Education and Manners of the Inhabitants.

An 1803.

which a native of the Cape is educated. apoplexy or a schirrous liver are the consequences August. of such intemperance. The former is seldom attended with immediate dissolution, on account of the languid state of the constitution; but it generally terminates in dropsy, which shortly proves fatal.

Instances of longevity are very rare, few exceeding the period of sixty years. Few die by the hands of justice. In the last eight years 110 have been sentenced to death, 33 of whom were publicly executed, and these were chiefly slaves. The rest were condemned to labour on the public works during life. The confession of a crime was sometimes extorted by the torture; and breaking on the wheel was a capital punishment. These are all abolished.

The education of youth has hitherto been very much neglected. That portion of the day, not employed in the concerns of trade, is usually devoted to the gratification of sensualities. Few have any taste for reading, and none for the cultivation of the fine arts. They have no kind of public amusements except occasional balls; nor is there much social intercourse except by family parties, which usually consist in card playing and dancing. Money-matters and merchandise engross their whole conversation. Yet none are opulent, though many in easy circumstances. There are no beggars in the whole colony; and but few who are the objects of public charity.

Those carriages that are used only for short excursions, or for taking the air, are open and calculated for four or six persons. For making journeys they have a kind of light waggon,

Ladies of the Cape.

1803, covered with sail cloths, and provisions for seveAugust, ral days. The coachmen are a mixed breed between an Hottentot woman and an European man: They make most excellent drivers, and think nothing of turning short corners, or of galloping through narrow avenues with eight in hand.

It has been a remark of most travellers, that the ladies of the Cape are pretty, lively, and good-humoured; possessing litle of that phleg matic temper which is a principal trait in the national character of the Dutch. The difference in the manners and appearance of the young men and young women in the same family, is inconceivably great. The former are clumsy in their shape, aukward in their carriage, and of an unsociable disposition; whilst the latter are generally of a small delicate form, below the middle size, of easy unaffected manners, well dressed, and fond of social intercourse. Most of them are taught music, in the better families; and some have acquired a tolerable degree of execution. Many understand the French language, and some have made a great proficiency in the English.

They are expert at needle-work, and, in ge neral, make up their own dresses, following the prevailing fashions of England, brought from time to time by the female passengers bound to India, from whom they may be said to

"Catch the manners living as they rise."

Neither are the other sex, while boys, defi, cient in vivacity or talent; but for want of the means of a proper education, to open their minds,

Tuckey' Sketch of the Cape.

and excite in them a desire of knowledge, they 1803. soon degenerate into the common routine of August. eating, smoking, and sleeping. Few of the male inhabitants associate with the English, except such as hold employments under the government. This backwardness may be owing, in part, to the different habits of the two nations; and partly, perhaps, to the reluctance that a vanquished people must always feel in mixing with their conquerors,

SKETCH OF THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, s

IN. 1803,

(From Tuckey's Voyage to New South Wales.) "CAPE TOWN is one of the handsomest colo nial towns in the world. The streets, which are wide, and perfectly straight, are kept in the highest order, and planted with oaks and firs. The houses are built in a style of very superior elegance, and, inside, are in the cleanest and most regular order They are not, however, suffici ently ventilated, to dissipate the stale fume of tobacco, which is peculiarly offensive to a stranger. The play-house is a neat building, erected by the English, where French and Dutch plays are acted alternately twice a week by private performers. (1803.)

"The public garden, in which was formerly a Menagerie, well stocked with all the curious an mals of Africa, was entirely neglected by the English. Within the garden is the governmenthouse, a neat and convenient building, without any appearance of grandeur, and perfectly con

Quere, Whether Batavia is not handsomer?

Bold Scenery round Simmon's Town.

1803. sonant to the plain and frugal manners of the August. Old Batavians. The torrents which descend

from Table Hill, in the wet season, often overflow the town. To carry the waters off, canals are cut through the principal streets, communicating with the ditch of the forts, and thence 'vith the sea.

"Table and False Bay are separated by an isthmus, which has evidently been covered by the sea at no very remote period, for it is a plain of fine sea-sand mixed with shells, but little elevated above the level of the sea. The S. E. wind, which blows with great fury, forms this sand into hills, which are in some places bare, and in others bound by flowering shrubs, and heaths of various kinds: the distance between the two bays by land is twenty-four miles.

66

Quitting Simmon's Town, the road to Muisenbourg (a small post about six miles from it) sometimes runs along the beach, which is flat, and on which the sea flows with gentle undulations; at others it winds round the feet of craggy hills, which are covered with masses of stone, suspended almost in air, that seem nodding, and ready to be displaced by the least impulse; even the reverberation of sound, one would think, might dislodge them. The sides of these hills are cover- ed with heath and shrubs, which throw out blossoms of every colour in the spring, and they abound in deer and other game. Regiments of baboons assemble on them; and, screened behind the impending rocks, roll down the loose masses on the passing traveller: wolves also descend from them in large troops; and, "burning for blood, bony, gaunt, and grim," seize as their

Approach to Cape Town.

prey the strayed oxen, sheep, or wandering 1803. goats." August.

A few scanty and turbid rills, apparently impregnated with iron, steal down the mountain's sides; but scarce a stream deserving the name of rivulet is to be seen here. At Muisenbourg, the road crosses a salt lake, about half a mile wide, which is always fordable. From thence to within eight miles of Cape Town the road lies over a flat heavy sand, where the path is distinguished only by the tracks of waggons; on either side the sand is covered with an innumerable variety of flowering heaths and shrubs, whose blossoms impregnate the air with the most balmy odours. The remainder of the way to Cape Town is formed of iron-stone, (which is found here,) and kept in excellent order. Neatly elegant country-houses embellish it on each side, while lofty oaks growing out of the fences, and clumps of firs within them, in some parts give it the appearance of an English avenue. The entrance into the town is over a down, rising on the left side to the Table Mountain, and on the right descending to a fertile valley, with several neat houses and wind-mills scattered over it. The sides of the hills are variegated with patches of the silver-tree, contrasting their glossy Jeaves with the brown heath and barren rock.

The sensations which possessed our minds on entering this beautiful town, fresh from sea, acquired the most vivid colours from contrast. The evening before, we were confined to the narrow limits of a ship, surrounded and buffeted by the boisterous waves, and almost beaten down by the torrents of rain, mingled with the conti