SOUTHERN AFRICA. 65 
called the Green Pointy is lower, much lower, than the iflhmus, 
and muft confequently, at the fame time, have alfo been covered 
with the fea. Now there is not one fingle appearance to denote 
that fuch has ever been the cafe. The Lion's Hill declines in 
a gentle and uninterrupted line into the plain, an appearance 
which would not have taken place had it ever been beaten by 
the billows of the ocean. This is further obvious by attending 
to the fide of the plain next to the water, where (the loofe ma- 
terials being fwept away by the violence of the furge) the rocky 
ridges of fchiflus and, in places, of granite, run like fo many 
artificial piers, fometimes to the diftance of a mile, into the fea. 
The whole flicre of the peninfula is fcolloped out in the fame 
manner, demonftrating an encroachment, rather than a retreat, 
of the ocean. The two ridges alfo of the ifthmus that bound 
the two bays, one to the northward and the other to the fouth- 
ward, are the higheft parts of its furface, and feem to have ferved 
the purpofe of flopping the progrefs, rather than marking the re- 
treat, of the fea. 
Indeed, from all the obfervations I have been able to make 
on the fouthern coaft of Africa, I am decidedly of opinion, that 
the whole of L'Aguillas Bank, ftretching from Cape Point 
acrofs the entrance of Falfe Bay to the mouth of Rio Infante 
or the Great Fifh River, and to the thirty-feventh parallel of 
fouthern latitude, has at one time formed a part of the conti- 
nent. The very manner in which it rounds from this extreme 
point of South Africa into the main land, the materials that 
compofe it, the indentations of the coaft, all formed in one di- 
rection, and the manner in which the fragile rocks break oiF 
VOL. II. K perpen- 
