STAUTLIXG INFOIIMATION. 
51 
which, if applied to our own navy, would render it both 
eflective and comfortable. 
Table Mountain has been drawn so often both by pen 
and pencil, and Cape Town, which slumbers at its base, 
is so well known, that I shall pass lightly over both and 
hasten on to other regions. 
We met Mr. Holmes at the appointed hour, enjoyed a 
very fair dinner, and had the pleasure of conversing 
during said enjoyment with Captain Jamison, an 
accomplished Englishman, and a man of great general 
and local information. Having resided over twenty years 
in the colony, and being known as a gentleman of unex- 
ceptionable character, I feel that I may safely give circu- 
lation to parts of his very instructive conversation. 
Among other things, he told us that the tribe of Kaffirs 
proper did not number over forty thousand fighting-men, 
but that in their conflicts with the English they could 
double or treble that number by calling in other South 
Africans, drawn chiefly from the Bushmen and another 
tribe the name of which has escaped me. The Hotten- 
tots, he said, were almost extinct. In regard to ■wild ani- 
mals and reptiles, he said that the cheetah, the leopard, 
and the antelope, still existed in the vicinity in consider- 
able numbers, but that a lion was now very rarely en- 
countered. Pufi-adders were abundant, and the cobra di 
capello was often killed on the mountain-sides measuiing 
from ten to fourteen feet. 
This latter was a piece of’ information that sounded 
much more agreeably to my ear at that time than it would 
have done some days previous, 'when the purser and my- 
self were “smelling a rat” at the head of a deep ravine, 
