BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA AND THE TRANSVAAL 83 



in English territor3\ It starts ffom Cape Town, passes through Cape 

 Colon\% and follows closely the Avestern frontier of the Orange Free 

 State and the Transvaal. It passes through Kimberley and Mafeking, 

 from whence a wagon road runs to Krugersdorp and Johannesburg. 

 This road runs as far north as Bulawaj'o, about 1,300 miles north of 

 Cape Town. The third road starts from Durban, in the colon}'^ of 

 Natal, passes through Pieterniaritzburg, the capital of the colony, and 

 reaches Lad3^smith, where it separates into two sections, one section 

 extending westward into the Orange Free State and the other north- 

 ward to Heidelberg and Johannesburg, in the Transvaal. This road 

 enters the Transvaal territory through a tunnel under Laings Nek, 

 a pass in the Drakensberg Mountains near Majuba Hill, where the 

 English met such a crushing defeat in 1881. 



The fourth line starts from Lourenco Marques on Delagoa Bay, 

 traverses the Portuguese territory, enters the Transvaal at Komati- 

 poort, and terminates at Pretoria. This is the only road b}' which 

 the Transvaal government has been able to obtain supplies since the 

 outbreak of the war. 



The South African Republic was until a few years ago little known 

 to the outside world. It was merely a pastoral and agricultural 

 region, and such notoriety as it had achieved was due ])rincipally to 

 the frequent wars and bloody contests between its Boer inliabitants 

 and the British local and imperial authorities and the native tribes. 

 Twenty 3'ears ago it was seldom visited except by traders and hunters 

 in quest of big game, but thediscovery of the marvelous gold deposits 

 of the Witwatersrand in 1885 brought a rush of adventurers in search 

 of wealth. It is true that gold had heeii discovered in the Lydenburg 

 district as early as 1867, but not in sufficient quantities to attract 

 great attention. Immediately a multitude of French, Portuguese, 

 Germans, English, and Americans streamed into the country and the 

 city of Johannesburg sprang uj), like Aladdin's palace, in a day. 



The Transvaal lies immediately north of her sister Boer republic, 

 the Orange Free State, between the Limjiopo or Crocodile River on 

 the north and the Vaal River on the south. The country on the north 

 and west is British. The rei)ublic has no seaport, as the Portuguese 

 possessions and the colony of Natal shut it off from the Indian Ocean 

 on the east. The Vaal River is the chief tributary of the great Orange 

 River, which rises in the Drakensberg and flows across the continent 

 into the Atlantic. The Limpopo empties into the Indian Ocean. The 

 gold-bearing region, the Witwatersrand, or " White Water Range," 

 forms tlie watershed l)etween the two rivers. 



