SOUTHERN AFRICA. 5 
the northward is much more sandy, barren, and thinly inha- 
bited, than to the eastward, in which direction it^eems to in- 
crease in beauty and fertility with the distance from the 
Cape. 
None of the mountains of the Cape settlement possess 
much of the sublime or the beautiful, but the approach to the 
bases in some parts, and the entrance of the Kloofs, are aw- 
fully grand and terrific ; sometimes their naked points of solid 
rock rise almost perpendicularly, like a wall of masoniy, tO' 
the height of three, four, and even five thousand feet, gene- 
rally in the same form as the Table Mountain on the Cape 
peninsula ; sometimes the inclination of the strata is so great 
that the v/hole mass of mountain appears to have its centre 
of gravity falling without the base, and as if it momentarily 
threatened to strew the plain with its venerable ruins ; in other 
places where the lower fragments have given way, they are 
irregularly peaked and broken into a variety of fantastic 
shapes. Such is the general outline of the territory that is 
comprehended under the name of the Cape of Good Hope- 
As the best soil for vegetable growth is unquestionably pro- 
duced from a decomposition of vegetable matter, it amounts 
to a pleonasm to say, that the richest soil will invariably be 
found where vegetation is most abundant and most luxuriant ; 
the soil and the plant acting reciprocal h'^ as cause and effect. 
Hence, if climate were entirely out of the question,, we should 
have an infallible criterion for determining the quality of soil 
in any country by the abundance or scarcity, the luxuriance 
or poverty, of the native plants. Measuring the soil of the 
