Chapter 797

Edward Port.

"The mountain roads in South Africa are truly hard to traverse. And judging by Cape Town's British army, they are not entirely without the strength to put up a fight," Merke said to his subordinates.

As East Africa's military advance continued, the Southern Military Region had already pushed deep into Cape Town's eastern hinterland. However, it was constrained by the Drakensberg Mountains. Aside from the rugged terrain, the rivers and swamps greatly slowed East Africa's advance.

Moreover, the British army could effectively exploit the advantage of the narrow, elongated terrain to hinder the East African National Defense Army's offensive. Edward Port lay roughly 150 kilometers from Durban in a straight line.

This had originally been the territory of East Griqualand, one of the regimes established by the Boers. Wedged between Natal Colony and Cape Colony, it had been occupied by the British army in the late seventies and early eighties.

Thus, the area had originally been extremely desolate. Edward Port had only been established recently as well; it was merely a small coastal town with a limited population.

"Commander, military advances still depend on the inland regions. The western forces should have crossed the Orange River by now. After all, the inland plateau is convenient for marching and sparsely populated. The east, however, is Cape Town's more densely populated region, so the British army is actually stronger there."

South Africa's population was clustered in groups. At the southernmost end lay Cape Town and its surrounding areas, followed by the eastern region centered on East London and Port Elizabeth. Both were Britain's core territories.

Farther north lay Natal Colony and several former Boer republics, where the population was relatively dense. The plateau region between the Boer Republic and Cape Town in the west, meanwhile, was a population vacuum.

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