388 TRAVELS IN 
with regard to the latter, I am inclined to think it must have 
been brought upon the summit of the mountain by the native 
Hottentots, as to a place of safety, when Bartholomew Diaz, 
or some of the early Portugueze navigators, landed first in 
this country. Others, however, who have seen and examined 
the mass, are of opinion that it must have been placed in its 
present situation at a period long antecedent to the discovery 
of the Cape of Good Hope by Europeans. Be that as it 
may, the resemblance it bears to part of an anchor, with the 
Neptunian appearances of various parts of Southern Africa, 
which are particularly striking in the formation of the Table 
Mountain, press strongly on the recollection the beautiful, 
observation of the Latin poet : 
Vidi ego, quod fuerat quondam solidlssima tellus 
" Esse fretum. Vidi factas ex sequore terras, 
** Et procul a pelago conchas jacuere marinas 
*< Et vetus inventa est in montibus anchora summis." 
The face of places, and their forms, decay 
And that is solid earth that once was sea : 
** Seas in their turn, retreating from the shore,. 
** Make solid land what ocean was before ; 
« Far from the shore are shells of fishes found, 
*' And rusty anchors fix'd on mountain-ground," 
It may be observed, by the way, that Mr. Dryden has re- 
versed the idea of the poet in the first couplet of his transla- 
tion, and continued the same in his second, making only 
the land to gain on the sea, instead of contrasting it with 
the opposite effect of the sea encroaching on the land. Ob- 
serving this to a son of my ingenious and learned friend 
