Chapter 3—Cape Town and M. Viot
As John Mangles intended to put in at the Cape of Good Hope for coals, he was obliged to deviate a little from the 37th parallel, and go two degrees north. In less than six days he cleared the thirteen hundred miles which separate the point of Africa from Tristan d’Acunha, and on the 24th of November, at 3 p.m. the Table Mountain was sighted. At eight o’clock they entered the bay, and cast anchor in the port of Cape Town. They sailed away next morning at daybreak.
Between the Cape and Amsterdam Island there is a distance of 2,900 miles, but with a good sea and favoring breeze, this was only a ten day’s voyage. The elements were now no longer at war with the travelers, as on their journey across the Pampas—air and water seemed in league to help them forward
