SOUTHERN AFRICA. 37 
maintain the living principle, or regions covered with that 
brow^n fickly hue in which an angry poet, with more wit than 
juftice, has drefled the furface of that part of our ifland to the 
northward of the Tweed : 
" Far as the eye could reach no tree was feen, 
" Earth clad in ruflet, fcorn'd the lively green." 
To perfons arriving from a long fea voyage, and immediately 
-meeting with p^iofi: of the European, and fome of the tropical, 
fruits, the Cape muft, no doubt, appear a moft delightful fpot ; and 
fuch perfons, making a fhort ftay, and loaded with refrefliments 
for the fucceeding part of their voyage, are apt to extol and to 
exaggerate the pleafantnefs and the value of the country. Bo- 
tanifts, alfo, and florifts, are fo taken up with the beauty, and 
vaft variety, of flowering fhrubs and bulbous rooted plants, 
that they are apt to overlook the fandy furface out of which 
they grow, entirely bare of any kind of grafs, and deftitute of 
that verdant turf which is fo diftinguifhing a feature of our 
happy ifland. Beautiful as the heaths of the Cape mofl: un- 
quefl:ionably are, yet thofe who have been accufl:omed to look 
at them nurtured in the green-houfes of England, where all or 
moft of the numerous fpecies, and variety of the fpecies, are 
colle<fted into one groupe, and arranged fo as to convey the 
moft ftriking effed, would be greatly difappointed if they ex- 
peded to meet with them. In the fame ftate of perfedion, in 
their native foil. They would here behold whole trads of 
country covered, in the fame manner as our heath lands, with 
one or two fpecies, fliattered and jagged by the force of the 
E 2 winds, 
