^^GRICULTURE
CHAPTER XVII
HE Province of Natal is often spoken of as the "'Garden Colony* 1 of South Africa. The semi- tropical nature of its climate, and the consequent luxuriant vegetation which attracts the attention of the traveller en route to the Rand, has gained for Natal this favourable appellation.
Although the climate of Natal may be regarded as semi-tropical, its summer heat is tempered by copious rains, which cool the aip and tend to make the evenings mild and refreshing. The winter season is dry, and the air consequently exhilarating and bracing. For three or four months practically no rain falls, and day by day a continuously unclouded sky diffuses unlimited sunshine all round. The climate, in short, is one to which people from the British Isles can safely come without any injurious results as far as health is concerned. There are practically only two seasons, the wet and the dry ; spring and autumn being of such short duration as to be scarcely observable. The wet, or summer, season lasts from about October to March, and the dry, or winter, season from about April to September. Frosts are experienced during June and July ; snowstorms are so rare as to be the subject of special excitement when experienced ; but occasionally during the summer hailstorms do enormous damage. Fortunately these also are of comparatively rare occurrence, and are generally very local in their action, though this is not of much consolation to the unfortunate farmer whose farm happens to lie in the path of the storm. One farmer who lives in a district subject to hailstorms states that, on the average, once in six years his crops are damaged, but that he reckons the five good years fully compensate for the one bad occasionally experienced.
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