Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1900-01-02

rs
Alien sargret Contributes TO Ains-
ices TOT Januart an article on South
Africa, This is how the country APP
peared to him:
You land in South Africa at the
1901 q mountain 5000 feet high.
Iney call it Table Mountain, and the
veil OF mist that, excepting on very
oieAi udys' overhangs it, South Afri-
cans are pleased to call the Table
eio1li' Presenting a front of solid
rock 1000 feet in height. perpendicular
as a wall, and for half a mile on top
quite level, this mountain offers the
best natural sign-board ON earth.
Time and again have English firms at
tempted with fabulous sums to secure
it for advertising purposes, but as yet
there has been no such DETACHMENT.
Iaple Mountain marks the tip end
OF the Dark Continent. Below it nes-
ties the city of Cape Town, beautiful
Day stretcnlng out in the foreground.
On the west the mountain breaks off
abruptly, and the railroad skirts about
it to the interior. On the east it slopes
off into billy, 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 un-
derstand in a trice just what South
Africa is geographically.
Streaming along the East Coast from
Cape Colony northward, you have the
Drakensburg in view nearly all the way
to Beira, distance 1000 miles. In
Cape Colony and Natal mountains in
many places dip to the waters edge,
and with field glass one may see on
their crags and peaks smoke curling
up from the native villages In Portu-
guese territory the mountains recede
slightly from the coast, and at Delagoa
Bay there is an intervening stretch of
lowland twenty miles wide At Beira
this has increased to sixty miles At
the Zambesi the Drakensburg ends.
The Plateau.
"To get into the interior of South
Africa from any of the five East Coast
landing places, Port Elizabeth, East
London, Durham, Delagoa Bay and
Beira, one must first cross short ex-
tent of lowland, and then ascend steep
mountains. Having arrived there, the
traveller is conscious of little or no de-
scent, five-sixths of the whole interior
being vast plateau that extends to
the Zambesi on the north, the Atlantic
ocean on the west, and varies in alti-
tude from 5000 to 5000 feet above the
sea level.
"a fringe of tropical country, where
bloom the magnolia and the rose,
where flourish the orange, pineapple,
lemon, guano, grape, banana, the cot
ton and the tea plant; long stretch
of mountains running parallel with the
Indian ocean, the highest peaks of
which are capped with snow, and in
whose valleys wave tracts of wheat
and corn, vast prairies, dotted here
and there with patches of scrub wood
land, mission stations, and immense
farms with millions of sheep and cat
tie grazing thereon; few thousand
hamlets scattered like Gases over a
great landscape, made black by the
native Africans who live in matched
huts and wear but a 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 a jar of sweets; the remnants of a
once mighty geological garden, includ-
ing many leopards, beautiful and 1.-THE,
balloons, antelope, jackals and croco-
dies, a less number of hippopotami,
and a few herds of buffalo, elephants
and giraffes; some iron ore, some coal,
some copper, and a little silver; forty
miles of gold and one hundred acres of
diamonds That iS SOufh Africa y