58 
FROM BERMUDAS TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE . 
polished base, such as are used by painters grinding colours, and which may have been 
employed to crush seeds. 
Amongst the ethnological curiosities of the Cape are the descendants of a number of 
Malay families, which, we were told, were exiled to this colony by their Dutch conquerors. 
The Orientals still wear the broad-brimmed conical hat and the high 
wooden pattens—to them, no doubt, sacred symbols of their race and of their 
long-lost fatherland. Some of them earn a livelihood in the capacity of 
coachmen, and a driver surmounted by the pagoda-hat seems to be the 
necessary complement of a fashionable “ turn-out ” at the Cape. 
Sirnonstown, surrounded as it is by bare rocks and sand-hills, offers 
but slight temptation to the lover of scenery. The only picturesque spot 
is a glen at the back of the town. It is traversed by a brook whose bed 
is strewn with huge boulders, and ends abruptly at the foot of a fine 
waterfall. Upon the plateau above the fall the geranium may be seen growing wild in tall 
patches. Its bright scarlet flowers and green leaves form with the white and grey rocks 
a very attractive combination of colours. The profusion of wild flowers met with at every 
step redeems the desolate aspect of these mountains; and it would almost seem as if, in 
the lapse of time, the flowers had quitted the sunburnt plains of the continent, and had 
taken refuge upon the Cape Peninsula that they might inhale the moist Atlantic breezes. 
