British West Afric

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: expect from the area of the country, they are of immense size and length.i These form a natural highway for commercial and other purposes, but, owing to the presence of rapids, their navigation in many instances ia seriously impeded; their mouths, however, are invaluable as harbours, which otherwise are...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: expect from the area of the country, they are of immense size and length.i These form a natural highway for commercial and other purposes, but, owing to the presence of rapids, their navigation in many instances ia seriously impeded; their mouths, however, are invaluable as harbours, which otherwise are almost entirely absent, yet even the mouths of the largest rivers are but poor harbours, since not unfrequently the bar across them can only be crossed by ocean-going steamers at high tide. West Africa, by which is here meant that portion of the country lying between the Sahara on the north and the Atlantic on the south, and between the Gambia River on the west and Lake Chad on the east,2 differs in no particular degree from the rest of Tropical Africa. There are present the low-lying belt of coast-line, the succession of plateaux, the higher mountains, the wide and long waterways, and the scarcity of harbours. But, the reader will ask, if West Africa is so like the other parts, why should we hear so much of the evil influences of its climate, when the same parallels of latitude in East Africa are considered almost healthy. There are several answers to the question. The West Coast is much nearer to England than the East Coast, more intercourse has been maintained with it, it has been the residence of Europeans for hundreds of years compared with tens of years, and its European residents are to this day numbered by hundreds in place of tens. The West Coast, therefore, has always been before our eyes; of the East Coast we know comparatively little, and it may be that the one is no more unhealthy than the other. Then, again, the trade of West Africa is essentially a coast trade; the merchant never leavesthe malaria zone, as the palm oil and other products are brought don to him by ...