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