as they are in some
other hot countries; in many parts of India, for instance, or in the
West Indies and Brazil. Thus even in the regions where the rainfall is
heaviest, reaching thirty inches or more in the year, the land soon
dries up and remains parched till the next wet season comes. The air is
therefore extremely dry, and, being dry, it is clear and stimulating in
a high degree.

Now let us note the influence upon the climate of that physical
structure we have just been considering. The prevailing wind, and the
wind that brings most of the rain in the wet season, is the east or
south-east. It gives a fair supply of moisture to the low coast strip
which has been referred to above. Passing farther inland, it impinges
upon the hills which run down from the Quathlamba Range, waters them,
and sometimes falls in snow on the loftiest peaks. A certain part of the
rain-bearing clouds passes still farther inland, and scatters showers
over the eastern part of the tableland, that is to say, over the
Transvaal, the Orange Free State, eastern Bechuanaland, and the
territories still farther north, toward the Zambesi. Very little
humidity, however, reaches the tracts farther to the west. The northern
part of Cape Colony as far as the Orange River, the western part of
Bechuanaland, and the wide expanse of Damaraland have a quite trifling
rainfall, ranging from four or five to ten inches in the whole year.
Under the intense heat of the sun this moisture soon vanishes, the
surface bakes hard, and the vegetation withers. All this region is
therefore parched and arid, much of it, in fact, a desert, and likely
always to remain so.

These great and dominant physical facts--a low coast belt, a high
interior plateau, a lofty, rugged mountain-range running nearly parallel
to, and not very far from, the shore of the ocean, whence the rainclouds
come, a strong sun, a dry climate--have determined the character of
South Africa in many ways. They explain the very remarkable fact that
South Africa has, broadly speaking, no rivers. Rivers are, indeed,
marked on the map--rivers of great length and with many tributaries; but
when in travelling during the dry season you come to them you find
either a waterless bed or a mere line of green and perhaps unsavoury
pools. The streams that run south and east from the mountains to the
coast are short and rapid torrents after a storm, but at other times
dwindle to feeble trickles of mud. In the interior the