Physical geography. By Mary Somerville ...

88 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. CHAP. VII.
The karroos are arid deserts in the dry season, but soon after the
rains they are covered with verdure and a splendid flora. The maritime plains partake of the same temporary aridity, though a large
portion is rich in cereal productions, vineyards, fruits, and pasture.
The most inland of the parallel ranges, about the 20th meridian
east, is 10,000 feet high, and, though it sinks to some groups of
hills at its eastern extremity, it rises again about the 37th meridian,
in a truly alpine and continuous chain-the Quotlamba mountains,
which follow the northerly direction of Natal, and are continued in
the Lupata range of hills, 89 miles inland, through Zanguebar.
At Natal the coast is grassy, with clumps of trees, like an English
park. The Zambeze and other streams from the table-land refresh
the plains on the Mozambique Channel and Zanguebar, where,
though some parts are marshy and covered with mangroves, groves
of palm-trees adorn the plains, which yield prodigious quantities of
grain, and noble forests cover the mountains; bnt from 40 N. latitude to Cape Guardafui is a continued desert. There is also a barren tract at the southern end of the Lupata chain, where gold is
found in masses and grains on the surface and in the water-courses,
which tempted the Portuguese to make settlements on these unwholesome coasts.
The island of Madagascar, with its magnificent range of mountains, full of tremendous precipices, and covered with primeval
forests, is parallel to the African coast, and only separated from it
by the Mozambique Channel, 300 miles broad, so it may be presumed that it rose from the deep at the same time as the Lupata
chain.
The contrast between the eastern and western coasts of South Africa is very great. The escarped bold mountains round the Cape of
Good Hope, and its rocky coast, which extends a short way along
the Atlantic to the north, are succeeded by ranges of sandstone of
small elevation, which separate the internal sandy desert from the
equally parched sandy shore. The terraced dip of the Atlantic coast
for 900 miles between the Orange River and Cape Negro has not a
drop of fresh water.
At Cape Negro, ranges of mountains separated by long level
tracts begin and make a semicircular bend into the interior, leaving
plains along the coast 140 miles broad. In Benguela these plains
are healthy and cultivated; farther north there are monotonous
grassy savannahs, and forests of gigantic trees. The ground, in
many places saturated with water, bears a tangled crop of mangroves
and tall reeds which even cover the shoals along the coast; hot pestilential vapours hang over them, never dissipated by a breeze.
The country of Calbongos is the highest land on the coast, where
a magnificent group of mountains, covered almost to their tops with
large timber, lie not far inland. The low plains of Biafra and Be.