Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/287

 is indeed novel. On either side of Table Mountain are seen the crags of Lion’s Head and Devil’s Peak. The broad, flat top of Table Mountain is always overhung by  a great cloud, and when the cloud spreads out and  covers the whole town with its broad shadows, it is then  termed by Jack before the mast "the devil’s tablecloth."

To the south, on the hill, stands the world-renowned observatory, where Sir John Herschell discovered the  planet which once bore his name, but is now called  Uranus.

Cape Town is an old Dutch settlement, and everything wore a Dutch look. Almost all the people we met were Dutch. Both men and women were short and stout, with full, rosy cheeks. They all dressed in the old Dutch fashion.

While taking a cruise with the botanists in the outskirts of the town, we fell in with some of the Caffirs, Bushmen, Hottentots, and other tribes of South Africa.

On the 17th we got under way, and took our departure from the Cape of Storms, shaping our course for the island of St. Helena.

On the morning of the 19th Joseph Sylva, a Portuguese boy, who had shipped at Oahu, died. In the afternoon his body, with two roundshot, was sewed up in his hammock, and committed to the deep. Brave little Joe is now sleeping beneath the blue waters with others  of the ocean’s heroes.

After a run of thirteen days, we came to anchor in the roadstead of the Valley of Jamestown, island of St. Helena. Here we found six American and two