There Is One Feature In Which The Niger May Defy Competition
From Any River, Either Of The Old Or New World.
This is the grandeur of
its Delta.
Along the whole coast, from the river of Formosa or Benin to
that of Old Calabar, about 300 miles in length, there open into the
Atlantic its successive estuaries, which navigators have scarcely been
able to number. Taking its coast as the base of the triangle or Delta,
and its vertex at Kirree, about 170 miles inland, we have a space of
upwards of 25,000 square miles, equal to the half of England. Had this
Delta, like that of the Nile, been subject only to temporary inundations,
leaving behind a layer of fertilizing slime, it would have formed the
most fruitful region on earth, and might have been almost the granary of
a continent. But, unfortunately, the Niger rolls down its waters in such
excessive abundance, as to convert the whole into a huge and dreary
swamp, covered with dense forests of mangrove, and other trees of
spreading and luxuriant foliage. The equatorial sun, with its fiercest
rays, cannot penetrate these dark recesses; it only exhales from them
pestilential vapours, which render this coast the theatre of more fatal
epidemic diseases than any other, even of Western Africa. That human
industry will one day level these forests, drain these swamps, and cover
this soil with luxuriant harvests, we may confidently anticipate; but
many ages must probably elapse before man, in Africa, can achieve such a
victory over nature."[29]
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 535 of 546
Words from 145283 to 145540
of 148366
