9^ TRAVELS IN 
and purchasing for them necessaries in return. A boor in the 
Cape can do nothing for himself. Unaccustomed to any 
society but those of his family and his Hottentots, he is the 
most awkward and helpless being on earth, when he gets into 
Cape Town, and neither buys nor sells but through his agent. 
Tiie emancipated slaves and people of color are generally ar- 
tificers ; many of them support their families by fishing. Dur- 
ing the whole year there is great plenty and variety of fisli 
caught in Table Bay, and cheap enough for the poorest fami- 
lies to make a daily use of. 
The leading pleasures of the inhabitants are chiefly of the 
sensual kind, and those of eating, drinking, and smoking pre- 
dominate ; principally the two latter, which, without inter- 
mission, occupy the whole day. They have little or no relish 
for public amusements. They love not any kind of exercise 
but that of dancing. A new theatre was erected, but plays 
were considered to be the most stupid of all entertainments, 
%vhether the performance was English, French, or German. 
To listen three hours to a conversation was of all punishments 
the most dreadful. I remember, on one occasion only, to 
have observed the audience highly entertained ; this was at an 
old German soldier smoking his pipe ; and the encouragement 
he met with in this part of his character was so great, and his 
exertions proportioned to it, that the whole house was .pre- 
sently in a cloud of tobacco smoke. 
J- 
There is neither a bookseller's shop in the whole town, nor 
SI book society. A club called the Concordia has lately aspired 
