Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/86

 62 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. exploration at Cape Town, had been visited by Gulton, Andersson', Baines, Smuts, Green, Hubn and Rath, Hartley, Coates, Pulgrave, and Duparquet; and since the proclamation of the new political regime, a large number of German travellers have been attracted to these regions in order to study their geographical conditions, and especially to examine their economic resources. Special charts have been prepared of the seaports and mineral deposits, the traces have been laid down of future routes and railways, and the work of preliminary exploration has received a decided impulse from the oflficial annexation. In its main outlines the relief of the land forms a southern continuation of the Angolan uplands and lowlands. The ground rises in terraces to the crest of a plateau near the coast, beyond which it again falls eastwards in the direction of an inland fluvial basin. The whole region from the Cunene to the Orange presents the aspect of an elongated protuberance of somewhat regular form, whose axis runs exactly parallel with the coast-line. This long elevated ridge is, how- ever, completely isolated, and whereas the Angolan tablelands are connected eastwards with the waterpartings between the Congo and Zambese basins, those of Damara and Namaqua lands are limited in this direction by profound depres- sions separating them from the Kalahari Desert and from the Ku-Bango and the u{)per affluents of the Orange river. Separated also from the Chella highlands by the gorges traversed by the Cunene, those rocky heights of Damaraland, commonly designated by the name of Kaoko, at first rise but slightly above the general level of the land. But south of the limestone Otavi hills they gradually rise higher and higher, until several eminences attain elevations of 3,000 feet and upwards, while a veritable highland system with its dome-shaped summits and table rocks is developed to the north- east and east of Walvisch Bay. Mount Omatako, culminating point of this system, has an altitude of no less than 7,630 feet, and this majestic peak is encircled by numerous other less elevated but still imposing summits. Farther south the main axis again falls to a height of little over 3,000 feet; in many places the continuous ridge even disappears altogether, or rather becomes broken into groups of isolated hills resting on a common pedestal, which presents the aspect of a shield with its convex side uppermost. Here and there some of the more conspicuous eminences assume the fantastic outlines of towers, pinnacles, and needles. Still farther south the vast region of great Namaqualand is still traversed by a somewhat continuous ridge or unbioken line of elevated hills, and the route which runs from the coast at Angra Pequena eastwards to Bethany crosses the intervening chain at an altitude of o,300 feet. In all these uplands the prevailing formations are gneiss, micaceous schists, crystalline limestones, with intruding granites, porphyries, and other eruptive rocks. Masses of basalt are also said to occur. The main axis of the Damara and Namaqua highlands runs parallel with the seaboard at an average distance of about 120 miles inland, but in several places the intervening space between the first escarpments and the coast is much more