The cart was a featherweight to the sturdy team, and trekking well into the night and again before dawn, we were in sight of the sea when the fog lifted in the morning; however, it was still far distant, and it was then possible to realise to what a height above sea-level the gently undulating plain had brought us. All day long, with but brief spells of rest, we trekked on, and the long glistening line of sea seemed as far off as ever. Two strangely shaped mountains, known as the “Buchu Bergen,” were our objective, as we knew them to mark the locality of the bays. That night we again trekked late, and midnight found us under the black shadow of “Buchu Berg,” with the thunder of the surf in our ears and the sweet perfume of the _buchu_ bush making fragrant the cold night air. And cold it was--one of the coldest nights I ever remember. We had a bucksail with us, but the wind was so strong that we spent most of the night trying to hold it down over the cart we were “sleeping” under, and I was very glad when morning came. Directly below the steep face of Buchu Mountain we came upon the most perfect little boat bay imaginable, surrounded by high rocks and almost circular, but with room only for a few lighters and small craft; here the ruins of a substantial stone house still stand, and little piles of copper ore scattered here and there tell their tale of the past. South of the cove runs a long, shallow depression known as Homewood Harbour, little better, however, than an open roadstead. The whole coast is indescribably lonely and desolate, and, to add to its dreariness, scattered along the beach far above high-water mark lie piles of driftwood, the accumulation of centuries, tree-trunk piled upon tree-trunk to a height of 4 or 5 feet, and a belt of 10 to 15 yards extending for many miles. Many of them are the remains of big trunks 2 or 3 feet in diameter, and all of them are bone-dry and like tinder. Turning northward, we tramped, hot and thirsty, around the long crescent-shaped indentation known as “Peacock Roadstead,” the northern extremity of which is Cape Voltas, so named by hardy old Bartholomew Diaz, who landed there in 1486 and erected a _padrão_--a stone pillar surmounted by a cross such as these devout old adventurers usually hanked round with them, tokens of a pledge to the Pope that the salvation of the infidel was the principal object of their quest. The headland is low and insignificant, and, as at Cape Cross, no vestige of the pillar remains, not even the hole it stood in. It is highly probable that Diaz landed at a small cove some distance from the point, where there are more ruins of a much more recent date, with a rude boatslip and many fragments of copper ore.