Our course after leaving the farm was due
south by the compass, and at last we had the
pleasure of seeing the lighthouse ahead. About
three quarters of a mile before reaching it, the
ascending plain came to an end at the high rock
on the peak of which the lighthouse is perched.
Here then we had to leave the horses,
knee-haltered and turned loose. This knee-haltering
consists in tying the soft untanned leather
strap of the halter in a scientific manner just
above the knee, so that it cannot slip over, but
is not tight enough to impede circulation.
Length enough of strap is given to allow the
horse to feed off the ground, but should he
attempt to go at anything beyond a walk, the
effect is either to pull the head down to the
knee, or the knee up to the head. Both
positions making a quick pace impossible, the
owner can regain his animal without much
trouble. But I have seen a cute old stager
deliberately lift his knee-haltered foreleg off the
ground, high enough to enable him to carry his
head in the position for running, and so "make
tracks" from his enraged pursuer on three legs,
at a good seven miles an hour. These halters
and straps always form part of the gear of the
travelling horse in the Cape Colony, whether
for riding or driving, as does in Australia the
picket rope.

The pull up the steep rock was hot work,
there being no path but such as had been made
by water torrents, and furrows worn by the
constructors of the lighthouse when they dragged
up their materials. But this they did chiefly
by hoisting the heavy iron plates from one
ledge to the one above by ropes and pulleys.
Owing to this difficulty and the absence of all
roads, the expense of conveying these materials
from Simons Bay – a distance of forty-two miles
– considerably exceeded the whole cost of
bringing them from the manufactory in England
to the sea port, and thence by ship to the
Cape.

A team of from sixteen to twenty-four oxen
is required to drag, through the heavy yielding
sand, a load that a couple of dray horses would
easily convey along an English road.

The lighthouse keeper was out on the rock
watching our toilsome ascent through a long
ship's glass. A strong pull, a final breathless
desperate struggle, and we stand, hot, heaving,
panting, and perspiring, at the southernmost
point of Africa; the actual "Cape of Storms"
enchanted ground. For is it not the very
home, castle-keep, of the dread Flying Dutchman?
No longer a solitary storm-lashed rock
"far from humanity's reach," the meddling
British engineer has annexed it, and supplies it
with elliptic lenses, argand lamps, plate-glass,
and colza-oil.

The lighthouse is built on a small plateau at
the summit of the rock, partly natural, chiefly
levelled by art. There may be perhaps thirty
feet of level space in front of the house, and
then abruptly, plumb, without a foot of incline,
the rock, many hundreds of feet deep, drops
into the sea. The water for a mile or two
round is studded with sunken rocks, sharp
as needles, around which the sea boils and
lashes itself into a white foam. Woe to the
ship and men who are carried into this
archipelago of reefs. None live to tell the
misadventure.

Standing on this platform one may by an
effort of fancy draw a line from himself due
south, which forms the boundary between two
of the largest oceans in the world, the Atlantic
on the right, the Indian on the left. And one
may dream that the two mighty powers having
chosen this spot as their battle field, are here
constantly engaged in struggle for supremacy,
sometimes with more sometimes with less fury,
but never in the calmest weather ceasing from
the strife. The huge waves came rolling along
the east and west sides, meeting in front where
we stood (and for miles away along our
imaginary line) with a concussion like a thunder
clap, sending a body of water up into the air,
which during a gale is carried as far as the
lantern of the lighthouse, coating the glass
with an incrustation of salt.

Looking immediately below, where the surge,
owing to the protection of the reefs, was
comparatively quiet, I saw what seemed to me to be
moving masses of discoloured water, each patch
several acres in extent. I could hardly believe
that these coloured patches were fish. But masses
of fish they were, attracted hither by the
million to feed within the reefs. The Cape waters
I well knew produce fish in incredible
numbers and variety. I had often seen, amongst
others, a hideous monster, in appearance
something between a shark and a jack, weighing
from twelve to twenty pounds, sold in the
market at Cape Town for threepence; but till
now, of the actual prodigality of marine life on
these coasts I had formed no adequate idea.

Brown's mission proved rather a difficult
one. There was no good water in the
neighbourhood. The two alternatives were, to bring
it fifteen miles in barrels about once a month –
a plan that involved the labour of getting the
barrels up the rock by rope slings, and pulleys; or
to form tanks and collect the rain-water falling
on the roof and plateau during the three wet
months, for use during the remaining nine.
Both methods were bad, one from its cost, the
other from the uncertainties of the wet season:
in one year there would be, perhaps, rain
enough to fill the tanks ten times over; in the
next year, perhaps, not enough to moisten the
ground. I do not know how the problem has
been solved.

The keeper, who was an old man-of-war's
man, asked, I remember, for two boons.
Firstly, he wanted a flag-staff and a code of
ship's signals. When asked of what use they
would be, he answered, "Well, you see, sir, if
so be a wessel hugs too close in, I'd up signals
and tell her to sheer furder off." But seeing
that, if a ship were near enough to make out
signals, she would be already close into the
reefs, and perhaps be tempted into further
danger by her desire to make out what the