It is impossible to say how much farther to the north these subtending ridges
may stretch.
There is reason to believe that, though the same
general form of country obtains, they are not flanked by abrupt hills
between the latitude 12 Deg. south and the equator. The inquiry is worthy
the attention of travelers. As they are known to be favorable to health,
the Makololo, who have been nearly all cut off by fevers in the valley,
declaring that here they never had a headache, they may even be recommended
as a sanatorium for those whose enterprise leads them into Africa,
either for the advancement of scientific knowledge, or for the purposes
of trade or benevolence. In the case of the eastern ridge,
we have water carriage, with only one short rapid as an obstruction,
right up to its base; and if a quick passage can be effected during
the healthy part of the year, there would be no danger of loss of health
during a long stay on these high lands afterward. How much farther
do these high ridges extend? The eastern one seems to bend in considerably
toward the great falls; and the strike of the rocks indicating that,
farther to the N.N.E. than my investigations extend, it may not,
at a few degrees of latitude beyond, be more than 300 or 350 miles
from the coast. They at least merit inquiry, for they afford
a prospect to Europeans of situations superior in point of salubrity
to any of those on the coast; and so on the western side of the continent;
for it is a fact that many parts in the interior of Angola, which were
formerly thought to be unhealthy on account of their distance inland,
have been found, as population advanced, to be the most healthy spots
in the country. Did the great Niger expedition turn back
when near such a desirable position for its stricken and prostrate members?
The distances from top to top of the ridges may be about 10 Deg. of longitude,
or 600 geographical miles. I can not hear of a hill ON either ridge,
and there are scarcely any in the space inclosed by them.
The Monakadze is the highest, but that is not more than a thousand feet
above the flat valley. On account of this want of hills
in the part of the country which, by gentle undulations, leads one insensibly
up to an altitude of 5000 feet above the level of the sea, I have adopted
the agricultural term ridges, for they partake very much of the character
of the oblong mounds with which we are all familiar. And we shall yet see
that the mountains which are met with outside these ridges
are only a low fringe, many of which are not of much greater altitude
than even the bottom of the great central valley. If we leave out of view
the greater breadth of the central basin at other parts, and speak only
of the comparatively narrow part formed by the bend to the westward
of the eastern ridge, we might say that the form of this region
is a broad furrow in the middle, with an elevated ridge about 200 miles broad
on either side, the land sloping thence, on both sides, to the sea.
If I am right in believing the granite to be the cause of the elevation
of this ridge, the direction in which the strike of the rocks
trends to the N.N.E. may indicate that the same geological structure
prevails farther north, and two or three lakes which exist in that direction
may be of exactly the same nature with Lake Ngami, having been diminished
to their present size by the same kind of agency as that which formed
the falls of Victoria.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 435 of 572
Words from 232860 to 233499
of 306638
