, they deserve to be called mountains, for some of them reach
7000 feet. These high regions are healthy, for the summer heats are
tempered by easterly breezes and copious summer rains. The lower parts
lying toward the Indian Ocean and the Limpopo River are feverish, though
drainage and cultivation may be expected to reduce the malaria and
improve the conditions of health. Like the Free State, the Transvaal is
primarily a pasture land, but in many parts the herbage is less juicy
and wholesome than in the smaller republic, and belongs to what the
Dutch Boers call "sour veldt." There are trees in the more sheltered
parts, but except in the lower valleys, they are small, and of no
economic value. The winter cold is severe, and the fierce sun dries up
the soil, and makes the grass sear and brown for the greater part of the
year. Strong winds sweep over the vast stretches of open upland, checked
by no belts of forest. It is a country whose aspect has little to
attract the settler. No one would think it worth fighting for so far as
the surface goes; and until sixteen years ago nobody knew that there was
enormous wealth lying below the surface.

BRITISH TERRITORIES--BECHUANALAND

Of one British territory outside the two colonies, viz., Basutoland, I
shall have to speak fully hereafter. A second, Bechuanaland, including
the Kalahari Desert, is of vast extent, but slender value. It is a level
land lying entirely on the plateau between 3,000 and 4000 feet above the
sea, and while some of its streamlets drain into the Limpopo, and so to
the Indian Ocean, others flow westward and northward into marshes and
shallow lakes, in which they disappear. One or two, however, succeed, in
wet seasons, in getting as far as the Orange River, and find through it
an outlet to the sea. It is only in the wet season that the streamlets
flow, for Bechuanaland is intensely dry. I travelled four hundred miles
through it without once crossing running water, though here and there in
traversing the dry bed of a brook one was told that there was water
underneath, deep in the sand. Notwithstanding this superficial aridity,
eastern Bechuanaland is deemed one of the best ranching tracts in South
Africa, for the grass is sweet, and the water can usually be obtained by
digging, though it is often brackish. There is also plenty of wood--thin
and thorny, but sufficiently abundant to diversify the aspect of what
would otherwise be a most dreary and monotonous reg