TRANSVAAL 



5863 



TRANSVAAL 



LOCATION MAP 

 Transvaal occupies a rela- 

 tively-small portion of the 

 African continent, but no 

 chief- other political division is 

 more important. 



the state of Nevada, or as large as Great Brit- 

 ain and Ireland combined. It is a little more 

 than five times the size of Nova Scotia. 



The province was settled by the Boers, the 

 descendants of the early Dutch, French and 

 German colonists of the Cape, but the white 

 settlers constitute only a fourth of the popula- 

 tion, which in 

 1911 numbered 

 1,686,212. The 

 native inhabit- 

 ants are negroids 

 of the Bantu 

 family, and 

 though many 

 tribes in the 

 northern, eastern 

 and extreme 

 southwest- 

 ern provinces still 

 retain their abo- 

 riginal customs 

 and tribal 

 tains, a large 

 number are in the service of the colony as la- 

 borers in the mines and on farms. Johannes- 

 burg, the largest city in the South African 

 Union, and Pretoria, its seat of government, 

 are both Transvaal cities and important centers 

 of industry and trade. 



The Land. The Transvaal is for the most 

 part a plateau country, with an average eleva- 

 tion of from 3,500 to 5,000 feet above sea level. 

 A northern extension of the Drakensberg 

 Mountains extends along the eastern part of 

 the country and follows the southern boundary 

 for a considerable distance. The highest sum- 

 mit of the range, the Mauchberg, has an alti- 

 tude of 8,730 feet. Extending eastward from 

 the mountains is a broad belt of lowland, which 

 approaches a range of flat-topped hills the 

 Lebombo on the frontier between the Trans- 

 vaal and Portuguese East Africa. The interior 

 of the plateau region is crossed from west to 

 east as far as Johannesburg by a range of hills 

 called Witwatersrand, which constitutes one of 

 the richest gold fields in the world and forms 

 the water parting between the rivers flowing 

 into the Indian Ocean and those flowing into 

 the Atlantic. 



Farther north, separated from the hill region 

 by a low bush (or low veldt) country, are the 

 Waterberg and Zoutpansberg ranges, the latter 

 being the northern termination of the Drakens- 

 berg. The land south of the Witwatersrand 

 and west of the Drakensberg, which is called 



the high veldt, is a rolling, treeless country, 

 with occasional flat-topped or pointed knobs, 

 called kopjes, varying the landscape. In this 

 region there are numerous fresh-water springs 

 and several shallow lakes with no outlet, called 

 pans. The largest of the pans, Lake Chrissie, 

 is only five miles long. The waters of these 

 lakes are generally brackish. The low veldt, a 

 desolate region covered with scrub, is for the 

 most part level country, though it is occa- 

 sionally broken by ridges and kopjes. In the 

 far north the veldt slopes rapidly to the low- 

 lands along the Limpopo River. 



Two great fissures are cut in the plateau by 

 the Limpopo and the Vaal rivers. The former 

 flows along the northern and northwestern bor- 

 ders of the province, describing a great semi- 

 circle 1,000 miles in length. After leaving the 

 province it flows southwest through Portuguese 

 East Africa to the Indian Ocean. With its 

 tributaries it drains an area of 95,000 square 

 miles in the Transvaal. The Vaal, rising in the 

 west slope of the Drakensberg, flows southwest 

 to the Orange River and thence to the Atlantic. 

 It forms most of the southern boundary of the 

 province, which is thus well named, "across the 

 Vaal." The Olifants, the chief tributary of the 

 Limpopo, drains the region between the high 

 veldt and the northern ranges. 



In the interior uplands the climate is health- 

 ful, but along the low, damp banks of the 

 Limpopo there is a malaria and fever belt in- 

 fested with the tsetse fly, and its jungles and 

 thickets are inhabited only by the elephant, 

 lion and other wild animals of the African for- 

 ests. The rainfall ranges from forty inches in 

 the east to twelve inches in the western plains, 

 and is heaviest during the hot summer season, 

 lasting from October until April. The winter 

 months between April and September are cool 

 and invigorating. 



Industries. In respect to agriculture the 

 Transvaal is chiefly a stock-raising country, and 

 the land devoted to grazing covers 30,000,000 

 acres. Sheep and goats are raised in largest 

 numbers, and other stock includes horses, cat-" 

 tie, mules, swine and ostriches. There are 

 about 2,000,000 acres under cultivation, and the 

 principal crops are maize and tobacco. Pota- 

 toes, barley and oats are also cultivated with 

 profit, but many agricultural products have to 

 be imported. 



The most important industry in the prov- 

 ince is mining. The hills and mountains of the 

 Transvaal are richer in minerals than any other 

 region on the African continent, and are un- 



