill declines in a gentle and 
uninterrupted line into the plain, an appearance which could 
not have taken place had it ever been beaten by the billows 
of the ocean. This is further obvious by attending to the 
side of the plain next to the water, where (the loose materials 
being swept away by the violence of the surge) the rocky 
ridges of schistus, and, in places, of granite, run like so many 
artificial piers, sometimes to the distance of a mile, into the 
sea. The whole shore of the peninsula is scolloped out in 
the same'manner, demonstrating an encroachment, rather than 
a retreat, of the ocean. The two ridges also of the isthmus 
that bound the two bays, one to the northward and the other 
to the southward, are the highest parts of its surface, and 
seem to have served the purpose of stopping the progress, ra- 
ther than marking the retreat, of the sea. 
Indeed, from all the observations I have been able to make 
on the southern coast of Africa, I am decidedly of opinion, that 
the whole of L'Aguillas Bank, stretching from Cape Point 
across the entrance of False Bay to the mouth of Rio Infante 
or the Great Fish River, and to the thirty-seventh parallel of 
southern latitude, has at one time formed a part of the conti- 
nent. The regular sweep in which it rounds from this ex- 
treme point of South Africa into the main land, the materials 
