The largest political division of South Africa is Cape Colony. The area is about 292,000 square miles and the population, white and native, is 2,011,305. The whites number about 400,000. But little of it is suitable for agriculture, and considerable portions of it are too arid for stock raising. Including the natives the population is only about seven to the square mile. On the lowlands skirting the sea on the south and west are some fruitful regions that give a profitable yield of grapes and corn. On the tableland of the interior there is a rainfall of only from five to fifteen inches in the year. As a consequence the surface is dry and unfriendly to vegetable life. In an area of three hundred miles by one hundred and fifty there is not a stream having a current throughout the year, nor is there any moisture at all in the dry season except some shallow pools which are soon dried up by evaporation. Nevertheless, in this desert, bare of trees and of herbage, there is abundance of prickly shrubs, which are sufficiently succulent when they sprout under the summer rains to afford good browsing for goats and sheep. In the northwestern part of the interior and northward to Kimberley and Mafeking, the country is better watered than the more westerly regions, and grazing animals find a generous growth of grass as well as nutritious shrubs. In the southeastern part the rainfall is still heavier. The foothills of the Quathlamba Range toward the sea are covered in places with forests, the grass is more abundant and much of the land can be tilled to profit without artificial irrigation. In 1899 there were about 3,000 miles of railway and nearly 7,000 miles of telegraph open in the colony. The number of vessels entering the ports of Cape Colony in 1897 was 1,093, with a total tonnage of 2,694,370 tons; in addition to this there were 1,278 vessels engaged in the coastwise trade, with a tonnage of 3,725,831 tons. The foreign commerce of Cape Colony is large, including, as it does, the bulk of the import and export trade of all South Africa. The total importation of merchandise for 1897 was $80,127,495, and the exports, including a large proportion of the gold and diamond products of Kimberley and the Transvaal, amounted, in 1898, to $123,213,458.