SOUTHERN AFRICA. 301 
those of the living. In the interment of the dead, the Dutch 
have no kind of service or ceremony. 
Close to the usual landing-place of Plettenberg's bay have 
lately been erected a neat and spacious dwelling-house; a 
magazine for the reception of timber, two hundred feet in 
length ; and a strong and commodious building for the recep- 
tion of troops. The intention of the Dutch government was 
to form an establishm.ent here, for the purpose of deriving 
from it a supply of limber, to answer their demands for that 
article in the Cape. Strong prejudices, however, have long 
been entertained against the Cape timber, though perhaps 
without sufficient grounds. Few woods will stand the effects 
of alternate exposure to heavy rains, dry winds, and a scorch- 
ing sun ; where such exposure has beeji guarded against, one 
of the slightest of the woods, the Geelhout, has been known 
to remain for more than a century, without shewing a,ny 
symptoms of decay. 
In the forests, near this bay, a creeping plant grows in great 
plenty, whose interior bark, drawn off in fibres of forty or 
fifty feet in length, seems to be an excellent substitute for 
hemp. The Hottentots twist these fibres into very strong 
cordage. The bark of another native plant, a species of Hi- 
biscus, made very excellent hemp. The leaves of the plant 
were deeply divided, like those of the Cannabimis, a species 
of the same genus, cultivated in India, for the purpose of ob- 
taining hemp from the bark; but the stem of the African 
Hibiscus had small spines, and the flower was large, and of 
a sulphureous yellow color. 
