Identifier: africa00johnrich (find matches)
Title: Africa
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Johnston, Alexander Keith, 1804-1871 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Africa -- Description and travel Africa -- Social life and customs
Publisher: London : Edward Stanford
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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somewhat more hilly as it approaches thewestern seaboard. Here is situated the vast and thinly-peopled plain known as the Great Kalahari desert. Thefourth or western section is the hilly country of the Hot-tentots and Damaras, extending from the Orange rivermouth northward to the southern limits of the Portuguesewestern possessions, and from the Kalahari to the sandybelt of country which here skirts the Atlantic. The moisture supply of these longitudinal belts isderived mainly from the Indian Ocean, and is brought tothem by the prevailing east winds. The greater portionof the rainfall is caught in its advance by the high outerdescent of the plateau which faces the Indian Ocean, andthence westward a gradual diminution of the supplybecomes evident, until towards the centre and west of theinterior plateau a region is found which is almost de-prived of rain, and is only visited by occasional thunder-showers during the summer months, which are those ofheaviest rainfall on the coast slopes.
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INTERIOR OF SOUTH AFRICA. 439 8. The Kalahari Desert. The Kalahari desert represents that area of the interiorwhich is most deficient of all in moisture supply. Itcontinues the dry region of Bushman Land, in thenorthern interior of the Cape Colony, northward acrossthe Orange river, and extends over the whole western cen-tral region of the continent as far as about 20° southlatitude, so that its position in each side of the tropic ofCancer coincides remarkably with that of the dry regions ofinner Australia and of South America in the same hemi-sphere, or with that of the Sahara in the north of Africa.Generally it may be described as a dry and sandy regionwithout any running water, inhabited only by a few wan-dering families of Bushmen following the herds of ante-lopes, which require little or no water, in their migrationsin search of pasture. The gradation westward from thefertile grass plains of the Transvaal and Orange States tothe barren desert country is, however, a very gradual o

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