SOUTH AFRICA. The part of Africa south of the Zambezi River; physically it is a distinct geographic unit. With an area of 1,100.000 square miles and a seaboard of more than 3000 miles, it is commercially a single trade region. Its collective commerce is known technically as the 'Cape trade' The business interests of every part of it are closely related to or inter woven with those of the other parts, and the best means of introducing civilization and commerce into tropical Africa is through the gateways that connect the equatorial regions with the wide regions which white men.are developing in South Africa. The colonies and protectorates which are wholly or in part in South Africa are: Portu guese East Africa, German Southwest Africa, Cape Colony, Orange River Colony, Transvaal Colony, Natal (including, Zululand Province), Rhodesia (Southern), Basutoland, and Bechu analand Protectorate (qq.v.), all except the first two belonging to Great Britain.
TOrOGRAlqIY. The coasts, like those of the rest of Africa, are chiefly straight and unbroken. They are deficient in good harbors and girdled by a tempestuous ocean with a never-ceasing surf. The west shore is very different in aspect from the south and east coasts. Nearly the whole of the west coast is low and sandy and the lands behind the shore line are barren and dismal. The south and east shores, however, though on the whole as regular and unbroken as the west coast, are attractive instead of repellent in appearance, with their evergreen slopes, picturesque bays, and wooded kloofs. All the ports of the west coast are roadsteads excepting Saldanha. Bay, a splendid natural harbor still undeveloped, and Cape Town, at enormous expense, has been made safe for shipping. None of the ports on the south coast is naturally good, but those of Port Elizabeth and East London have been made available for large trade by artificial improve ments. The east coast has in Delagoa Bay the only first-class harbor in Africa, and one of the finest in the world. The port of Durban on this coast has been rendered good artificially, and the port of Beira and the Chinde branch of the Zambezi delta are also available for large ship ping. Most of the interior of South Africa con sists of high plateaus, elevated so far above the sea level that the influences of the temperate zone are extended hundreds of miles to the north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Johannesburg enjoys
a temperate climate, while Rio de Janeiro, in nearly the sane latitude, is a tropical city. The high elevation of the most of South Africa is the chief element in its geographic unity. It is esti mated that the area of the region which, in re spect of temperature, is well adapted to become a home of the white race, is one-fifth as large as the area of the United States (exclusive of Alaska).
The entire coastal plain is only 20 to 50 miles wide excepting where it broadens to 100 miles or more in the neighborhood of Beira and the Zam bezi. Behind the plain the land begins to ascend in terraces. in the extreme south the coastal plain rises to 600 feet above the sea. Just north of it in Cape Colony are the Southern Karroo and the Bokkevelt. 1000 to 2000 feet high. Next come the Great Karroo with an average altitude of 3000 feet; then the loftiest of the Cape plateaus, the Northern Karroo, from 2700 to 6000 feet ; then the diamond fields coun try and the wide plains of the Orange River Colony, from 4000 to 5000 feet; the still more extensive plateau of the Transvaal, from 5000 to 7000 feet and the mo•e diversified uplands of the Matabeleland and Mashonaland region at a little lower level, sloping gradually to the plain of the Zambezi. In the west the irregular high lands of Damaraland and Namaqualand rise steeply from the Atlantic coast plain, and merge indefinitely with the vast central plains of Be chuanaland and the dreary expanse of the Kala hari Desert, once the floor of an inland sea and now about 4000 feet above the sea level. In the east and southeast the lowlands of Portu guese East Africa and the coast plain and plateau of Natal are skirted inland procipitously by the mighty rampart of the Drakensberg and other ranges that wall in the lofty interior plateaus. Many of the mountains lining the periphery of the plateaus or rising within them have an altitude of 6000 to 10,000 feet. The culminat ing points appear to be the Montaux Sources, Champagne Castle, and Mount Hamilton, all three probably upward of 10,000 feet in eleva tion, and the last perhaps not much short of 12,000 feet.