2$ TRAVELS IN 
to give in to the police officers, and which is called the Op- 
gaqff' \isti it appears that, notwithstanding the comparative 
short distance of every part of the Cape district from a market^ 
not one fifteenth part of the surface is under any kind of 
tillage. As by the Cape of Good Hope is usually meant 
the Southern peninsula of South Alrica, on which Cape 
Town is situated, I shall be more particular in the descrip- 
tion of this district than of the rest. 
Cape Town is built with great regularity, the streets being 
all laid out with a line. It is the only assemblage of houses in 
the Colony that deserves the name of a town ; they are gene- 
rally white-washed, and the doors and windows painted green ^ 
are mostly two stories in height, flat-roofed, with an ornament 
in the centre of the front, or a kind of pediment ; a raised 
platform before tlxe door with a seat at each end. It consists 
of 1145 dwelling-houses, inhabited by about five thousand 
five hundred whites and people of color, and ten thousand 
blacks. It is surrounded with remarkable mountains on every 
side, except the North, on which it is washed by a spacious 
bay. 
Many of the streets are open and airy, "with canals of wa- 
ter running through them, walled in, and planted on each side 
with oaks; others are narrow and ill paved. Three or four 
squares give an openness to the town. In one is held the 
public market ; another is the common resort of the peasantry 
with their waggons from the remote districts of the colony ; 
and a thirdj near the. shore of the bay, and between the town 
1 
