"Travelers Will Eventually Ascertain Whether The Basin-Shaped Structure,
Which Is Here Announced As Having Been The Great Feature
Of The Most Ancient, As It Is Of The Actual Geography Of South Africa
(I.E., From Primeval Times To The Present Day), Does, Or Does Not,
Extend Into Northern Africa.
Looking at that much broader portion
of the continent, we have some reason to surmise that the higher mountains
also form, in a general sense, its flanks only." - President's Address,
Royal Geographical Society, 1852, p. cxxiii.
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The characteristics of the rainy season in this wonderfully humid region
may account in some measure for the periodical floods of the Zambesi,
and perhaps the Nile. The rains seem to follow the course of the sun,
for they fall in October and November, when the sun passes over this zone
on his way south. On reaching the tropic of Capricorn in December, it is dry;
and December and January are the months in which injurious droughts
are most dreaded near that tropic (from Kolobeng to Linyanti).
As he returns again to the north in February, March, and April, we have
the great rains of the year; and the plains, which in October and November
were well moistened, and imbibed rain like sponges, now become supersaturated,
and pour forth those floods of clear water which inundate
the banks of the Zambesi. Somewhat the same phenomenon probably causes
the periodical inundations of the Nile. The two rivers rise
in the same region; but there is a difference in the period of flood,
possibly from their being on opposite sides of the equator.
The waters of the Nile are said to become turbid in June;
and the flood attains its greatest height in August, or the period
when we may suppose the supersaturation to occur.
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