It was on Advent Sunday, the 26th November, 1836, that on coming out of the great dining cabin, where I had been celebrating the church service, I saw right ahead of the ship the long expected Table Mountain. I felt my heart jump at the sight, as I experienced once before, and that was when I caught the first sight of Oxford und its glorious spires and domes. As we came nearer, the scene was very grand. The land is piled up in high conical rocks, which stand and receive the shock of the mighty ocean, rolling up from the south pole, as if they were the very "bars and doors" spoken of in the book of Job: "hitherto shall thou come but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." (Job. xxxviii. 11.) As we ran under these rugged guardians of the dry land, it was hard to see where our ship was to find an entrance between them; but at length an opening appeared, in the middle of which lay a small island, by the side of which we were to thread our way into the bay behind. The wind threatened a change, and for an hour or two there were some apprehensions of our being driven out again to sea. The captain, however, made all the possible use of the breeze we had; our good ship flew by Robin Island; the rugged rocks to seaward disappeared as we turned into the bay behind them, and the green mountain on our right took the shape of a couching lion, from which it is named; while Capetown came in sight, situated close by the water at the foot of the gigantic Table Mountain. This remarkable mountain is flat at the top like a table, from which the name is taken: the side towards the bay rises almost perpendicularly, immediately behind the town, and the top is often covered with a white cloud, which they facetiously call the table cloth. The sailors can form a good guess at the wind, by observing when this table cloth is put on or taken off.

We were not at anchor in the bay till eight o'clock in the evening, so that I was disappointed of my earnest wish to attend divine service on shore. The church was one of the first objects I had made out, and it was a deeply interesting thought, that here in Africa, at the southern extremity of the old world, Englishmen should be engaged in worship, exactly as in our beloved Island at home. That church was the first I ever saw beyond the seas: the truest comfort that can be felt by those who voyage to foreign parts, is to

know, that they do not leave the kingdom of CHRIST or the opportunities, which His church affords, of preparing for their everlasting home. The moment the boats rowed out to land the passengers, a fresh interest was given to my thoughts by the sight of the negroes pulling at the oar; for then I had for the first time before my eyes, in their own country, some of the objects of our missionary efforts and prayers for the benighted heathen. Just as I stepped out on the wharf, the evening gun fired, so close to us as to startle me not a little, and this completed the impression I was to receive that night, by reminding me that I still in the British Empire! Every evening that gun is fired at all our settlements, forts, and stations throughout the world. Shot after shot, as daylight fades and the national flag is hauled down, the evening gun proclaims to the night the supremacy of the British Crown; and before they have done telling this tale in the western parts of our empire, the morning guns have begun to repeat it and the flag again to wave in the light of the east. What a blessing should we be to all nations, if our church were enabled, as regularly and steadily, in solemn ordinances of prayer and praise to tell it out among the heathen, that the Lord is King! But for this, we need many, many, more churches and missionaries than we now possess.

It being now dark, we had nothing to do but go to bed, and you will laugh, boys, when I tell you, that I actually fell out on the floor during the night, from dreaming that we were still on board ship, and moving in my sleep to accommodate myself to the motion of the waves. As I had often been so thrown out at sea, I lay quiet at first, expecting to hear the things tumbling about me: and it was only the stillness that waked me thoroughly up.

I was out early in the morning, walking about the town, which seemed to be a compound of the Dutch and Italian styles. It was a Dutch settlement, you know, and the climate is like that of Italy. Being the end of November, it was the beginning of their summer; and the mountain behind the town reflecting the sun down upon the streets, they are often very hot. There is a canal, with trees on each side of it, in the street where we lodged, which I thought did more for the musquitoes than in cooling the air.

When I came back to the hotel I found another subject for reflection, in learning that Charles, the waiter, was a slave, the first I had ever seen.

