Simon's Town is a small straggling place of scarcely any importance,
except in connection with the naval establishment kept up here--dockyard,
hospital, etc.--this being the headquarters of the Cape station. It is
distant from Cape Town twenty-three miles. The neighbourhood is
singularly dreary and barren, with comparatively little level ground, and
scarcely any susceptible of cultivation. I have often been struck with
the great general similarity between the barren and sandy tracts of this
district, and many parts of New South Wales, where sandstone is the
prevailing rock. In both countries there are the same low scrubby bushes,
at the Cape consisting of Heaths and Proteae, and in Australia of
Epacridae and Banksiae--the last the honeysuckles of the Colonists. Even
the beautiful sunbirds of the Cape, frequenting especially the flowers of
the Proteae, are represented by such of the Australian honeysuckers as
resort to the Banksiae.

CAFFRE WAR.

We found the Cape Colony suffering from the long continuance of the
Caffre war. As a natural consequence, the price of everything had risen,
and there was little specie left in Cape Town. All the troops had been
sent to the frontier; a party of bluejackets from the flagship at one
time performed garrison duty at Cape Town; the emergency was so great
that even some detachments of troops on their way back to England after
long service in India, having put in at the Cape for refreshments, were
detained and sent to Algoa Bay. We were all heartily tired of Simon's Bay
long before leaving it; not the less so from having this all engrossing
Caffre war dinned into our ears from morning to night as an excuse for
high prices, and sometimes for extortions, which I had before supposed to
be peculiar to new colonies.