Impressions of South Africa

by Viscount James Bryce Bryce

CAPE COLONY

Cape Colony is a huge territory more than twice as large as the United Kingdom. But very little of it is available for tillage, and much of it is too arid even for stock-keeping. The population, including natives, is only seven to the square mile. Nearly the whole of it is high country. All along its westerly coast and its southerly coast there is a strip of low ground bordering the ocean, which in some places is but a mile or two wide, and in others, where a broad valley opens spreads backward, giving thirty or forty square miles of tolerably level or undulating ground. The rich wine and corn district round Stellenbosch and Paarl and northward towards Malmesbury is such a tract. Behind this low strip the country rises, sometimes in steep acclivities, up which a road or railway has to be carried in curves and zigzags, sometimes in successive terraces, the steps, so to speak, by which the lofty interior breaks down towards the sea.

Behind these terraces and slopes lies the great tableland described in a preceding chapter. Though I call it a tableland, it is by no means flat, for several long, though not lofty, ranges of hills, mostly running east and west, intersect it. Some tracts are only 2000 feet, others as much as 5000 feet, above the sea, while the highest hilltops approach 8000 feet. The part of this high country which lies between longitude 20° and 25° E., with the Nieuweld and Sneeuwberg mountains to the north of it, and the Zwarte Berg to the south, is called the Great Karroo. (The word is Hottentot, and means a dry or bare place.) It is tolerably level, excessively dry, with no such thing as a running stream over its huge expanse of three hundred miles long and half as much wide, nor, indeed, any moisture, save in a few places shallow pools which almost disappear in the dry season. The rainfall ranges from five to fifteen inches in the year. It is therefore virtually a desert, bearing no herbage (except for a week or two after a rainstorm), and no trees, though there are plenty of prickly shrubs and small bushes, some of these succulent enough, when they sprout after the few showers that fall in the summer, to give good browsing to sheep and goats. The brilliancy of the air, the warmth of the days, and the coldness of the nights remind one who traverses the Karroo of the deserts of Western America between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, though the soil is much less alkaline, and the so-called "sage-brush" plants characteristic of an alkaline district are mostly absent. To the north of the Karroo and of the mountains which bound it, a similar district, equally arid, dreary, and barren, stretches away to the banks of the Orange River, which here in its lower course has less water than in its upper course, because, like the Nile, it receives no affluents and is wasted by the terrible sun. In fact, one may say that from the mountains dividing the southern part of the Karroo from the coast lands all the way north to the Orange River, a distance of nearly four hundred miles, nature has made the country a desert of clay and stone (seldom of sand), though man has here and there tried to redeem it for habitation.

The north-eastern part of the interior of Cape Colony is more generally elevated than the south-western. From Graaf-Reinet northward to Kimberley and Mafeking, and north-eastward to the borders of Basutoland, the country is 4000 feet or more above sea-level; much of it is nearly level, and almost all of it bare of wood. It is better watered than the western districts, enjoying a rainfall of from ten to twenty-five inches in the year, and is therefore mostly covered with grass after the rains, and not merely with dry thorny bushes. Nevertheless, its general aspect in the dry season is so parched and bare that the stranger is surprised to be told that it supports great quantities of cattle, sheep, and goats. The south-eastern part, including the Quathlamba Range, and the hilly country descending from that range to the sea, has a still heavier rainfall and is in some places covered with forest. Here the grass is richer, and in the valleys there is plenty of land fit for tillage without irrigation.

THE COLONY OF NATAL

Much smaller, but more favoured by nature, is the British colony of Natal, which adjoins the easternmost part of Cape Colony, and now includes the territories of Zululand and Tonga land. Natal proper and Zululand resemble in their physical conditions the south-eastern corner of Cape Colony. Both lie entirely on the sea slope of the Quathlamba Range, and are covered by mountains and hills descending from that range. Both are hilly or undulating, with a charming variety of surface; and they are also comparatively well watered, with a perennial stream in every valley. Hence there is plenty of grass, and towards the coast plenty of wood also, while the loftier interior is bare. The climate is much warmer than that of Cape Colony, and in the narrow strip which borders the sea becomes almost tropical. Nor is this heat attributable entirely to the latitude. It is largely due to the great Mozambique current, which brings down from the tropical parts of the Indian Ocean a vast body of warm water which heats the adjoining coast just as the Gulf Stream heats the shores of Georgia and the Carolinas; and the effect of this mass of hot water upon the air over it would doubtless be felt much more in Natal were it not for the rapid rise of the ground from the sea in that colony. Pietermaritzburg, the capital, is only some fifty miles from the coast as the crow flies. But though it lies in a valley, it is 2225 feet above sea-level, and from it the country steadily rises inland, till at Laing's Nek (the watershed between the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic), the height of 5300 feet is reached, and the winter cold is severe. Nearly the whole of Natal and four-fifths of Zululand may thus be deemed a temperate country, where Europeans can thrive and multiply. So far as soil goes it is one of the richest as well as one of the fairest parts of South Africa. Tongaland, a smaller district, lies lower and is less healthy.

GERMAN SOUTH-WEST AFRICA

Very different is the vast German territory (322,000 square miles) which stretches northward from Cape Colony, bounded on the south by the Orange River, on the north by the West African territories of Portugal, on the east by Bechuanaland. Great Namaqualand and Damaraland constitute an enormous wilderness, very thinly peopled, because the means of life are very scanty. This wilderness is, except the narrow and sandy coast strip, a high country (3000 to 4500 feet above sea-level) and a dry country, drier even than the Karroo, and far too dry for any kind of cultivation. Some parts, especially those in the south-west, are hopelessly parched and barren; others have small bushes or grass; while on the higher grounds and generally in the far northern parts, where the Ovampo tribe dwell, grass is abundant, and as cattle can thrive there is also population. Copper has been discovered in considerable quantities, and other minerals (including coal) are believed to exist. But the country, taken all in all, and excepting the little explored districts of the north-east, toward the Upper Zambesi,—districts whose resources are still very imperfectly known,—is a dreary and desolate region, which seems likely to prove of little value. Germany now owns the whole of it, save the port of Walfish Bay, which has been retained for and is administered by Cape Colony.

PORTUGUESE SOUTH-EAST AFRICA

On the opposite side of the continent Portugal holds the country which lies along the Indian Ocean from British Tongaland northward to the Zambesi. Close to the sea it is level, rising gently westward in hills, and in some places extending to the crest of the Quathlamba Mountains. Thus it has considerable variety of aspect and climate, and as the rain falls chiefly on the slopes of the mountains, the interior is generally better watered than the flat seaboard, which is often sandy and worthless. Much of this region is of great fertility, capable of producing all the fruits of the tropics. But much of it, including some of the most fertile parts, is also very malarious, while the heat is far too great for European labour. When plantations are established throughout it, as they have been in a few—but only a few—spots by the Portuguese, it will be by natives that they will be cultivated. The Kafir population is now comparatively small, but this may be due rather to the desolating native wars than to the conditions of the soil.