On the coast are many lighthouses, which stand as sentinels to warn seamen of danger by night, and the ancient terror of stormy seas off the Cape of Good Hope has long since been forgotten.
The colony is connected with Europe by two submarine cables; so that everything of importance that occurs there one day is known in England through the newspapers on the next. Splendid steamships, carrying mails and passengers, arrive from, and leave for, England weekly. They make the run of six thousand miles in less than fifteen days; and the passage is certainly one of the pleasantest in the world.
Cape Town, the capital of Cape Colony, has a pleasant situation on the south side of Table Bay. It is a flourishing city of forty-five thousand inhabitants. It has many fine buildings and pretty villas, lighted by gas.
Tramways and railways pour into it the rich agricultural products of the adjacent countries. There is little, indeed, to remind the visitor that he is in a colonial capital founded, and for a long time inhabited, solely by Dutch settlers.
Cape Town is, in many respects, very unlike any city seen in Europe. No two houses can be found of the same size or architecture. The finest stores and other buildings stand in close proximity to the humblest and poorest homes and shanties of galvanized iron. Here the shedlike shop of a grocer or provision dealer stands side by side with the almost palatial building which shelters the display of a wealthy jeweler.
Here may be seen Kaffirs clothed in the rags of a uniform; Chinamen in their clean blue frocks; lanky Boers in brown velveteens, with their wives in black gowns, with thick black veils and huge poke bonnets; merchants in gray silk coats and white hats; officers in uniform; Parsee washerwomen; Moslem Malays, all passing, in a quick procession, the hotel door.
Hansoms and two-horse broughams are used here; and in the hotels accommodations can be obtained equal to anything found in towns of the same size in Europe and America.
Cape Town is the point of departure for two lines of railways. The one line runs to Worcester, and is to be extended across the Karroo; the other ends in the center of the Constantia wine district.
The atmosphere of Cape Colony is so clear and dry that objects can be distinctly seen even at great distances. The first object which attracts the attention of the traveler, as he approaches the colony from the sea, is Table Mountain. Its massive walls rise to the height of thirty-five hundred feet.
The colonists look with interest upon Table Mountain and watch the clouds as they assume fantastic shapes about and above it. Sometimes a snowy, fleecy vapor seems to spread over its top. This the colonists, not inappropriately, call the tablecloth. When, under the potent rays of the sun, this vapor disappears, they say, "The tablecloth has been rolled up and put away for some other time."