- The Swamps Of The Niger Outfalls (About Twenty-Three
Rivers In All) And Of The Sombreiro, New Calabar, Bonny, San
Antonio, Opobo (False And True), Kwoibo, Old Calabar (With The Cross
Akwayafe Qwa Rivers) And Rio Del Rey Rivers.
The whole of this
great stretch of coast is a mangrove-swamp, each river silently
rolling down its great
Mass of mud-laden waters and constituting
each in itself a very pretty problem to the navigator by its network
of intercommunicating creeks, and the sand and mud bar which it
forms off its entrance by dropping its heaviest mud; its lighter mud
is carried out beyond its bar and makes the nasty-smelling brown
soup of the South Atlantic Ocean, with froth floating in lines and
patches on it, for miles to seaward.
In this great region of swamps every mile appears like every other
mile until you get well used to it, and are able to distinguish the
little local peculiarities at the entrance of the rivers and in the
winding of the creeks, a thing difficult even for the most
experienced navigator to do during those thick wool-like mists
called smokes, which hang about the whole Bight from November till
May (the dry season), sometimes lasting all day, sometimes clearing
off three hours after sunrise.
The upper or north-westerly part of the swamp is round the mouths of
the Niger, and it successfully concealed this fact from geographers
down to 1830, when the series of heroic journeys made by Mungo Park,
Clapperton, and the two Landers finally solved the problem - a
problem that was as great and which cost more men's lives than even
the discovery of the sources of the Nile.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 98 of 705
Words from 26685 to 26969
of 194943
