We've gone and picked up the Styx." He was
evidently hurt and said, "Bonny was a nice place when you got used
to it," and went on to discourse on the last epidemic here, when
nine men out of the resident eleven died in about ten days from
yellow fever.
Next to the scenery of "a River," commend me for
cheerfulness to the local conversation of its mangrove-swamp region;
and every truly important West African river has its mangrove-swamp
belt, which extends inland as far as the tide waters make it
brackish, and which has a depth and extent from the banks depending
on the configuration of the country. Above this belt comes
uniformly a region of high forest, having towards the river frontage
clay cliffs, sometimes high, as in the case of the Old Calabar at
Adiabo, more frequently dwarf cliffs, as in the Forcados up at
Warree, and in the Ogowe, - for a long stretch through Kama country.
After the clay cliffs region you come to a region of rapids, caused
by the river cutting its way through a mountain range; such ranges
are the Pallaballa, causing the Livingstone rapids of the Congo; the
Sierra del Cristal, those of the Ogowe, and many lesser rivers; the
Rumby and Omon ranges, those of the Old Calabar and Cross Rivers.
Naturally in different parts these separate regions vary in size.
The mangrove-swamp may be only a fringe at the mouth of the river,
or it may cover hundreds of square miles.
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