Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/172

 128 SOUTH AND EA.ST AFEICA. Amid the surrounding valleys are scattered numerous suburban residences and rural hamlets chiefly occupied by the wealthy traders and officials, who seldom visit the capital except for btisiness purposes. In summer nearly the whole of ihe white population with their domestic servants betake themselves to the watering- places and the slopes of the hills, and at this season the traffic on the suburban Jail ways reminds the traveller of the movement in the neighbourhood of the great European cities. North of Cape Town lies the village of Sea-point with its villas fringing the surf-beaten beach. Eastwards the capital is continued by a succession of hamlets encircling the Devil's Peak and stretching away for nearly twenty miles in the direction of the Jut/k lidi/ staside resort. In the charming valley which connects the two bays, and which is flanked on the we>t by the superb rucky walls of Table Mountain, lies the picturesque little village of Wijnberg, a delightful group of residences nestling in the shade of oaks and pine groves. In the neighbourhood but more to the south is the estate of CouHtantia, which has given its name to the most esteemed vintage in South Africa. Towards the south are seen the irregular outlines of False Bay, one of whose western inlets, Simon's Bay, reflects in its clear waters the settlement of Simon's Town, a naval station with warehouses and fortified arsenal, which the British Government has maintained on the shores of the Southern Ocean. Simon's Town occupies one of the finest sites in Austral Africa on the sickle-shaped headland, at the southern extremity of which stands the lighthouse of the Cape of Good Hope. A few other groups of habitations belonging to the district of Cape Town are -scattered amid the glens on the Atlantic slope of the hills which bound the eastern horizon of Table Bay. Stelleuboach, which is connected by rail with the capital, is next to the capital itself the oldest settlement in the colony. In the vicinity, and especially in the amphitheatre of hills still known as the Fransche Iloek, or " French Quarter," most of the Huguenot refugees established themselves towards the close of the seventeenth century, and this " Athens " of South Africa has always been a centre of intellectual progress. Paarl, a village which straggles for a distance of seven miles along the highway at the foot of the Draken-steen hills, also dates from the early days of colonisation. The gardens, orange-groves, and woodlands encircling this " Pearl," as it is called, from a block of granite surmounting a rocky pedestal like a gem on a diadem, rendef it a charming retreat during the summer months. The surrounding country forms the most extensive wine-growing district in Cape Colony. Farther north lies the picturesque little town of Wellington, beyond which the railway penetrating inland describes a great bend round to the east, passing through a depression in the Atlantic coast range into the valley of the Breede River, which flows to the Southern Ocean. Paarl and Wellington lie in the upper basin of the Great Berg, which, after collecting numerous afiluents from the fertile districts of Tulbagh and the " Twenty-four Rivers," reaches the Atlantic at St. Helena Bay. South of the promontory which forms the southern limit of this storm-tossed gulf, lies the bay or landlocked inlet of Saldanha, so called from a Portuguese admiral whose name was formerly applied to Table Bay. It was in the neighbourhood of