The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-01-15
SUCH rs SOUTH AFRICA.

VIVID Picture in Miniature Of the
Lower Part of the Dark Continent.
You land in South Africa at the foot
of a mountain thirty-six hundred feet
high. They call 1t Table Mountain, and
the veil of mist that excepting on very
clear days, overhangs 1t, South African
are pleased to term the "Tablecloth.'
Presenting a front of solid rock, one
thousand feet in height, perpendicular
as a wall, and for half a mile on top
level, this mountain offers the best nat
ural signboard on earth. Time and
again have British firms attempted with
fabulous sums to secure 1T for advertis-
ing purposes but, as yet there has been
no such DETACHMENT.
Table ountain marks the tip end of
the Dark Continent. Below it nestles
the city Of Cape Town, a beautiful bay
stretching out in the foreground. On
the west the mountain breaks off
abruptly, and the railroad skirts about
1t to the interior. On the east it slopes
off into a lilly, picturesque formation
known as the Lions Back" and then
gradually rises into the Drakensburg
Mountains. This is the only great
mountain range south of the Zambesi,
and by noting its location one may I'M
derstand in a trice just what South At
RIGA is geographically. Steaming along
the east coast from Cape Colony north
ward you have the Drakensburg in
view nearly all the way to Beira, dis
lance of two thousand miles. In Cape
Colony and Natal the mountains in
many places dip the waters edge, and
with field glass onelfHay see on their
crags and peaks smoke curling up from
the native villages. In Portuguese ter
ritory the mountains recede slightly
from the coast, and at Delagoa Bay
there is an intervening stretch Of low
land twenty miles wide. At Beira this
has increased to sixty miles. At the
Zambesi the Draktnsburg ends.
To get into the interior of South At
RIGA from any of thel five east coast
landing places-Port Elizabeth. East
London, Durham Delagoa Bay and Bel
ra-one must cross a short extent Of
low land and then ascend steep noun
tains. Having arrived there, the trav-
eler is conscious of little or no descent,
five-sixths OF the whole interior being a
vast plateau that extends to the Fam
best on the north, the Atlantic ocean on
the west, and varies in altitude from
three to six thousand feet above the
sea.
A fringe of tropical country. where
bloom the magnolia and the rose, where
flourish the orange, pineapple, lemon,
guavo, grape, banana, the cotton and
the tea plant; long stretch Of noun
tains running parallel with the Indian
ocean, the highest peaks of which are
capped with snow, and in whose val
leys wave tracts of wheat and corn; a
vast prairie, dotted here and there with
patches of scrub woodland mission sta
tions and immense farms with millions
of sheep and cattle grazing thereon a
few thousand hamlets scattered like
GASES over great landscape, made
black by the native Africans who live in
matched huts, and wear but breech
clout; dozen large towns where is
heard the clang of the American trolley
car and the clatter of the police patrol
and about which men cluster as flies
gather to jar of sweets; the remnants
of once mighty geological garden, in
GLIDING many leopards, beautiful and
1.-THE, balloons, antelope, jackals and
crocodileS, a less number of hippopota-
mi and few herds of buffalo, elephants
and CRATES; some iron ore, some coal,
some copper. and little silver; forty
miles of gold and one hundred acres of
That is South Africa
Ainslee Magazine