The view, as Justin Rosenthal had truly said, was well worth looking at. First of all, the bay into which they had put was vast enough to accommodate any number of ships, and, indeed, a very considerable number rode at anchor within it. Before them lay Cape Town, nestled at the foot of Table Mount, whose perpendicular sides rose up behind it; while on either hand, like giant sentinels to guard the entrance of the port, stood the barren crags of Lion’s Head and Devil’s Peak. A little back from the shores were sunny, green hills and shady grove trees, among which, half hidden, stood beautiful villas, built in the old Dutch style, with flat roofs and painted walls and broad terraces. The newly-arrived voyagers remained on deck, gazing on this scene with never-tiring interest, until the short, bright twilight of those latitudes suddenly sank into night, and the stars came out in the purple-black heavens, and the lights shone in the streets and houses of Cape Town. Then they went below to the supper that had long been waiting; and afterward they turned in for the night. As soon as they were awake in the morning, the whole party arose and dressed, and hurried up on deck to take another look at the harbor, the shipping, the town and the mountain. “So this is Africa!” exclaimed Mrs. Ely, gazing in open-mouthed wonder upon the scene before them; “and only think—as long as we have been expecting to get here, now that we are here, I feel as if I was in a dream. Africa! Why, law, you know, though I always studied the map of Africa at school, and read about it in geography, I never seemed to realize there was such a place. It always seemed to me only like a place in a story, just as the Happy Valley, or the Cave of Despair. And I am sure it is as strange for me to be standing here, looking at it, as if I suddenly saw before me the Island of Calm Delight, or any other place that was only in a book. How queer! Africa!” “I think your feeling is a more common one than would be generally acknowledged,” replied her husband. “Until it is presented to our senses, the Real, like the Ideal, only exists, for us, in our imaginations.” “What astounds me,” said Mrs. Breton, “is to see here, at the most southern extremity of the most barbarous grand division of the earth, a town with houses, and a harbor with shipping, so much like the seaports of our own Christian and civilized native country. Why, law, only for that great mountain behind the town, and those two great rocks to the right and left, that stand like Gog and Magog to guard the port, one might think we were in New York Bay, and looking in upon some of the old Dutch quarters of the city.”