Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/175

 situated on the left bunk of the Breede, above the bar, is visited by a few small coasting vessels. But of all the havens officially opened to the foreign trade of the colony, Port Beaufort is the least frequented.

The extensive basin of the Gaurits, which follows to the east of the Breede Valley, contains several of the secondary towns of Cape Colony. Beaufort West, the chief station on the railway between the Cape and the banks of the Orange River, stands at an altitude of 2,960 feet above sea-level, and its gardens are watered by the farthest headstreams of the Gaurits, flowing from the southern slopes of the Niouwe-veld. The village of Prince Albert, in the arid region of the Great Karroo, lies also on one of the upper affluents of the Gaurits. Farther

south, and on tributaries of the same river, lie the towns of Ladysmith and Oudtshoorn, both at the southern foot of the Zwarte-bergen, or "Black Mountains." Oudtshoorn is noted for its tobacco, which grows on some of the best soil in the colony, a soil still unexhausted after a hundred years of uninterrupted tillage. North of this place, in an upland lateral valley, are situated the caves of Cango, stalactite grottoes that have not yet been entirely explored, although surveyed for a distance of over 2,000 yards from the entrance.

There are neither towns nor even large villages on the lower Gaurits, which in this part of its course winds between narrow rocky gorges. Riversdale, lying in the midst of the rich grazing-grounds of the Grasveld, is situated some 30