minimised. The most agreeable climate is that on the higher plateau
levels: never hot nor altogether cold, and yet virile and bracing;
something like the climate on sunny days found in the higher Alpine
regions in summer and in the mild Algerine winters. This climate is
found from the Queenstown district at about 3,000 feet elevation,
extending north and westwards over the Stormberg, the Orange Free State,
and along the lordly Drakensberg range and its spurs some 200 to 300
miles into the Transvaal, where the highest plateau levels occur between
Ermelo and to near Lydenburg, viz., 6,500 feet. The Harrismith district
near that mountain range is at a similar altitude with an identical
climate.

These high tracts are called _hoogeveldt_ or highlands. Their altitude
rises steadily with the advance northwards towards warmer latitudes, and
with the compensating effect that the climate in the Queenstown
district, Bontebok Flats for example, at 3,000 feet elevation, is
exactly similar to that in the eastern portions of the Orange Free State
at 5,500 feet, right up to near Lydenburg at 6,500 feet altitude, and
being some six degrees further north than Queenstown. The northern half
of Natal also partakes of that character, though there, as well as over
the rest of the eastern slopes of the Drakensberg mountains, the country
is more broken and hilly than on the western side. The Cape Colonial
high veldt near the Drakensberg range is intersected by high
continuations or spurs, but north and westwards those plateaux assume
more the real aspect of continuous high plains. There is a gradual
descent to the west; from occasional hilly ranges those dwindle to
kopjes, and to still less elevated "randjes" occurring in clusters more
and more apart, until yet further westwards one gets to the merely
undulating sterile approaches of the Karoo and the plains around and
beyond Kimberley, which merge at last in the still lower Kalahara