With These Remarks, I Now Give, As An Appropriate Introduction To
My Narrative - (1.) An Account Of The General Geographical
Features of the countries we are about to travel in, leaving the
details to be treated under each as we
Successively pass through
them; (2.) A general view of the atmospheric agents which wear
down and so continually help to reduce the continent, yet at the
same time assist to clothe it with vegetation; (3.) A general
view of the Flora; and, lastly, that which consumes it, (4.) Its
Fauna; ending with a few special remarks on the Wanguana, or men
freed from slavery.
Geography
The continent of Africa is something like a dish turned upside
down, having a high and flat central plateau, with a higher rim
of hills surrounding it; from below which, exterially, it
suddenly slopes down to the flat strip of land bordering on the
sea. A dish, however, is generally uniform in shape - Africa is
not. For instance, we find in its centre a high group of hills
surrounding the head of the Tanganyika Lake, composed chiefly of
argillaceous sandstones which I suppose to be the Lunae Montes of
Ptolemy, or the Soma Giri of the ancient Hindus. Further,
instead of a rim at the northern end, the country shelves down
from the equator to the Mediterranean Sea; and on the general
surface of the interior plateau there are basins full of water
(lakes), from which, when rains overflow them, rivers are formed,
that, cutting through the flanking rim of hills, find their way
to the sea.
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