Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/196

 strongest competitor prevailed, and in 1877 the Boers of the Free State consented to surrender their claim to the contested district for a sum of £90,000.

A conventional line drawn across the plateau from the right bank of the Orange to the left bank of the Vaal, henceforth detaches from the Free State and assigns to Cape Colony the triangular space comprised between the two rivers above their confluence. With a view to rounding off its frontiers, to this diamantiferous region has also been added a portion of the hilly tableland which stretches north of the Orange in the direction of the Kalahari Desert and of the new British Protectorate of Bechuanaland. Within its present limits the province of Griqualand West thus covers a superficial area of nearly eighteen thousand square

miles, with a population of about sixty thousand, or in the proportion of three persons to the square mile.

Griqualand West enjoys an excellent climate, notwithstanding the fever prevalent amongst the mining classes, which must be attributed to the unhealthy nature of the operations in which they are engaged. As in the southern regions, the European population finds here a perfectly congenial home, and increases in the normal way by excess of births over the death rate. The country stands at a mean altitude of about 3,600 feet above sea-level, and while the general tilt of the land is from east to west, as shown by the course of the Orange, the highest