walled in, with gateways at either side to admit these
teams, which, when they enter, and the wagon has been placed in a line
with others, are outspanned, that is, detached; and form an immense herd
in front of the wagons, the line of which, with the wall of the market
place, make a complete _corral_.

The reason why I call these farmers wholesale, is, that all the produce
brought by them is disposed of by lot to the highest bidders, according
to "rise and fall" by auctioneers, who regularly attend for this
purpose.

Met a number of this gentry hurrying to their duties on my return,
having been too early to witness the auction. Hucksters receive their
supplies in this manner, which they retail to the citizens--an extra
tax, I should suppose, upon the honest burghers, from whose pockets must
eventually be drawn the amount paid as commission to the auctioneers.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Settlement of Cape Town--Its productions--The Kaffir War
--Latest dispatches--Cause of the Rebellion--Description
of the Kaffir by the Traveller--Opinion of him by the
Resident--Authority of prominent men--Observatory, &c.

Within larger limits I would willingly indulge in a more extended
description of Southern Africa, which is set down by geographers as the
"Cape Region;" but as each day now diminishes our cruise, so does each
chapter deprive me of space for digression, and I must confine myself to
the Cape Colony, or more properly speaking, to Cape Town and its
environs.

The town is in latitude 33 deg. 55' 30'' south, and as the Observatory has
been decided to be in longitude 18 deg. 29', and is distant three miles and
a quarter from the town, due east, it would be placed 18 deg. 25' 45'' east
longitude.

The Cape of Good Hope, which is _not_ the extremity of Southern Africa,
as some geographers have it--"Lagullas" protruding further into the
Indian Ocean--was discovered by Bartholomew Diaz in 1486, who gave it
the name of the "Tormenting Cape," as previously stated, which was
afterwards changed into its present title by the far-seeing Emanuel, and
the hopes he then entertained of his navigators reaching the rich shores
of the far "Inde," were made good by Vasco de Gama, eleven years after
its discovery. The Dutch made their settlement here in 1652, of which
they were deprived by the English in 1795, who afterwards restored it to
them by treaty at Amiens, in 1802. Eventually it was ceded to Great
Britain in 1815. The c