CHAPTER V.
CAPETOWN; THE CAPITAL.
I had always heard that the entrance into Capetown,
which is the capital of the Cape Colony, was one of the
most picturesque things to be seen on the face of the earth.
It is a town lying close down on the seashore, within the
circumference of Table Bay so that it has the advantage of
an opposite shore which is always necessary to the beauty
of a seashore town; and it is backed by the Table Mountain
with its grand upright cliffs and the Lion with its head and
rump, as a certain hill is called which runs from the Table
Mountain round with a semicircular curve back towards the
sea. The "Lion" certainly put me in mind of Landseer's
lions, only that Landseer's lions lie straight. All this has
given to Capetown a character for landscape beauty, which
I had been told was to be seen at its best as you enter the
harbour. But as we entered it early on one Sunday morning
neither could the Table Mountain nor the Lion be seen
because of the mist, and the opposite shore, with its hills
towards The Paarl and Stellenbosch, was equally invisible.
Seen as I first saw it Capetown was not an attractive port,
and when I found myself standing at the gate of the dock-*yard
for an hour and a quarter waiting for a Custom House
