Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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This tract of coast belt forms part of the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony, and is under English rule. It is on the whole very fertile, though more subject to drought than the South-Western districts of the Colony; none of its rivers are perennial, all being in long droughts completely dry. Fruit and wool, and to a certain extent grain, are produced here. The villages, though far less beautiful than those of the west, show greater signs of commercial activity and civic life.

If we go further north along the coast we come to Kaffirland, a richly wooded, fertile tract; the scenery about the mouth of the St. John's River being supposed to be the finest combination of bush, river and mountain scenery to be found anywhere in South Africa. It is inhabited by Kaffir tribes of the Bantu race, in a half-civilized condition, and who are more or less under British protection.

Further north yet we come to Natal, a British colony. The climate here is warm, the country fertile in the extreme; coffee, sugar, rice, pineapples, and all tropical fruits abound here, yet the climate is not much less healthy than in the more southern portions of the coast belt. Its population is more largely black than white, the natives being Zulus of the Bantu race and imported coolies; the small white population is largely English, and appear to be rather above the common Colonial average in intelligence and culture.