ion.

THE TERRITORIES OF THE BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA COMPANY

North of Bechuanaland and the Transvaal, and stretching all the way to
the Zambesi, are those immense territories which have been assigned to
the British South Africa Company as the sphere of its operations, and to
which the name of Rhodesia has been given. Matabililand and Mashonaland,
the only parts that have been at all settled, are higher, more
undulating, and altogether more attractive than Bechuanaland, with great
swelling downs somewhat resembling the Steppes of Southern Russia or the
prairies of Kansas. Except in the east and south-east, the land is
undulating rather than hilly, but in the south-west, towards the Upper
Limpopo, there lies a high region, full of small rocky heights often
clothed with thick bush--a country difficult to traverse, as has been
found during the recent native outbreak; for it was there that most of
the Kafirs took shelter and were found difficult to dislodge. Towards
the south-east, along the middle course of the Limpopo, the country is
lower and less healthy. On the northern side of the central highlands,
the ground sinks towards the Zambesi, and the soil, which among the
hills is thin or sandy, becomes deeper. In that part and along the river
banks there are great possibilities of agricultural development, while
the uplands, where the subjacent rock is granite or gneiss, with
occasional beds of slate or schist, are generally barer and more dry,
fit rather for pasture than for tillage. More rain falls than in
Bechuanaland, so it is only at the end of the dry season, in October,
that the grass begins to fail on the pastures. The climate, though very
warm,--for here we are well within the tropics,--is pleasant and
invigorating, for nowhere do brighter and fresher breezes blow, and the
heat of the afternoons is forgotten in the cool evenings. It is
healthy, too, except along the swampy river banks and where one descends
to the levels of the Zambesi, or into the Limpopo Valley.

The reader will have gathered from this general sketch that there are no
natural boundaries severing from one another the various political
divisions of South Africa. The north-eastern part of Cape Colony is
substantially the same kind of country as the Orange Free State and
Eastern Bechuanaland; the Transvaal, or at least three-fourths of its
area, is physically similar to the Free State; the boundary between Cape
Colony and Natal is an artificial one