it no easy job to hold our own, much less to gain the anchorage.  But on the 24th of June, the day after, the wind moderated and became fair, the weather cleared up, and we sailed almost into Simon’s Bay, a snug little nook at the north-western angle of False Bay.  It then fell calm, but the boats of the men-of-war at anchor, his Majesty’s ships Lion, Nisus, and Galatea, soon towed us into our berth.  During the winter of that hemisphere, which corresponds to our northern summer, the only safe quarters for ships is in Simon’s Bay, on the south side of the Cape peninsula.

I have a perfect recollection of the feelings with which I leaped out of the boat, and first set foot on the continent of Africa, but am prevented from describing these poetical emotions by the remembrance, equally distinct, of the more engrossing anxiety which both my companion and myself experienced about our linen, then on its way to the laundress in two goodly bundles.  For the life of me, I cannot separate the grand ideas suitable to the occasion, from the base interests connected with cotton shirts and duck trousers.  And such is the tormenting effect of association, that when I wish to dwell upon the strange feelings, partly professional and partly historical, caused by actually gazing on the identical Cape of Good Hope, a spot completely hammered into the memory of all sailors, straightway I remember the bitter battling with the washer-folks of Simon’s Town touching the rate of bleaching shirts:  and both the sublime and the beautiful are lost in the useful and ridiculous.

The 3rd of July was named for sailing; but the wind, which first came foul, soon lulled into a calm, then breezed up again; and so on alternately, baffling us in all our attempts to get to sea.  Nor was it till the 5th that we succeeded in forcing our way out against a smart south-easter, with a couple of reefs in the topsails, and as much as we could do to carry the mainsail.  A westerly current sweeps at all seasons of the year round the Cape of Good Hope, and sometimes proves troublesome enough to outward-bound ships.  This stream is evidently caused by the trade-wind in the southern parts of the Indian ocean.  For three days we were bamboozled with light south-easterly airs and calms, but on the 8th of July, which is the depth of winter in that hemisphere, there came on a spanking snuffler from the north-west, before which we spun two hundred and forty miles, clean off the reel, in twenty-four hours.

Nothing is more delightful than the commencement of such a fair wind.  The sea is then smooth, and the ship seems literally to fly along; the masts and yards bend forwards, as if they would drop over the bows, while the studding-sail booms crack and twist, and, unless great care be taken, sometimes break across; but still, so long as the surface of the sea is plane it is astonishing what a vast expanse of canvas may be spread to the rising gale.  By-and-bye, however, it becomes prudent to take in the royals, flying-jib,