Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/23

Rh well calculated, to benefit the health of the numerous invalids now resorting to it, unless they possess a greater degree of abstinence, from scenes of pleasure, than usually belongs to the natives of England. My stay, nevertheless, was too short to enable me to make any very accurate estimate, of the general habits and customs of the place, or to gain any new information respecting an island, so often described.

On the 18th we took our departure; on the 20th we saw the Island of Palmas, where the sea being, as is usual, calm, we caught a turtle, sleeping on the water; on the 10th of April, we crossed the Equator, and on the 19th of May approached the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope. The sea birds round our ship now became numerous, many of which were taken by the ship's company, with a hook and line; and in the same way, three albatrosses were caught, one of which measured nine feet ten inches from wing to wing. On the 20th, we came in sight of the mountains of the Cape, and on the same day at noon, our ship was at anchor in Table Bay. The season of the year was too far advanced to render this step prudent, but the Captain was induced to venture it on account of part of his cargo which he had to deliver at Cape Town; though not, as appears by a remark in his journal, without feeling "an unpleasant impression that some accident might occur."

My remarks at the Cape will be almost entirely confined to the occurrences of the day; the description of this colony having been so exhausted by preceding writers, especially by the present able Secretary to the Admiralty, that I should deem it a trespass, on the patience of the reader, were I to dwell on the subject at any length. The introductions I had received from England, procured me a very gratifying reception, from His Excellency the Governor, Lord Caledon, General Grey, and the Admiral commanding the station, besides many agreeable English families resident at the Cape. I also, through the kindness of a friend, became acquainted with several Dutch families of the highest respectability, which added greatly to the pleasure of my stay, at the settlement, and enabled me to form a tolerably fair estimate of its society. Among all the foreign colonies that I have visited,