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Every year during the rainy season large numbers of persons are drowned in the full rivers; the numbers recorded in the papers during the last rainy season exceeded one hundred and fifty, and a large number of deaths of Kaffirs and others remains unchronicled. The nature of her rivers has powerfully affected the history of South Africa.

Crossing the Vaal River, we shall find to the north the Transvaal Republic. This is a tract of country of great extent and diversity. In part of it we have bush, in part high grass tablelands; on the east a low lying, moist, fever-haunted district. On the whole it is of great fertility. On the ridges of the high tablelands, lie the great Johannesburg gold-mines, which have drawn men from all parts of the earth. There are probably about eight black men to each white, the white population being probably divided between those of Boer, and English or other European extraction in the proportion of one to one; but no accurate census has yet been taken. The largest city, Johannesburg, is mainly English, the farming population Dutch-Huguenot.