Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/168

 the mountain, while the first heights are dotted over with pleasant villas and detached residences. Eastwards, in the midst of an extensive plain which was formerly a morass on which the first settlers erected their little stronghold, now stand the low buildings of the "Castle," property of the English Government and symbol of British supremacy in Austral Africa. Still farther east the bay is skirted by a suburban district which stretches as far as the broad estuary of the tortuous Salt

River. The city is everywhere encircled by fine gardens and: parks, which penetrate into the glens of the mountain. In 1887 a beginning was made with a system of defensive works, which are intended to convert the stronghold of Cape Town into a second Gibraltar.

In the hands of its English masters Cape Town has preserved but few reminiscences of the Dutch epoch. The chief thoroughfare is no longer