force.

CLIMATE AND TOPOGRAPHY

From the tropical Zambesi regions and the torrid Kalahari plains, down
to the 34th parallel at Cape point, a great diversity of climatic
conditions is met with. To the north and north-east are the steaming,
death-breeding low lands, abounding with dank virgin forests and scrubby
stretches; and to the north-west extend the arid, sandy, and stony
levels. There are the temperate and fruitful inland reaches along the
southern and south-eastern littoral, and again further inward the vast
plateaux at 2,000 to 6,500 feet elevation, which represent nearly
one-half of the sub-continent with quite other climatic aspects. In the
southern and western provinces of the Cape Colony the rainy season
occurs during the winter months, probably because of the proximity to
the trade wind influences prevailing over the South Atlantic; over the
rest of South Africa the winters are dry and sunny, the rains falling in
summer, most copiously in December and January, the effect being that
there are hardly any winter rigours, and the heat of summer is
minimised. The most agreeable climate is that on the higher plateau
levels: never hot nor altogether cold, and yet virile and bracing;
something like the climate on sunny days found in the higher Alpine
regions in summer and in the mild Algerine winters. This climate is
found from the Queenstown district at about 3,000 feet elevation,
extending north and westwards over the Stormberg, the Orange Free State,
and along the lordly Drakensberg range and its spurs some 200 to 300
miles into the Transvaal, where the highest plateau levels occur between
Ermelo and to near Lydenburg, viz., 6,500 feet. The Harrismith district
near that mountain range is at a similar altitude with an identical
climate.

These high tracts are called _hoogeveldt_ or highlands. Their altitude
rises steadily with the advance northwards towards warmer latitudes, and
with the compensating effect that the climate in the Queenstown
district, Bontebok Flats for example, at 3,000 feet elevation, is
exactly similar to that in the eastern portions of the Orange Free State
at 5,500 feet, right up to near Lydenburg at 6,500 feet altitude, and
being some six degrees further north than Queenstown. The northern half
of Natal also partakes of that character, though there, as well as over
the rest of the eastern slopes of the Drakensberg mountains, the country
is more broken and hilly than on the western