these unhappy people were irrecoverably lost to the world and their
friends, by being detained among the Caffres, the most savage set of
brutes on earth.

His Excellency resides at the Government house, in the East India
Company's garden. This last is of considerable extent, and is planted
chiefly with vegetables for the Dutch Indiamen which may happen to touch
at the port. Some of the walks are extremely pleasant from the shade
they afford, and the whole garden is very neatly kept. The regular lines
intersecting each other at right angles, in which it is laid out, will,
nevertheless, afford but little gratification to an Englishman, who
has been used to contemplate the natural style which distinguishes the
pleasure grounds of his own country. At the head of the centre walks
stands a menagerie, on which, as well as the garden, many pompous
eulogiums have been passed, though in my own judgment, considering the
local advantages possessed by the Company, it is poorly furnished
both with animals and birds; a tyger, a zebra, some fine ostriches, a
cassowary, and the lovely crown-fowl, are among the most remarkable.

The table land, which stands at the back of the town, is a black dreary
looking mountain, apparently flat at top, and of more than eleven
hundred yards in height. The gusts of wind which blow from it are
violent to an excess, and have a very unpleasant effect, by raising
the dust in such clouds, as to render stirring out of doors next to
impossible. Nor can any precaution prevent the inhabitants from being
annoyed by it, as much within doors as without.

At length the wished-for day, on which the next effort for reaching the
place of our destination was to be made, appeared. The morning was calm,
but the land wind getting up about noon, on the 12th of November we