Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/352

 enough, which it was supposed he was not when he jumped overboard. Fortunate was it for the man that the voracious shark we afterwards caught, whose interior was full of bones, did not make his acquaintance in the water.

March 4th.—The morning was fine, the sea heavy, and we came in delightfully towards the Cape: the mountains of Africa were beautiful, with the foaming breakers rushing and sounding at their base. The lighthouse and green point, with its white houses, were pleasing objects. The view as you enter the Cape is certainly very fine: the mountains did not appear very high to my eye, accustomed to the everlasting snows of the Himalaya, but they are wild, bold, and picturesque, rising directly from the sea,—and such a fine, unquiet, foaming, and roaring sea as it is! The Devil's Peak, the Lion, and Table Mountain, were all in high beauty; not a cloud was over them. The wreck of the "Juliana" lay near the lighthouse; and the "Trafalgar" was also there, having been wrecked only a week before.

5th.—Breakfasted at the George Hotel; fresh bread and butter was a luxury. Drove to Wineburgh to see a friend, and not finding him at home, we consoled ourselves with making a tiffin—that is, luncheon,—on the deliciously fine white water grapes from his garden. Proceeded to Constantia, called on a Dutch lady, the owner of the vineyard, whose name I forget; she, her husband, and daughter were very civil, and offered us refreshment. We walked over the vineyard; the vines are cut down to the height of a gooseberry bush, short and stumpy; the blue grapes were hanging on them half dried up, and many people were employed picking off the vine leaves, to leave the bunches more exposed to the sun; the taste of the fruit was very luscious, and a few grapes were sufficient, they were too cloying, too sweet. They told us it took an amazing quantity of grapes to make the Constantia, so little juice being extracted, in consequence of their first allowing the bunches to become so dry upon the vine; but as that juice was of so rich a quality, it rendered the Constantia proportionably expensive. The old Dutchman took us up a ladder into an oak tree, in which benches were