e differences between one
place and another, I may take the case of the three chief posts in the
territories of the British South Africa Company. Buluwayo, nearly 4000
feet above the sea, is always practically free from malaria, for it
stands in a dry, breezy upland with few trees and short grass. Fort
Victoria, 3670 feet above the sea, is salubrious enough during the dry
season, but often feverish after the rains, because there is some wet
ground near it. Fort Salisbury, 4900 feet above the sea, is now
healthful at all times, but parts of it used to be feverish at the end
of the rainy season, until they were drained in the beginning of 1895.
So Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal Republic, is apt to be
malarious during the months of rain, because (although 4470 feet above
the sea) it lies in a well-watered hollow; while at Johannesburg, thirty
miles off, on the top of a high, bare, stony ridge, one has no occasion
to fear fever, though the want of water and proper drainage, as well as
the quantity of fine dust from the highly comminuted ore and "tailings"
with which the air is filled, had until 1896 given rise to other
maladies, and especially to septic pneumonia. These will diminish with a
better municipal administration, and similarly malaria will doubtless
vanish from the many spots where it is now rife when the swampy grounds
have been drained and the long grass eaten down by larger herds of
cattle.

It is apparently the dryness and the purity of the air which have given
South Africa its comparative immunity from most forms of chest disease.
Many sufferers from consumption, for whom a speedy death, if they
remained in Europe, had been predicted, recover health, and retain it
till old age. The spots chiefly recommended are on the high grounds of
the interior plateau, where the atmosphere is least humid. Ceres,
ninety-four miles by rail from Cape Town, and Beaufort West, in the
Karroo, have been resorted to as sanatoria; and Kimberley, the city of
diamonds, has an equally high reputation for the quality of its air.
However, some of the coast districts are scarcely less eligible, though
Cape Town has too many rapid changes of weather, and Durban too sultry a
summer, to make either of them a desirable place of residence for
invalids.

Apart from all questions of specific complaints, there can be no doubt
as to the general effect of the climate upon health. The aspect of the
people soon convinces a visitor that, in