am over its huge
expanse of three hundred miles long and half as much wide, nor, indeed,
any moisture, save in a few places shallow pools which almost disappear
in the dry season. The rainfall ranges from five to fifteen inches in
the year. It is therefore virtually a desert, bearing no herbage (except
for a week or two after a rainstorm), and no trees, though there are
plenty of prickly shrubs and small bushes, some of these succulent
enough, when they sprout after the few showers that fall in the summer,
to give good browsing to sheep and goats. The brilliancy of the air, the
warmth of the days, and the coldness of the nights remind one who
traverses the Karroo of the deserts of Western America between the Rocky
Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, though the soil is much less alkaline,
and the so-called "sage-brush" plants characteristic of an alkaline
district are mostly absent. To the north of the Karroo and of the
mountains which bound it, a similar district, equally arid, dreary, and
barren, stretches away to the banks of the Orange River, which here in
its lower course has less water than in its upper course, because, like
the Nile, it receives no affluents and is wasted by the terrible sun. In
fact, one may say that from the mountains dividing the southern part of
the Karroo from the coast lands all the way north to the Orange River, a
distance of nearly four hundred miles, nature has made the country a
desert of clay and stone (seldom of sand), though man has here and there
tried to redeem it for habitation.

The north-eastern part of the interior of Cape Colony is more generally
elevated than the south-western. From Graaf-Reinet northward to
Kimberley and Mafeking, and north-eastward to the borders of Basutoland,
the country is 4000 feet or more above sea-level; much of it is nearly
level, and almost all of it bare of wood. It is better watered than the
western districts, enjoying a rainfall of from ten to twenty-five inches
in the year, and is therefore mostly covered with grass after the rains,
and not merely with dry thorny bushes. Nevertheless, its general aspect
in the dry season is so parched and bare that the stranger is surprised
to be told that it supports great quantities of cattle, sheep, and
goats. The south-eastern part, including the Quathlamba Range, and the
hilly country descending from that range to the sea, has a still heavier
rainfall and is in some places covered with forest. Here the grass is