Part 2 (1/2)

Finally, it must be noted that the coast has extremely few harbours.

From Cape Town eastward and north-eastward there is no sheltered deep-water haven till one reaches that of Durban, itself troubled by a bar, and from Durban to the Zambesi no good ports save Delagoa Bay and Beira. On the other side of the continent, Saldanha Bay, twenty miles north of Cape Town, is an excellent harbour. After that the Atlantic coast shows none for a thousand miles.

So much for the surface and configuration of the country. Now let us come to the climate, which is a not less important element in making South Africa what it is.

The heat is, of course, great, though less great than a traveller from North Africa or India expects to find in such a lat.i.tude. Owing to the vast ma.s.s of water in the southern hemisphere, that hemisphere is cooler in the same lat.i.tude than is the northern. Cape Town, in lat.i.tude 34 S., has a colder winter and not so hot a summer as Gibraltar and Aleppo, in lat.i.tude 36 N. Still the summer temperature is high even at Durban, in lat.i.tude 30 S., while the northern part of the Transvaal Republic, and all the territories of the British South Africa Company, including Matabililand and Mashonaland, lie within the tropic of Capricorn, that is to say, correspond in lat.i.tude to Nubia and the central provinces of India between Bombay and Calcutta.

The climate is also, over most of the country, extremely dry. Except in a small district round Cape Town, at the southern extremity of the continent, there is no proper summer and winter, but only a dry season, the seven or eight months when the weather is colder, and a wet season, the four or five months when the sun is highest. Nor are the rains that fall in the wet season so copious and continuous as they are in some other hot countries; in many parts of India, for instance, or in the West Indies and Brazil. Thus even in the regions where the rainfall is heaviest, reaching thirty inches or more in the year, the land soon dries up and remains parched till the next wet season comes. The air is therefore extremely dry, and, being dry, it is clear and stimulating in a high degree.

Now let us note the influence upon the climate of that physical structure we have just been considering. The prevailing wind, and the wind that brings most of the rain in the wet season, is the east or south-east. It gives a fair supply of moisture to the low coast strip which has been referred to above. Pa.s.sing farther inland, it impinges upon the hills which run down from the Quathlamba Range, waters them, and sometimes falls in snow on the loftiest peaks. A certain part of the rain-bearing clouds pa.s.ses still farther inland, and scatters showers over the eastern part of the tableland, that is to say, over the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, eastern Bechua.n.a.land, and the territories still farther north, toward the Zambesi. Very little humidity, however, reaches the tracts farther to the west. The northern part of Cape Colony as far as the Orange River, the western part of Bechua.n.a.land, and the wide expanse of Damaraland have a quite trifling rainfall, ranging from four or five to ten inches in the whole year.

Under the intense heat of the sun this moisture soon vanishes, the surface bakes hard, and the vegetation withers. All this region is therefore parched and arid, much of it, in fact, a desert, and likely always to remain so.

These great and dominant physical facts--a low coast belt, a high interior plateau, a lofty, rugged mountain-range running nearly parallel to, and not very far from, the sh.o.r.e of the ocean, whence the rainclouds come, a strong sun, a dry climate--have determined the character of South Africa in many ways. They explain the very remarkable fact that South Africa has, broadly speaking, no rivers. Rivers are, indeed, marked on the map--rivers of great length and with many tributaries; but when in travelling during the dry season you come to them you find either a waterless bed or a mere line of green and perhaps unsavoury pools. The streams that run south and east from the mountains to the coast are short and rapid torrents after a storm, but at other times dwindle to feeble trickles of mud. In the interior there are, to be sure, rivers which, like the Orange River or the Limpopo, have courses hundreds of miles in length. But they contain so little water during three-fourths of the year as to be unserviceable for navigation, while most of their tributaries shrink in the dry season to a chain of pools, scarcely supplying drink to the cattle on their banks. This is one of the reasons why the country remained so long unexplored. People could not penetrate it by following waterways, as happened both in North and in South America; they were obliged to travel by ox-waggon, making only some twelve or sixteen miles a day, and finding themselves obliged to halt, when a good bit of gra.s.s was reached, to rest and restore the strength of their cattle. For the same reason the country is now forced to depend entirely upon railways for internal communication. There is not a stream (except tidal streams) fit to float anything drawing three feet of water.

It is a curious experience to travel for hundreds of miles, as one may do in the dry season in the north-eastern part of Cape Colony and in Bechua.n.a.land, through a country which is inhabited, and covered in some places with wood, in others with gra.s.s or shrublets fit for cattle, and see not a drop of running water, and hardly even a stagnant pond. It is scarcely less strange that such rivers as there are should be useless for navigation. But the cause is to be found in the two facts already stated. In those parts where rain falls it comes at one season, within three or four months. Moreover, it comes then in such heavy storms that for some hours, or even days, the streams are so swollen as to be not only impa.s.sable by waggons, but also unnavigable, because, although there is plenty of water, the current is too violent. Then when the floods have ceased the streams fall so fast, and the channel becomes so shallow, that hardly even a canoe will float. The other fact arises from the proximity to the east coast of the great Quathlamba chain of mountains. The rivers that flow from it have mostly short courses, while the few that come down from behind and break through it, as does the Limpopo, are interrupted at the place where they break through by rapids which no boat can ascend.

