TRAVELS IN 
white inhabitants, fo that each individual might poflefs eight 
and a half fquare miles of ground. A very great portion, how- 
ever, of this territory may be confidered as an unprofitable 
wafte, unfit for any fort of culture, or even to be employed as 
pafture for the fupport of cattle. Level plains, confifting of a 
hard impenetrable furface of clay, thinly fprinkled over with 
chryftallized fand, condemned to perpetual drought, and pro- 
ducing only a few ftraggling tufts of acrid, faline, and fucculent 
plants, and chains of vaft mountains that are either totally 
naked, or clothed in parts with four gralTes only, or fuch plants 
as are noxious to animal life, compofe at leaft one half of the 
colony of the Cape. Thefe chains of mountains and the inter- 
jacent plains are extended generally in the diredion of eaft and 
weft, except indeed that particular range which, beginning at 
Falfe Bay, oppofite to the Cape Point, ftretches to the northward 
along the weftern coaft as far as the mouth of Olifant's river, 
which is about 210 miles. 
The firft great chain of mountains that runs eaft and weft 
enclofes, between it and the fouthern coaft, an irregular belt of 
land from twenty to fixty miles in width, indented by feveral 
bays, covered with a deep and fertile foil, interfeded by nume- 
rous ftreamlets, well clothed with grafs and fmall arboreous or 
fruitefcent plants, well wooded in many parts with foreft-trees, 
fupplied with frequent rains, and enjoying, on account of its 
proximity to the fea, a more mild and equable temperature than 
the more remote and interior parts of the colony. 
The nest great chain is the Z^arte Berg or Black Mountain. 
This is confiderably more lofty and rugged than the firft, and 
confifts 
