1831.] CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. (>g 
The suspense, which had now become insufferable, was soon 
reheved by the cheerful exclamation from the larboard gangway, 
of " there he is ! there he is !" and the man was borne aft as one 
snatched from the very portals of death. It appears that he had 
been sent into the forechains, to clear ,the foresheet, as the sudden 
change of wind came on; and the ship rolling at the time very 
deep, he was washed from thence into the sea. Fortunately, he 
had done his work so well, by overhauling the sheet, that a bite 
had fallen near the water ; so that when the ship rolled again 
towards him he succeeded in seizing it, and but a moment elapsed 
before the welcome exclamation of " here he is ! here he is !" 
relieved the feelings of all. 
On the sixth of December, land was seen; and, before night, 
made out to be Table Mountain. On the following day, after a 
passage of thirty-one days from Rio, the Potomac came safely to 
anchor at Cape Town, near the southern extremity of the African 
continent, which stretches out into the sea, as if to interrupt all 
further progress to the east. The breeze, which had promised an 
anchorage on the evening of the preceding day, had died away 
with the setting sun; and during the night, the restless clouds 
flitting swiftly in different directions, indicated that the spirit of 
the tempest still resided in the neighbourhood of the cape. On 
the same afternoon salutes were exchanged between the Potomac 
and the fort on shore, and all hands seemed much delighted with 
their arrival once more in port. 
The peninsula of the Cape of Good Hope is a mountainous 
ridge, stretching nearly north and south for fifty or sixty miles, and 
connected on the east side, and near its northern extremity, with 
the main body of Africa, by a flat, sandy isthmus about ten miles 
broad, having Table Bay on the north of it, and False Bay on the 
south. The southern extremity of this peninsula, extending into 
the sea, with False Bay on the east, and the ocean on the south 
and west, is properly the " Cape of Good Hope," and is nearly 
the most southern point of Africa. We say nearly, because after 
doubling the cape from the Atlantic, the coast is found to incline 
southeasterly for about one hundred miles, when it suddenly 
changes to a northeasterly direction. The most southerly point 
of Africa is, therefore, a projection of the coast called Cape 
Agullus, extending a few leagues further into the Indian Ocean 
