Chap. V. NATURAL DIVISIONS OF AFRICA. 95 



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 arborescens) ; 

 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, energetic, and brave ; altogether they merit the cha- 

 racter 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 

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

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

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

 and still fewer flowing streams. Earn 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 pre vailing 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, 

 M in the fuse of the Kalahari, the great heated inland plains; 



