woods o f it ftretch along the feet of the eaftern fide of the
Table Mountain, planted folely for fuel. The Conocarpa, another
fpecies of Protea, the Kreupel boom of the Dutch, is alfo
planted along the fides of the hills : its bark is employed
in tanning leather, and the branches for fire wood. The
grandtflora, fpeciofa cs5 mellifera, different fpecies of the fame
genus, grow every where in wild luxuriance and are collected
for fuel, as are alfo the larger kinds of Ericas or heaths, phyllicas,
Brunias, polygalas, the Oka Capenfis, Euclea racemofa, Sophora,
and many other arboreous plants that grow in great abundance
both on the hills o f the peninfula, and on the fandy ifthmus
that connects it with the continent. The article of fuel is fo
fcarce that a fmall cart load of thefe plants fells in the town
from five to feven dollars, or twenty to eight-and-twenty
{hillings. In moft families a flave is kept exprefsly for collecting
fire wood. He goes out in the morning, afcends the
fteep mountains of the peninfula, where waggons cannot approach,
and returns at night with two finall bundles of faggots,
the produce o f fix or eight hours hard labour, fwinging at the
two ends of a bamboo carried acrofs the ihoulder. Some
families have two and even three Haves, whofe foie employment
confifts in climbing the mountains in fearch o f fuel. The
expence o f a few faggots, whether thus collected or purchafed
by the load, for preparing victuals only, as the kitchen alone
has any fire place, amounts, in a moderate family, to forty or
fifty pounds a-year.
The addition to the inhabitants of five thoufand troops, and
a large fleet Rationed at the Cape, has increafed the demand
for
for fuel to fucb a degree, that ferious apprehenfions have been
entertained of fome deficiency ihortly happening in the fupply
of this neceifary article. Under this idea the attention of the
Engliih has been, for Tome time paft, directed towards finding
out a fubftitute for wood. The appearance of all the mountains
in Southern Africa, being particularly favorable to the
fuppofition that foflil coal might be found in the bowels of moil
o f thofe inferior hills connected with, and interpofed between
them and the fea, His Excellency the Earl of Macartney, well
knowing ,how valuable an acquifition fuch a difcovery would
prove to the colony, direded a fearch to be made. Boring
rods were prepared, and men from the regiments, who. had
laboured in the collieries of England, were feleCted to make the
experiment. Wynberg, a tongue of land projecting from the Table
Mountain, was the fpot fixed on, and the rods were put
down there through hard clay, pipe-clay, iron-ftone and fand-
flone, in fucceflive ftrata, to the depth of twenty-three feet.
The operation of boring was then difcontinued by the difcovery
of aCtual coal coming out, as miners exprefs it, to day, along
the banks of a deep rivulet flowing out of the Tygerberg, a
hill that terminates the ifthmus to the eaftward. The ftratum
of coaly matter appeared to lie nearly horizontal. Immediately
above it was pipe-clay and white fand-ftone j and it refted on a
bed of indurated clay. It ran from ten inches to two feet in
thicknefs ; differed in its nature In different parts: in fome
places were dug out large ligneous blocks in which the traces of
the bark, knots and grain were diftindly vifible ; and in the
very middle o f thefe were imbedded pieces of iron pyrites,
running through them in crooked veins, or lying in irregular
lumps.