3-021-583 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Lion's Head Mountain, near Capetown, Cape of Good Hope, 1868. 'Viewed from the entrance of Table Bay, the city of Capetown appears to be nearly surrounded by an amphitheatre of mountains presenting strange and grotesque outlines. Immediately behind the town the celebrated Table Mountain, so called from its flat surface, rises, at first gradually, and then in precipitous cliffs, forming a mighty wall of rock, which is flanked on the left by the peak of the Devil's Mountain. On the right hand of the town extends a singular hill, called the Lion's Mountain, from its fancied resemblance to a lion couchant. Our engraving represents that portion called the Lion's head, as seen from the kloof leading from Capetown to Camp's Bay. The hills are scattered over with the "witte-boom", or silver-tree, of the colonists, and the margin of the stream of water seen in this view is clothed with clusters of the white arum, which grows wild in abundance in South Africa'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.