b either the fowls or their masters, had been obliged to
satisfy the cravings of his hungry maw with this unsatisfactory
substitute. I cut a slice out of him; it was like a skein of wire, so
tough and unfishlike.

Some preserved salmon that we had for dinner on the following day was
pronounced by a youngster "very good indeed, and better than he could
have fancied a shark would taste:" and he very likely believes to this
day that boiled shark is very like salmon, as we were all careful not to
inform him of his error.

As we neared the Cape, we were occasionally inspected by some gigantic
albatrosses, whose spectral appearance, as they sailed rapidly along
with outstretched and rigid wings, and passed from side to side of the
horizon in sweeping circles, seemed like the ghosts of ancient mariners
thus condemned monotonously to pass their time till the day of judgment.

When near the island of Tristan D'Acunha we caught one with a little
hook and a line; we brought him on deck, and, after inspecting his
personal appearance and ten-feet-wide wings from tip to tip, threw him
overboard, when he was furiously attacked by his cousins, who,
Chinaman-like, seemed to think death the only fit reward for his having
dealt with the white travellers.

We entered Table Bay in the night, just in time to escape a strong
south-easter that sprung up at daybreak, enveloped the Table Mountain
with its dense white cloth of clouds, and sent volumes of dust from the
flats pouring into the town, to the blinding of every unfortunate
out-of-door individual. On disembarking in any foreign land, one is
naturally amused with the curious costumes of the people; and when the
country happens to be that of a coloured race, this peculiarity is still
more striking. The people here were of every colour and denomination,--
English, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinamen, Malays, Negroes, Kaffirs,
Hottentots, Fingoes, and Mohammedans, white and black, red and yellow,
with every intermediate shade.

The head-dresses showed in the greatest variety. Some heads had nothing
on them, not even hair; others had a small rag. Hottentot and Malay
women's heads were extensively got up with red and blue handkerchiefs;
some wore English straw hats or coverings shaped like rotundas; others
had plumes of ostrich-feathers, wide-awakes, etc. Most of the women and
boys danced round us when we first landed, and I felt like Sindbad the
sailor being welcomed by the beasts on the m