The 'Cambrian' entered Table Bay, December 13. It was early in the morning, but the sun was already high, and when I went on deck and looked around me, I beheld as flashing and noble a scene of blue water and mountain as this earth has to show. The atmosphere was brimful of white and even splendour, so that the azure of the sky looked cold in it. Wonderful to my eyes was the sight of a gale of wind so local in its fury that freshing confines of the torn water, curved like a line of beach, this side being smooth and glittering, softly fanned with a little air out of the west, where the white light was so lustrous that the leaning sails of the Malay boats flickered in it with a look of frosted silver. Afar, and marvellously clear cut in their hundred miles of distance, loomed a range of lofty mountains; the fierce wind was blowing out of a glorious white mist which veiled, with falling and ascending draperies of vapour, the greater bulk of the tawny mass on the right; but so marvellously brilliant was the atmosphere through which the gale was rushing, the sense of distance vanished, the huge steep lifting and disappearing in its splendour of mist, drew close, I saw the curves of the cloofs, every wrinkle of broken rock, and patches of the bush, though it was all miles off and high in air. The white houses spread like toys of ivory to the base; and the wide waters of the bay, full of the gleam of the brushing westerly air, and rushing in froth under the shriek and lash of the gale, where the breast of blue rounded to the town, were framed by a sparkling snow-white beach, past which the swelling country showed in reds and greens till the sight died upon the phantom blue of distant heights. There were no docks in those days, nor can I recollect that they had begun to build the breakwater. We brought up in the splendid weather outside the thrashing storm, but it seemed we were to be kept aboard till the south-easter had blown itself out. Many ships, a few very large and fine, lay straining at their anchors, some within and some without that spray-white sheet of foul weather. I stood at the rail looking at a little barque which lay within easy hail of the voice; Mr. Baynton, chief officer of the 'Cambrian' approached to look at a boat that lay close under alongside. But his seaman's eye went quickly to the barque, and turning to me, he said: 'That's what they call a spouter.' 'A whaler?'