SOUTHERN AFRICA. 15 
half in a hundred among the white inhabitants, and under 
three in a hundred among the slaves. Those in the latter 
condition, who live in the town, are in general well fed, well 
clothed, not much exposed to the weather, nor put to hard 
labor. Others in the country, whose principal food consists 
of black sandy bread, and the offals of butchers' meat, who 
labor from morning to night in the field, and those also who 
follow the arduous and daily task of gathering wood on the 
exposed sides of the mountains, or in the hot sands, are sub- 
ject to bilious fevers of wliich they seldom recover. 
The scarcity of water in summer is much more unfavor- 
able to an extended cultivation than either the soil or climate. 
The torrents of rain that descend for about four months in 
the year, deluging the whole country, disappear suddenly, 
leaving the deep sunken beds of the rivers nearly dry, or so 
far exhausted as to be rendered incapable of supplying the 
purposes of irrigation. The periodical rivulets, and the 
streams that issue from the mountain springs, are either ab- 
sorbed or evaporated before they arrive at any great distance 
from their sources. In the whole compass of this extensive 
colony, one can scarcely say that there is a single navigable 
river. The beds indeed of all the rivers in the colony are 
sunk, in a remarkable manner, to a very great depth below 
the general surface of the country ; so that v/henever the 
heavy rains descend, the waters subside into these deep 
channels, which, on account of their narrowness, almost 
instantaneously become filled to the very brink. The im- 
petuosity v/ith which such torrents rush towards the sea is 
irresistible. 
