Generally speaking, the average Boer cares very little for any other occupation than farming. He has little or no aptitude for commerce, and, in consequence, in the various commercial settlements with which the country is dotted there is little that is Dutch except the names of the towns; for the inhabitants are mostly English merchants, and the shopkeepers are invariably English.
There are a few Germans in the Transvaal; but, as in the Orange Free State, the population is essentially Dutch. In the rural districts it is almost without exception of that nationality.
Compared with the Orange Free State, this country is more favorable for a large population than one might suppose, for its general features and climate are to its advantage.
Like the Orange Free State, the Transvaal is an elevated pastoral plateau, or series of plateaux, broken by low ranges of hills. On the west it has for its boundary the country which gradually merges into the Kalahari Desert. Towards the north, along the Limpopo River, the country has a partially tropical character.
A range of hills, which forms the southern edge of the plateau, is known as the High Veldt, or Field. It comprises an area of about thirty-five thousand square miles, composed chiefly of pastoral land, having an elevation of from three thousand to eight thousand feet above the sea. This section, necessarily, must possess a bracing climate, and is, for the most part, well watered in the summer, but dry during the winter months. We must remember how the seasons are reversed in Africa, hence winter would extend from March or April to October.
Several detached ranges of hills join with the Drachenberg Mountains on the northeast to form the region known as the Middle Veldt. This occupies about twenty-five thousand miles of broken country, intersected with kloofs, or gullies, and many valleys. It is well suited in some portions for the cultivation of grain and other crops of the temperate climates. As a rule, it has not the extent of open country which would fit it for grazing purposes on a large scale.
The Low Veldt, or Bush country, is the region on the north in the direction of the Limpopo River. It rarely has an elevation of more than from two to four thousand feet above the sea.
It is in this section that the usual characteristics of the Transvaal disappear and the features of the hot lands of the north become noticeable.
Mimosa groves and thorn thickets become so numerous as to be disagreeable features in the landscape. The climate, too, changes its character; hitherto it has been healthy; it now becomes malarial, particularly during the rainy season, which takes place in the summer months.
It seems quite probable that, were it not for the nature of the country, the Transvaal would possess a semi-tropical climate throughout, since its extension northward places it among countries which, farther to the east or to the west, are hot and pestilential.