File:Africa (1878) (14776043982).jpg

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

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
somewhat more hilly as it approaches the western seaboard. Here is situated the vast and thinly-peopled plain known as the Great Kalahari desert. The fourth or western section is the hilly country of the Hottentots and Damaras, extending from the Orange river mouth northward to the southern limits of the Portuguese western possessions, and from the Kalahari to the sandy belt of country which here skirts the Atlantic. The moisture supply of these longitudinal belts is derived mainly from the Indian Ocean, and is brought to them by the prevailing east winds. The greater portion of the rainfall is caught in its advance by the high outer descent of the plateau which faces the Indian Ocean, and thence westward a gradual diminution of the supply becomes evident, until towards the centre and west of the interior plateau a region is found which is almost deprived of rain, and is only visited by occasional thunder-showers during the summer months, which are those of heaviest rainfall on the coast slopes.
Text Appearing After Image:
INTERIOR OF SOUTH AFRICA. 439 8. The Kalahari Desert. The Kalahari desert represents that area of the interior which is most deficient of all in moisture supply. It continues the dry region of Bushman Land, in the northern interior of the Cape Colony, northward across the Orange river, and extends over the whole western central region of the continent as far as about 20° south latitude, so that its position in each side of the tropic of Cancer coincides remarkably with that of the dry regions of inner Australia and of South America in the same hemisphere, or with that of the Sahara in the north of Africa. Generally it may be described as a dry and sandy region without any running water, inhabited only by a few wandering families of Bushmen following the herds of antelopes, which require little or no water, in their migrations in search of pasture. The gradation westward from the fertile grass plains of the Transvaal and Orange States to the barren desert country is, however, a very gradual o

Note About Images