FEATURES

To understand the material resources and economic conditions of South
Africa, and, indeed, to understand the history of the country and the
political problems which it now presents, one must first know something
of its physical structure. The subject may seem dry, and those readers
who do not care for it may skip this chapter. But it need not be
uninteresting, and it is certainly not uninstructive. For myself, I can
say that not only South African history, but also the prospects of South
African industry and trade, were dark matters to me till I had got, by
travelling through the country, an idea of those natural features of the
southern part of the continent which have so largely governed the course
of events and have stamped themselves so deeply upon the habits of the
people. Some notion of these features I must now try to convey.
Fortunately, they are simple, for nature has worked in Africa, as in
America, upon larger and broader lines than she has done in Europe. The
reader will do well to keep a map beside him, and refer[3] constantly to
it, for descriptions without a map avail little.

Africa south of the Zambesi River consists, speaking broadly, of three
regions. There is a strip of lowland lying along the coast of the Indian
Ocean, all the way round from Cape Town, past Durban and Delagoa Bay and
Beira, till you reach the mouth of the Zambesi. On the south, between
Cape Town and Durban, this strip is often very narrow, for in many
places the hills come, as they do at Cape Town, right down to the sea.
But beyond Durban, as one follows the coast along to the north-east, the
level strip widens. At Delagoa Bay it is some fifteen or twenty miles
wide; at Beira it is sixty or eighty miles wide, so that the hills
behind cannot be seen from the coast; and farther north it is still
wider. This low strip is in many places wet and swampy, and, being
swampy, is from Durban northward malarious and unhealthful in the
highest degree. Its unhealthfulness is a factor of prime importance in
what may be called the general scheme of the country, and has had, as we
shall presently see, the most important historical consequences.

Behind the low coast strip rise the hills whose slopes constitute the
second region. They rise in most places rather gradually, and they
seldom (except in Manicaland, to be hereafter described) present
striking forms. The neighbourhood of Cape Town is almost the only place
where high mountain