Slavery indeed had been abolished, and the inhabitants of Dutch descent were very little pleased with the English for doing so; though we gave twenty millions of money, out of our own pockets, to compensate the slave owners. The slaves, however, were not to be set free at once, but to serve an apprenticeship with their masters for a certain term of years; and the pale-faced, yellow, slim Hottentot, who brought in our breakfast, was one of these apprentices. You want to know, of course, what provision was made for bringing these poor creatures, who had been enslaved in their own land by the original Dutch settlers, to the knowledge of that liberty wherewith the Son of God doth make us free. And to that I am afraid I can give no good answer. The colony of the Cape was ceded to the English in 1806. The London Society opened a mission there immediately, and the Wesleyans began another in 1816; but for many years the English church had not even a place of worship, but borrowed the one belonging to the Dutch Lutherans. A single church was all we possessed when I was in Capetown; it was served by one colonial chaplain, and there was another for the troops, but no missionary or other clergyman of the Church of England was there in all the place. The colonial chaplain, moreover, being then sick, all the charge was devolved on the military chaplain, whom I had the good fortune to find at the church, and, to my further joy, in the act of baptizing an infant. Thus at least some portion of our beloved liturgy did greet my ears in Africa: the door of the kingdom of heaven was open there as well as here. But when the clergyman at the close of the service, told the sponsors to bring the child "to the bishop to be confirmed by him," I could not help asking him how that was to be done; and I sympathized with his regrets, as he replied it was impossible. Their bishop was the Bishop of London! eight or ten thousand miles away! Of course he was never there, and confirmations could only be held at very long intervals, when they conld catch a bishop on his voyage to or from India. Happily Bishop Corrie had landed on his way to Madras the year before, but those isolated ministrations only served to make religious people more desirous of a bishop of their own. The want of this was the great cause of the weakness of our church.

On this subject, a very striking account was given me by an Indian officer, who resided a long time at the Cape, and took a great interest in the London Society's Missions. These are conducted by the dissenters

called Independents, who do not acknowledge bishops, but consider the minister and his congregation to be all that is necessary to make a complete church. Well, there were two missionaries of this denomination at a place in the interior, where, in consequence of the failure of water, by the river changing its course (as sometimes happens in Africa), the inhabitants found it necessary to change their abode. They dispersed in parties different ways, and the missionaries were at last left nearly alone. As they were thinking of moving too, tidings were brought from a party of their christian people, who had found a river and set up a village on its banks, and now wished the missionaries to come and live with them; but several other parties, also, had pitched in other places, and were making the same request: what were the missionaries to do? They went and visited the several parties; and when they found the people were really settled in many villages, which would be sure to increase, they established a teacher under themselves in each place, while they resolved to go about visiting them all in turn, and so superintending and directing their affairs. I see what you are going to say: those Independent missionaries were now really acting as bishops; much as they object to the name and office in England! Well, that is not the only point in which I have known dissenting missionaries abroad obliged to adopt the

plans of the church, which are so much better suited, than their own, for propagating the gospel in distant lands. Those missionaries would have done very wrong to desert their scattered flocks, and leave them to find out pastors for themselves, merely because some have a fancy at home that there ought not to be an order of ministers, that is bishops, to superintend and guide the parochial clergy. But while dissenters were thus acting on episcopal principles, what will you say to the two church clergymen being left to act on the Independent plan? For that was really the fact, since the Bishop of London could, of course, exercise no superintendence over them at that distance, and they had no one else

to refer to.

I visited Wynberg, a beautiful village about seven miles from Capetown, where there is a church; and also the vineyards at Constantia, eight miles further on, where the wine of that name, and Cape Madeira, and Frontignac, are made. Interesting sights occured in all, but no clergyman could I hear of at either place. This spiritual destitution was the more to be lamented, because independently of the numbers of English who resort to this colony, as emigrants and sojourners, there is a mixed multitude of natives of many lands, pointing it out as an admirable centre for mission work. Negroes from the interior of Africa and from the great island of Madagascar, Hottentots, Bushmen (or as the Dutch write it Bosjemen), the fierce Caffre tribes, with whom we were so lately engaged in warfare, besides Mahometans and Hindoos from the East Indies, &c., are all congregated in this colony : so that, with an effective missionary establishment, it might send forth the light of the gospel to a great part of the world.

I sailed from the Cape, laden with oranges and other fruits, but with very little hope of that beautiful country producing a more spiritual harvest: but things are changed indeed since then! Do you remember the two bishops who were staying with me in York last year? To be sure, one of them was the new Bishop of Capetown. Many bishops have been sent out to our foreign possessions of late years, and Miss Coutts having given money enough to provide for one at the Cape, Mr. Gray, a clergyman of great ability, zeal, and energy, and well known to me, was selected for this important charge. I can hardly tell you my feelings, when I heard the Bishop of Capetown preaching in my own pulpit, and thought of the prospect of his diocese twelve years before!