of
the same distance anywhere in Western Europe or in America east of the
Alleghany Mountains. The same geological formations prevail over wide
areas, and give the same profile to the hilltop, the same undulations to
the plain; while in travelling northward toward the Equator the flora
seems to change far less between 34 deg. and 18 deg. south latitude than it
changes in the journey from Barcelona to Havre, through only half as
many degrees of latitude.

There are, nevertheless, several interesting bits of scenery in South
Africa, which, if they do not of themselves repay the traveller for so
long a journey, add sensibly to his enjoyment. The situation of Cape
Town, with a magnificent range of precipices rising behind it, a noble
bay in front, and environs full of beautiful avenues and
pleasure-grounds, while bold mountain-peaks close the more distant
landscape, is equalled by that of few other cities in the world.
Constantinople and Naples, Bombay and San Francisco, cannot boast of
more perfect or more varied prospects. There are some fine pieces of
wood and water scenery along the south coast of Cape Colony, and one of
singular charm in the adjoining colony of Natal, where the suburbs of
Durban, the principal port, though they lack the grandeur which its
craggy heights give to the neighbourhood of Cape Town have, with a
warmer climate, a richer and more tropically luxuriant vegetation. In
the great range of mountains which runs some seventeen hundred miles
from Cape Town almost to the banks of the Zambesi, the scenery becomes
striking in three districts only. One of these is Basutoland, a little
native territory which lies just where Cape Colony, the Orange Free
State, and Natal meet. Its peaks are the highest in Africa south of
Mount Kilimanjaro, for several of them reach 11,000 feet. On the
south-east this mountain-land, the Switzerland of South Africa, faces
Natal and East Griqualand with a long range of formidable precipices,
impassable for many miles. The interior contains valleys and glens of
singular beauty, some wild and rugged, some clothed with rich pasture.
The voice of brooks, a sound rare in Africa, rises from the hidden
depths of the gorges, and here and there torrents plunging over the edge
of a basaltic cliff into an abyss below make waterfalls which are at all
seasons beautiful, and when swollen by the rains of January majestic.
Except wood, of which there is unhappily nothing more than a little
scru