32 TRAVELS IN 
but almonds, walnuts, and cbesnuts, all of good quality, are 
plentiful, as are also mulberries of a large size and excellent 
flavor. 
The market is likewise tolerably well supplied with most of 
the European vegetables for the table, from the farms that lie 
scattered along the eastern side of the peninsula, in number 
about forty or fifty. On some of these farms are vineyards 
also of considerable extent, producing, besides a supply for 
-the market of green and ripe grapes and prepared raisins, 
a^bout seven hundred leaguers or pipes of wine a-year, each 
containing 154 gallons. Of these from fifty to a hundred con- 
sist of a sweet luscious wine, well known in England by the 
name of Constantia, the produce of two farms lying close un- 
cler the mountains about mid-way between the two bays. 
The grape is the Muscatel, and the rich quality of the wine 
is in part owing to the situation and soil, and partly to the 
care taken in the manufacture. No fruit but such as is full 
ripe, no stalks are suffered to go under the press, precautions 
that are rarely taken by the other farmers of the Cape. 
The vinej^ards, gardens, and fruiteries are divided into small 
squares, and inclosed by cut hedges of oaks, quince trees, or 
myrtles, to break ofi^ the south-cast winds of summer, which, 
from their strength and dryness, are found to be deleterious to 
vegetation ; but the grain is raised on open grounds. The pro- 
duce of this article on the peninsula is confined chiefly to barley, 
which, in this countrj", is preferred to oats for the feeding of 
horses. None of the common flat-eared barley has yet been 
introduced, but that hexangular kind onl}^ is known, which in 
some parts of England is called beer, and in others big. Corn 
