i64 TRAVELS IN 
man, they were encouraged to hope could not be very 
distant. 
In this state of things t]ie British fleet appeared before the 
bay. The governor called an extraordinary council to de- 
liberate upon the steps to be taken in this critical juncture. 
Some were inclined to throw the settlement under the protec- 
tion of the British flag, but the governor and the greaternum- 
ber, influenced, and perhaps intimidated, by the citizens, 
listened to the absurd proposals of resisting the English force 
and, if successful, as they doubted not they would be, of set- 
ting up immediately a free and independent republic of their 
own. They talked of the thousands and ten thousands of 
courageous boors who, on the signal of alarm being given, 
would flock to the Batavian standard ; so ignorant were they 
of the nature and the number of their valiant countrymen. The 
burgher cavalrt/, a militia of country boors, who were then in 
the vicinity of the town, were immediately called out, and a 
few hundreds reluctantly obeyed the summons. The con- 
duct and the cowardice of this undisciplined rabble, whose 
martial spirit had hitherto been tried only in their expeditions 
against the native Hottentots, might easily have been fore- 
seen. A few shot from the America ship of war, striking the 
rocks of Muisenberg, soon cleared that important pass, and 
caused the regular troops to retreat to Wynberg, which is a 
tongue of land projecting from the east side of the Table 
Mountain, and about eight miles from Cape Town i the Hot- 
tentot corps still loitered about the rocks and did some mis- 
Chief but, being speedily dislodged, fell back also upon 
