(< The fifiiermen that walk upon the beach
" Appear like mice ; and you tall anchoring bark
. (t Diminilh’d to her cock. # # % #
* * * (t The murmuring furge,
<c That on the unnumber’d idle pebblesxliafes,
“ Cannot be heard fo high.**
. All the obje£ts on the plain below are, in fad, dwindled
away to the eye of the fpeCtator into littlenefs and infignificance.
The flat-roofed houfes o f Cape Town, difpofed into formal
clumps, appear like thpfe paper fabrics which children are
accuftomed to make with cards. The fhrubbery on the fandy
ifthmus looks like dots, and the farms and their euclofures as fo
many lines, and the more-finifhed parts of a plan drawn on
paper.
On the fwampy parts 6f the flat fummit, between the maffes
o f rock, are growing feveral forts of handfome ihrubs. The
Cenaa mucronata, a tall, elegant, ffuitefcent plant, is peculiar to
this fituation ; as is alfo that fpecies o f heath called the Phyfodes,
which, with its clufters o f white flowers glazed with a glutinous
coating, exhibits in the funihine a very beautiful appearance.
Many other heaths, common alfo on the plains, feemed to
thrive equally well on this elevated fituation as in a milder
temperature. The air on the fummit, in the clear weather of
Winter, and in the ihade, is generally about fifteen degrees of
Fahrenheit’s fcale lower than in Cape Town. In the fummer
feafon the difference is much greater, when that well-known
appearance o f the fleecy cloud, not inaptly called the Table
Cloth, envelopes the fummit o f the mountain.
A fingle
A fingle glance at the topography of the Cape and the adjacent
country will be fuflicient to explajn the caufe of this phenomenon
which has fo much the appearance of Angularity.
The mountainous peninfula is connefted with a ftill more
mountainous continent, on which the great ranges run parallel
to, and at no; great diftance from, the fea-coaft. In the heat of
the fummer feafon, when the fouth-eaft monfoon blows ftrong
atfea, the Water taken up by evaporation is borne in,the air to
the continental mountains, where, being condenfed, it refts on
their fummits in the form of a thick cloud. This cloud, and a
low denfe bank of fog on the fea, are the precurfors of a fimi-
lar, but lighter, fleece on the Table Mountain, and o f a ftrong
gale o f wind in Cape Town from the fouth-eaft, Thefe effe&s
may be thus accounted fo r : The condenfed air on the fummit
o f the mountains of the continent rallies, by its fuperior gravity,
towards the more rarified atmofphere over the ifthmus, and
the vapor it contains is there taken up and held invifible or in
tranfparent folution. From hence it is carried by the fouth-
eaft wind towards the Table and its neighbouring mountains,
where, by condenfatian from decreafed temperature and con-
cuflion, the air is no longer capable of holding the vapor with
which it was loaded, but is obliged to let it go. The atmof-
phere on the fummit of the mountain becomes.turbid, the cloud
is ihortly formed, and, hurried by the wind over the verge o f
the precipice in large fleecy volumes, rolls down the fteep fides
towards the plain, threatening momentarily to deluge the town.
No fooner, however, does it arrive,!'in/its defcent, at the point
o f temperature equal to that of the atmofphere in which it has
floated over the ifthmus, than it is once more taken up and
“ vanilhes