[Footnote 3: In particular I will ask the reader to refer to the two maps showing the physical features of the country which have been inserted in this volume.]

CHAPTER II

HEALTH

The physical conditions just described determine the healthfulness of the country, and this is a matter of so much moment, especially to those who think of settling in South Africa, that I take the earliest opportunity of referring to it.

The sun-heat would make the climate very trying to Europeans, and of course more trying the farther north toward the Equator they live, were it not for the two redeeming points I have dwelt on--the elevation and the dryness of the interior. To be 3000, 4000, or 5000 feet above the sea is for most purposes the same thing as being in a more temperate lat.i.tude, and more than five-sixths in area of the districts which are now inhabited by Europeans have an elevation of fully 3000 feet. Not merely the tablelands of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, but also by far the larger part of Cape Colony and nearly the whole of Natal (excluding a small strip along the coast), attain this elevation. Thus even in summer, when the heat is great during the day, the coolness of the night refreshes the system. The practical test of night temperature is whether one wishes for a blanket to sleep under. In Madras and Bombay all the year round, in New York through several months of summer, in Paris or sometimes even in London for a few days in July or August, a light blanket is oppressive, and the continuance of the high day temperature through the hours of darkness exhausts and enfeebles all but vigorous const.i.tutions. But in South Africa it is only along the coast, in places like Durban, Delagoa Bay, or Beira, that one feels inclined to dispense with a woollen covering at night, while in Johannesburg or Bloemfontein a good thick blanket is none too much even in November, before the cooling rains begin, or in December, when the days are longest. In fact, the fall of temperature at sunset is often a source of risk to those who, coming straight from Europe, have not yet learned to guard against sudden changes, for it causes chills which, if they find a weak organ to pounce upon, may produce serious illness. These rapid variations of temperature are not confined to the pa.s.sage from day to night. Sometimes in the midst of a run of the usual warm, brilliant weather of the dry season there will come a cold, bitter south east wind, covering the sky with gray clouds and driving the traveller to put on every wrap he possesses. I remember, toward the end of October, such a sudden ”cold snap” in Matabililand, only twenty degrees from the equator. One s.h.i.+vered all day long under a thick greatcoat, and the natives lit fires in front of their huts and huddled round them for warmth. Chills dangerous to delicate people are apt to be produced by these changes, and they often turn into feverish attacks, not malarial, though liable to be confounded with malarial fevers. This risk of encountering cold weather is a concomitant of that power of the south-east wind to keep down the great heats, which, on the whole, makes greatly for the salubrity of the country; so the gain exceeds the loss.

But new comers have to be on their guard, and travellers will do well, even between the tropic and the equator, to provide themselves with warm clothing.

Strong as the sun is, its direct rays seem to be much less dangerous than in India or the eastern United States. Sunstroke is unusual, and one sees few people wearing, even in the tropical north, those hats of thick double felt or those sun-helmets which are deemed indispensable in India. In fact, Europeans go about with the same head-gear which they use in an English summer. But the relation of sun-stroke to climate is obscure. Why should it be extremely rare in California, when it is very common in New York in the same lat.i.tude? Why should it be almost unknown in the Hawaiian Islands, within seventeen degrees of the equator? Its rarity in South Africa is a great point in favour of the healthfulness of the country, and also of the ease and pleasantness of life. In India one has to be always mounting guard against the sun. He is a formidable and ever-present enemy, and he is the more dangerous the longer you live in the country. In South Africa it is only because he dries up the soil so terribly that the traveller wishes to have less of him. The born Africander seems to love him.

