382 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



THE INDIGENOUS AFRICAN SCENE 

 THE PHYSICAL SETTING 



Seen from an approaching ship the westernmost land of Africa 

 emerges above the horizon as a group of cliffed islands, flat or gently 

 rounded. A nearer view discloses that the highest of these eminences 

 are linked by a somewhat lower platform, behind which low ground 

 extends northward and eastward. A map (fig. 1) shows this low 

 ground to curve on each side in a wide concave arc to the mainland 

 of the continent, 40 kilometers away. 



This peninsula is the Cape Verde tombolo, product of emergence 

 combined with deposition by waves and currents. The promontory 

 called Cape Verde faces west, and behind it rise the rounded Mamelles, 

 the western and higher one to 103 meters. Some 10 kilometers to 

 the southeast is Cape Manuel, a cliff of columnar basalt rising 40 

 meters out of the sea. Between these heights somewhat lower ground 

 is capped by altered limestone, which juts out in promontories to 

 make a festoon of coves all around the headland. 



The higher cliffs are skirted by talus, and at their base the waves 

 break on beaches of large black boulders. Sand, worn from the 

 limestone or brought from the Sahara by marine currents, has softened 

 the physiognomy of the coves on the seaward faces of the peninsula. 

 On the north, strong surf and north winds have heaped beach and 

 dune the length of the shore line. On the inner face, the long, sandy 

 curve of beach that forms the south shore of the tie to the mainland 

 gives way to the headlands of the south-trending coast. The coves 

 between these heads are progressively less sandy, the southernmost 

 having a stony beach. Unlike the coves on the Atlantic side, they 

 are not silted by the predominant northerly winds and receive incre- 

 ments of sand only from the beach to leeward. The tombolo bar is 

 4.4 kilometers wide at the narrowest point and 40 at the base. 



Two basalt islands not yet tied to the mainland flank Cape Manuel. 

 They are only slightly lower, and they duplicate in miniature the 

 physical character of the peninsula. A few low islets sprinkled off 

 Cape Verde are a menace to navigators but are otherwise negligible. 



The basalt islands and Cape Manuel are waterless and barren. 

 In the rainy season the limestone plateau is moistened by seepage 

 from dunes standing upon it. On the calcareous sands of the tombolo 

 bar the uninterrupted beaches convert streamlets into backwaters 

 and marshes, and the lines of fixed dunes act as reservoirs feeding 

 water into the depressions throughout the year. 



A few palms fringe the marshes, but elsewhere the native trees 

 are baobabs, which dot the peninsula and give it its often-described 



