AFRICA. . 109 
tind hence has arifen the name of Table given 
to it by mariners and travellers. Its fummit, 
however, as I have already faid, is far from 
being a plain. Interfered throughout by 
enormous cavities, it at the fame time appears 
rugged with ridges, eminences, and high rocks ; 
which, by their crumbling down and the 
changes they undergo, atteft how much they 
have loft their primitive form. Its longeft 
fide is that which looks tov*^ards the town* 
Not being provided with inftruments, it Vs^as 
impoffible for me to meafure the extent of It 
exadly* I hovv^ever attempted it by walking 
feveral times over it ; and I obferved that each 
time I went from the eailern to the oppofite 
weftern extremity, it required nearly twenty 
minutes: which certainly indicates a quarter of 
a league in length, at leaft. 
While employed in my meafarement, my 
good fortune rendered me a fpedator of an in- 
terefling phenomenori, which the curious have 
often fought to obferve on the mountain, but 
which does not always prefent itfelf to the eye 
of the beholder with the fame magnificence: 
I mean the foriii:itlon of one of thole Ibuth- 
eafterly fiorms, produced by the accumulation 
2 of 
