NATURAL DIVISIONS OF AFRICA. JQ9 



physical appearance and population. These are more marked 

 beyond than within the colony. At some points one district 

 seems to be continued in and to merge into the other, but the 

 general dissimilarity warrants the division, as an aid to memory. 

 The eastern zone is often furnished with mountains, well wooded 

 with evergreen succulent trees, on which neither fire nor droughts 

 can have the smallest effect {Strelitzia, Zamia horrida, Portula- 

 caria afra, Schotia speciosa, Euphorbias, and Aloes arbor escens) ; 

 and its seaboard gorges are clad with gigantic timber. It is also 

 comparatively well watered with streams and flowing rivers. The 

 annual supply of rain is considerable, and the inhabitants (Caffres 

 or Zulus) are tall, muscular, and well made ; they are shrewd, en- 

 ergetic, and brave ; altogether they merit the character given them 

 by military authorities, of being "magnificent savages." Their 

 splendid physical development and form of skull show that, but 

 for the black skin and woolly hair, they would take rank among 

 the foremost Europeans. 



The next division, that which embraces the centre of the con- 

 tinent, can scarcely be called hilly, for what hills there are are 

 very low. It consists for the most part of extensive, slightly un- 

 dulating plains. There are no lofty mountains, but few springs, 

 and still fewer flowing streams. Rain is far from abundant, and 

 droughts may be expected every few years. Without artificial 

 irrigation no European grain can be raised, and the inhabitants 

 (Bechuanas), though evidently of the same stock, originally, with 

 those already mentioned, and closely resembling them in being an 

 agricultural as well as a pastoral people, are a comparatively timid 

 race, and inferior to the Caffres in physical development. 



The western division is still more level than the middle one, 

 being rugged only near the coast. It includes the great plain 

 called the Kalahari Desert, which is remarkable for little water 

 and very considerable vegetation. 



The reason, probably, why so little rain falls on this extensive 

 plain is that the prevailing winds of most of the interior country 

 are easterly, with a little southing. The moisture taken up 

 by the atmosphere from the Indian Ocean is deposited on the 

 eastern hilly slope ; and when the moving mass of air reaches its 

 greatest elevation, it is then on the verge of the great valley, or, 

 as in the case of the Kalahari, the great heated inland plains ; 



