Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/243

 planned for a single narrow line. The main line successively crosses all the transverse ridges of the eastern slope. Near the village of Westown it attains an elevation of nearly 5,500 feet, but will have to climb about 300 feet higher in order to reach the crest of the Drakenberg and penetrate into the Orange Free State.

The carriage roads, which complete the network of communications in the colony, are also planned with great skill and daring. Many of them skirt the deep ravines and ascend the precipitous flanks of the main range in order to reach

the level of the inland plateaux. Most of the main highways converge on Port Natal, where is centred all the foreign trade of the colony.

The southern district between the Um-Tavuna and Um-Zimkulu rivers is one of the most thinly peopled in Natal, and here the white squatters are still scattered in small and isolated groups amid the surrounding Zulu and Pondo populations. In this district has recently been founded the Norwegian agricultural settlement