re are, to be
sure, rivers which, like the Orange River or the Limpopo, have courses
hundreds of miles in length. But they contain so little water during
three-fourths of the year as to be unserviceable for navigation, while
most of their tributaries shrink in the dry season to a chain of pools,
scarcely supplying drink to the cattle on their banks. This is one of
the reasons why the country remained so long unexplored. People could
not penetrate it by following waterways, as happened both in North and
in South America; they were obliged to travel by ox-waggon, making only
some twelve or sixteen miles a day, and finding themselves obliged to
halt, when a good bit of grass was reached, to rest and restore the
strength of their cattle. For the same reason the country is now forced
to depend entirely upon railways for internal communication. There is
not a stream (except tidal streams) fit to float anything drawing three
feet of water.

It is a curious experience to travel for hundreds of miles, as one may
do in the dry season in the north-eastern part of Cape Colony and in
Bechuanaland, through a country which is inhabited, and covered in some
places with wood, in others with grass or shrublets fit for cattle, and
see not a drop of running water, and hardly even a stagnant pond. It is
scarcely less strange that such rivers as there are should be useless
for navigation. But the cause is to be found in the two facts already
stated. In those parts where rain falls it comes at one season, within
three or four months. Moreover, it comes then in such heavy storms that
for some hours, or even days, the streams are so swollen as to be not
only impassable by waggons, but also unnavigable, because, although
there is plenty of water, the current is too violent. Then when the
floods have ceased the streams fall so fast, and the channel becomes so
shallow, that hardly even a canoe will float. The other fact arises from
the proximity to the east coast of the great Quathlamba chain of
mountains. The rivers that flow from it have mostly short courses, while
the few that come down from behind and break through it, as does the
Limpopo, are interrupted at the place where they break through by rapids
which no boat can ascend.

[Footnote 3: In particular I will ask the reader to refer to the two
maps showing the physical features of the country which have been
inserted in this volume.]

CHAPTER II

HEALTH

The physical conditio