■white inhabitants,, fo that each individual might polfefs eight
and a half fquare miles of ground. A very great portion, however,
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 o f cattle. Level plains, confifting of a
hard impenetrable furface of clay, thinly, fprinkled over with
chryftallized fand, condemned to perpetual drought, and producing
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 graifes only, or fuch plants
as are noxious to animal life, compofe at leaft one half of the
colony of the Cape. Thefe chains o f mountains and the interjacent
plains are extended generally in the direction 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
Iafid from twenty to fixty miles in width, indented by feveral
bays, covered with a deep and fertile foil, interfeded by nume-
rousftreamlets, 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 next great chain is the Zevarte Berg or Black Mountain.
This is confiderably more lofty and rugged than the firft, and
confifts
confifts in many inftances o f double and fometimes treble ranges.
The belt enclofed between it and the firft chain is about the
mean width of that between the firft and the fea; of a furface
very varied, compofed in fome parts of barren hills, in others
of naked arid plains of clay, known to the natives, and alfo to
the colonifts, by the name of Karroo ; and in others of choice
patches of well watered and fertile grounds. The general furface
of this belt has a confiderable elevation above that of the
firft ; the temperature is lefs uniform ; and from the nature of
the foil, as well as the difficulty of accefs over the mountains,
which are paffable only in few places, this diftri£t is much lefs
valuable than the other.
The third range of mountains is the Nieuwveldt’s Gebergtey
which, with the fecond, grafps the Great Karroo or arid defert,
uninhabited by a human creature. This defert, making the
third ftep or terrace of Southern Africa, is greatly elevated
above the fecond; is near 300 miles in letlgth from eaft to
weft, and eighty in breadth ; is fcarcely ever moiftened by a
ffiower of rain ; exhibits a furface of clay, thinly fprinkled over
with fand, out of which a few ihrivelled and parched plants
here and there meet the eye, faintly extending their half
withered fibres along the ground, and ftruggling, as it were,
to preferve their exiftence againft the exceffive heat of one
feafon of the year and the fevere frofts of the other.
The country likewife afcends from the weftern coaft towards
the interior in fucceffive terraces, o f which the moft elevated,
called the Roggeveld, falls in with the laft-mentioned chain of
c 2 mountains,