magnificent canopy, shades the town and the adjacent country from the sun. The inferior boundary of this cloud is regulated, probably, by various circumstances; and among others, by the strength of the wind, and the temperature of the air in the Table valley. The influence of the latter is to be inferred from the fact, that, though the cloud never descends farther than halfway into the hot parched amphitheatre of Cape Town, it may be observed on the side of Camp's Bay, rolling down in immense volumes to the very sea, over which it sometimes stretches farther than the eye can follow it. Nothing can be more singular than the appearance of this cloud. It is continually rushing down to a certain point on the side of the mountain, and there vanishing. Fleeces are seen from time to time, torn from its skirts by the strength of the wind, floating and whirling, as it were, in a vortex over the town, and then gradually dissolving away. But the main body remains as if it were nailed to the mountain, and bids defiance to the utmost efforts of the gale." There are two other mountains of nearly the same height, but of a different shape near the Table mountain.

The Dry mountains, which are near the Table mountain, are composed of horizontal strata of sandstone, and some of them have a flat summit. These mountains run in one dark chain many leagues in length, and they are so steep and uniform in shape, as to give the missionaries who have described them, the idea of the Great Wall of China.

Peter Botte's Mountain in the Mauritius is said to have obtained its very singular name from a person of the name of Peter Botte, who ascended to the summit but who was dashed to pieces when he attempted to come down. From the extraordinary shape of this mountain, it is evidently of volcanic origin, for it rises like a vast needle about 1,800 feet in height, and what makes the ascent more difficult is, that it does

not taper gradually to a point, but at a distance of about 1500 feet from the ground, there is a kind of platform, above which a piece of stone bulges out like a vast cupola. In 1831, Captain Lloyd, accompanied by a Mr. Dawkins, attempted to ascend this mountain, but when they had reached what is called the neck, they found the ladder they had brought with them was not long enough to reach half-way up the perpendicular face of the rock above, and they relinquished their attempt as impracticable. The following year, however, (the 7th of September, 1832,) Captain Lloyd made another attempt, accompanied by three other officers, and a number of sepoys and negroes. The ascent was up a very steep ravine formed by the rains in the wet season, and full of loose stones. Along this path, which was not a foot broad, the party picked their way for about four hundred yards, the negroes keeping their footing firm, by catching hold of the shrubs above them as they proceeded. "On rising to the shoulder of the mountain," says the narrative which has been published of the ascent, " a view burst upon us which quite defies my descriptive powers. We stood on a little narrow ledge or neck of land, about twenty yards in length, on the side which we mounted; we looked back into the deep wooded gorge we had passed up while on the opposite side of the neck, which was between six and seven feet broad, the precipice went sheer down fifteen hundred feet to the plain. One extremity of the neck was equally precipitous, and the other was bounded by what appeared to me the most magnificent sight I ever saw. A narrow knife-like edge of rock, broken here and there by precipitous faces, ran up in conical form to about 350 feet above us, and on the

very pinnacle old Peter Botte frowned in all his glory. A ladder had been left by Messrs Lloyd and Dawkins last year. It was about twelve feet high, and reached about half-way up the face of the perpendicular rock. The foot, which was spiked, rested upon a ledge which was barely three inches on each side. A grapnel line had also been left, but though it had never been used, it had become rotten by exposure to the weather. One of the negroes clambered from the top of the ladder along the cleft in the face of the rock, as he did not dare trust his weight to the line. It was a hazardous undertaking, as a single loose stone or false hold must have precipitated him into the abyss; but he used his feet exactly as a monkey would have done, grasping with them every projection as firmly as he could have done with his hands. He carried a small cord tied round his middle, and as soon as he reached the platform under the rock, he fastened it firmly, and crying, all right,' we all climbed up in succession. The head, which is an enormous mass of rock, about thirty-five feet in height, overhangs its base many feet on every side. A ledge of tolerably level rock runs round three sides of the base, about six feet in width, bounded everywhere by the abrupt edge of the precipice, except in the spot where it is joined by the ridge up which we climbed. In one spot, the head, though overhanging its base several feet, reaches only perpendicularly over the edge of the precipice, and most fortunately it was at the very spot where we mounted. When we reached the ledge, a communication being established with the shoulder of the mountain, by a double line of ropes, we hoisted up crowbars, additional coils of rope, and various other articles, but the difficulty was, how to get the ladder up against the

rock. Captain Lloyd had prepared some iron arrows, with thongs, to fire over, and having got up a gun, he made a line fast round his body, which we all held on, and going over the edge of the precipice on the opposite side, he leaned back against the line, and fired. over the least projecting part. Had the line broken, he would have fallen at least 1800 feet.

Twice this

failed, and then he had recourse to a large stone, with a lead line, which swung diagonally, and seemed to be a feasible plan. Several times he tried this without success, till at last, the wind changing, the stone went over and was eagerly seized on the opposite side. Three lengths of the ladder were now put together on the ledge, a large line attached to the one which was