be supposed, to check wagon traffic and to promote that by railway;
apart from the railway, communication with Delagoa Bay would now be
impossible. What with the fever climate in summer, and the formidable
mountain barriers, the Transvaal high veldt is well protected from
aggression from the direction of Delagoa Bay. A few thousand men
distributed at the few mountain passes, blocking the tunnel at one of
these (at Waterval Boven), and breaking up some few bridges, would
effectually arrest the progress of any invading force.




CLIMATE AND TOPOGRAPHY


From the tropical Zambesi regions and the torrid Kalahari plains, down
to the 34th parallel at Cape point, a great diversity of climatic
conditions is met with. To the north and north-east are the steaming,
death-breeding low lands, abounding with dank virgin forests and scrubby
stretches; and to the north-west extend the arid, sandy, and stony
levels. There are the temperate and fruitful inland reaches along the
southern and south-eastern littoral, and again further inward the vast
plateaux at 2,000 to 6,500 feet elevation, which represent nearly
one-half of the sub-continent with quite other climatic aspects. In the
southern and western provinces of the Cape Colony the rainy season
occurs during the winter months, probably because of the proximity to
the trade wind influences prevailing over the South Atlantic; over the
rest of South Africa the winters are dry and sunny, the rains falling in
summer, most copiously in December and January, the effect being that
there are hardly any winter rigours, and the heat of summer is