The dryness of the climate makes very strongly for its salubrity. It is the absence of moisture no less than the elevation above sea-level that gives to the air its fresh, keen, bracing quality, the quality which enables one to support the sun-heat, which keeps the physical frame in vigour, which helps children to grow up active and healthy, which confines to comparatively few districts that deadliest foe of Europeans, swamp-fever. Malarial fever in one of its many forms, some of them intermittent, others remittent, is the scourge of the east coast as well as of the west coast. To find some means of avoiding it would be to double the value of Africa to the European powers which have been establis.h.i.+ng themselves on the coasts. No one who lives within thirty miles of the sea nearly all the way south from Cape Guardafui to Zululand can hope to escape it. It is frequent all round the great Nyanza lakes, and particularly severe in the valley of the Nile from the lakes downward to Khartoum. It prevails through the comparatively low country which lies along the Congo and the chief tributaries of that great stream. It hangs like a death-cloud over the valley of the Zambesi, and is found up to a height of 3000 or 4000 feet, sometimes even higher, in Nya.s.saland and the lower parts of the British territories that stretch to Lake Tanganyika. The Administrator of German East Africa has lately declared that there is not a square mile of that vast region that can be deemed free from it. Even along the generally arid sh.o.r.es of Damaraland there are spots where it is to be feared. But Cape Colony and Natal and the Orange Free State are almost exempt from it. So, too, are all the higher parts of the Transvaal, of Bechua.n.a.land, of Matabililand, and of Mashonaland. Roughly speaking, one may say that the upper boundary line of malarial fevers in these countries is about 4500 feet above the sea, and where fevers occur at a height above 3000 feet they are seldom of a virulent type. Thus, while the lower parts of the Transvaal between the Quathlamba Mountains and the sea are terribly unhealthy, while the Portuguese country behind Delagoa Bay and Beira as far as the foot of the hills is equally dangerous,--Beira itself has the benefit of a strong sea-breeze,--by far the larger part of the recently occupied British territories north and west of the Transvaal is practically safe. It is, of course, proper to take certain precautions, to avoid chills and the copious use of alcohol and it is specially important to observe such precautions during and immediately after the wet season, when the sun is raising vapours from the moist soil, when new vegetation has sprung up, and when the long gra.s.s which has grown during the first rains is rotting under the later rains. Places which are quite healthful in the dry weather, such as Gaberones and the rest of the upper valley of the rivers Notwani and Limpopo in eastern Bechua.n.a.land, then become dangerous, because they lie on the banks of streams which inundate the lower grounds. Much depends on the local circ.u.mstances of each spot. To ill.u.s.trate the differences between one place and another, I may take the case of the three chief posts in the territories of the British South Africa Company. Buluwayo, nearly 4000 feet above the sea, is always practically free from malaria, for it stands in a dry, breezy upland with few trees and short gra.s.s. Fort Victoria, 3670 feet above the sea, is salubrious enough during the dry season, but often feverish after the rains, because there is some wet ground near it. Fort Salisbury, 4900 feet above the sea, is now healthful at all times, but parts of it used to be feverish at the end of the rainy season, until they were drained in the beginning of 1895.

So Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal Republic, is apt to be malarious during the months of rain, because (although 4470 feet above the sea) it lies in a well-watered hollow; while at Johannesburg, thirty miles off, on the top of a high, bare, stony ridge, one has no occasion to fear fever, though the want of water and proper drainage, as well as the quant.i.ty of fine dust from the highly comminuted ore and ”tailings”

with which the air is filled, had until 1896 given rise to other maladies, and especially to septic pneumonia. These will diminish with a better munic.i.p.al administration, and similarly malaria will doubtless vanish from the many spots where it is now rife when the swampy grounds have been drained and the long gra.s.s eaten down by larger herds of cattle.

It is apparently the dryness and the purity of the air which have given South Africa its comparative immunity from most forms of chest disease.

Many sufferers from consumption, for whom a speedy death, if they remained in Europe, had been predicted, recover health, and retain it till old age. The spots chiefly recommended are on the high grounds of the interior plateau, where the atmosphere is least humid. Ceres, ninety-four miles by rail from Cape Town, and Beaufort West, in the Karroo, have been resorted to as sanatoria; and Kimberley, the city of diamonds, has an equally high reputation for the quality of its air.

However, some of the coast districts are scarcely less eligible, though Cape Town has too many rapid changes of weather, and Durban too sultry a summer, to make either of them a desirable place of residence for invalids.

Apart from all questions of specific complaints, there can be no doubt as to the general effect of the climate upon health. The aspect of the people soon convinces a visitor that, in spite of its heat, the country is well fitted to maintain in vigour a race drawn from the cooler parts of Europe. Comparatively few adult Englishmen sprung from fathers themselves born in Africa are as yet to be found. But the descendants of the Dutch and Huguenot settlers are Africanders up to the sixth or seventh generation, and the stock shows no sign of losing either its stature or its physical strength. Athletic sports are pursued as eagerly as in England.

CHAPTER III

WILD ANIMALS AND THEIR FATE

When first explored, South Africa was unusually rich in the kinds both of plants and of animals which it contained; and until forty or fifty years ago the number, size, and beauty of its wild creatures were the things by which it was chiefly known to Europeans, who had little suspicion of its mineral wealth, and little foreboding of the trouble that wealth would cause. Why it was so rich in species is a question on which geology will one day be able to throw light, for much may depend on the relations of land and sea in earlier epochs of the earth's history. Probably the great diversities of elevation and of climate which exist in the southern part of the continent have contributed to this profuse variety; and the fact that the country was occupied only by savages, who did little or nothing to extinguish any species nature had planted, may have caused many weak species to survive when equally weak ones were peris.h.i.+ng in Asia and Europe at the hands of more advanced races of mankind. The country was therefore the paradise of hunters.

Besides the lion and the leopard, there were many other great cats, some of remarkable beauty. Besides the elephant, which was in some districts very abundant, there existed two kinds of rhinoceros, as well as the hippopotamus and the giraffe. There was a wonderful profusion of antelopes,--thirty-one species have been enumerated,--including such n.o.ble animals as the eland and koodoo, such beautiful ones as the springbok and klipspringer, such fierce ones as the blue wildebeest or gnu. There were two kinds of zebra, a quagga, and a buffalo, both huge and dangerous. Probably nowhere in the world could so great a variety of beautiful animals be seen or a larger variety of formidable ones be pursued.