A Prosperous course by sea, like a state of profound peace and tranquility in civil society, though most advantageous to those who enjoy it, is unfavourable to the purposes of narration. The striking facts which the writer exerts himself to record, and the reader is eager to peruse, arise only from difficult situations: uniform prosperity is described in very few words. Of this acceptable but unproductive kind was the passage of the Botany Bay fleet from Rio de Janeiro to the Cape of Good Hope; uniformly favourable, and not marked by any extraordinary incidents. This run, from about lat. 22° south, long. 43 west of London, to lat. 34° south, long. 18° east of London, a distance of about four thousand miles, was performed in thirty-nine days: for having left Rio on the 4th of September, on the 13th of October the ships came to anchor in Table Bay. Here they were to take their final refreshment, and lay in every kind of stock with which they were not already provided. In this period no additional lives had been lost, except that of a single convict belonging to the Charlotte transport, who fell accidentally into the sea, and could not by any efforts be recovered. 13 October 1787 Table Bay, on the north-west side of the Cape of Good Hope, is named from the Table Mountain, a promontory of considerable elevation, at the foot of which, and almost in the centre of the Bay, stands Cape Town, the principal Dutch settlement in this territory. This Bay cannot properly be called a port, being by no means a station of security; it is exposed to all the violence of the winds which set into it from the sea; and is far from sufficiently secured from those which blow from the land. The gusts which descend from the summit of Table Mountain are sufficient to force ships from their anchors, and even violently to annoy persons on the shore, by destroying any tents or other temporary edifices which may be erected, and raising clouds of fine dust, which produce very troublesome effects. A gale of this kind, from the south-east, blew for three days successively when Capt. Cook lay here in his first voyage, at which time, he informs us, the Resolution was the only ship in the harbour that had not dragged her anchors. The storms from the sea are still more formidable; so much so, that ships have frequently been driven by them from their anchorage, and wrecked at the head of the Bay. But these accidents happen chiefly in the quaade mousson, or winter months, from May 14 to the same day of August; during which time few ships venture to anchor here. Our fleet, arriving later, lay perfectly unmolested as long as it was necessary for it to remain in this station.