One writer records the curious fact that the westerly winds which prevail in the winter season, from April to October, bring rain to the southeast maritime regions, while on the eastern coast the rainy season is in the summer, from September to April.
The highest mountain ranges are covered with snow for several months. In the inland sections frequent thunderstorms occur; these bring brief but copious falls of rain.
If we should start from the southern portion of the Cape and travel northward, we should find the country rising in a series of terraces. These finally culminate in what is known as Spitz Kop, or Compass Mountain. From this elevation, eight thousand five hundred feet above the sea, the country gradually declines to the Orange River.
These terraces, on their outer edges, resemble mountain ranges. They run in a direction from east to west, or, as one writer has described them, "parallel to the coast and to each other."
The outer, or the seaboard slopes of the ridges, constitute the best parts of the colony. They are for the most part thickly inhabited. The chief towns and villages are located here, and the fields of grain, the vineyards and orchards, and the tobacco plantations have given the country a well-deserved fame and reputation.
The narrow mountain gorges serve as passageways from one terrace to another. They bear the name of "kloofs." Their sides are the only passes into the interior. It is believed that the mountain torrents, which flow during certain seasons of the year, have worn deep valleys in their sides, and thus occasioned these kloofs, or mountain passes.
Beyond the Zwartebergen, or the Black Mountain, is the great grazing district of Cape Colony. It consists of vast undulating plains, and is known as the Great Karroo.
No trees are found upon the Great Karroo, and but very few shrubs. As soon as the wet season begins, however, this great district is covered with rich verdure and a profusion of flowers. Then the flocks of sheep enjoy all the luxuriance of a paradise of herbage, which clothes field, valley, and hillside alike.
It is at this season that the Great Karroo seems like a beautiful garden. One can scarcely believe the testimony of those who, having visited it a few days before the wet season begins, describe it as a bare, barren, brown waste.
During the summer months this region is dry and dreary in its character. Little or no running water is to be found, and only after a thundershower are the pools filled. For a brief season then the beds of the streams have running water. They soon run dry, and only by digging deep down in their beds can a scant amount of brackish water be obtained to supply both man and beast until the rainy season begins.