46 TRAVELS IN 
dren are accustomed to make with cards. The shrubbery on 
the sandy isthmus looks like dots, and the farms and their 
enclosures as so many lines, and the more-finished parts of a 
plan drawn on paper. 
On the swampy parts of the flat summit, between the 
masses of rock, are growing several sorts of handsome shrubs. 
The Pencea mucronata, a tall, elegant, frutescent plant, is pe- 
culiar to this situation ; as is also that species of heath called 
the Phi/sodes, which, with its clusters of white flowers glazed 
with a glutinous coating, exhibits in the sunshine a very 
beautiful appearance. Many other heaths, conuiion also on 
the plains, seemed to thrive equally well on this elevated 
situation as in a milder temperature. The air on the sum- 
mit, in the clear weather of winter, and in the shade, is gene- 
rally about fifteen degrees of Fahrenheit's scale lower than 
in Cape Town. In the summer season the difierence is much 
greater, when that well-known appearance of the fleecy cloud, 
not inaptly called the Table Cloth, envelopes the summit of 
the mountain. 
A single glance at the topography of the Cape and the ad- 
jacent country will he sufficient to explain the cause of this 
phenomenon which has so much the appearance of singularity. 
The mountainous peninsula is connected with a still more 
mountainous continent, on which the great ranges run parallel 
to, and at no great distance from, the sea-coast. In the heat 
of the summer season, when the south-east moonsoon blows 
strong at sea, the water taken up by evaporation is borne in 
