Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/126

 92 SOUTH AND EAST AFEICA. The Kci, that is, the " Great," pleonastically called the " Great Kei," which descends from the Storm-bcrgen and the Kwathlamba highlands, has acquired considerable political importance first as the old limit of the Hottentot domain, and afterwards as for a long time marking the boundary of the British possessions in this direction. Beyond it begins the territory of the Transkei Kafirs (Galecas and others), who were formerly independent of the colonial government. The Kei is a very rapid stream, rushing over magnificent waterfalls and winding through many romantic gorges. But of all the rivers watering the Kafir domain the most picturesque is the St. John, that is, the Um-Zimvulu of the natives. At its mouth it is a broad stream 2,000 feet wide from bank to bunk ; but the channel gradually narrows and becomes hemmed in between steep wooded escarpments dominated by the vertical cliffs of a terrace, which is itself surmounted by other rocky walls terminating in a flat tabular surface. This section of the stream, where both banks rival each other in size and romantic beauty, has received from the English settlers the name of the " Gate " of the St. John. Notwithstanding its great width the entrance is rendered inaccessible to large vessels by a bar, which, however, is easily crossed with the flood tide by smaller craft. For these the river is navigable from its mouth for about twelve miles to the point where the first rapids obstruct all further approach. The Rivers of Natal and Zlluland. The colony of Natal is intersected by several parallel channels, each flooded by a copious stream with its wild gorges, falls, and rapids. The Um-Zimkulu, Ura- Komanzi, Um-Lazi, Um-Geni, and other Uhih, or " watercourses," follow succes- sively as far as the great Tugela river, whose main branch rises, like the Vaal and the Caledon, on the Potong uplands, and which flows thence to the Indian Ocean between Natal and the Zulu territory. Jieyond this point the relief of the seaboard and with it the suliont features of the running waters become modified. Their banks are no longer rocky, the hills recede more inland, leaving between tli( m and the sea a broad level zone, over which the rivers wind mainly in a northerly or north-easterly cour.-e For a space of about 180 miles in a bee line the coast maintains the character of a sandy beach covered with dunes and enclos- ing extensive lagoons and backwaters. The largest of these lagoons, which were formerly marine inlets, but which are now separated from the sea by narrow strips of sand, is the so-called Lake St. Lucia, a sheet of shallow water nearly 60 miles long with a mean breadth of 12 miles. It occupies the southern part of the low-lying coastlands, which terminate northwards in a number of channels and smaller lagoons communicating with the spacious inlet of Lourenco Marques or Delagoa Bay. This section of the seaboard is clearly limited southwards by the narrow passages giving access to Lake St. Lucia, northwards by the arm of the sea which penetrates into Delagoa Bay. At its issue the southern basin of St. Lucia is obstructed by a bar infested by voracious sharks, which often greedily swallow the sounding lines and snap at the boathooks of passing craft. *In 1875, when these waters were surveyed by the