DAKAR — WHITTLESEY 



383 



Figure 1. — The Cape Verde Peninsula. Scale approximately 1 : 300,000. Based 

 on the 1 : 100,000 map of the Service Gt5ographique de TAfrique Occideutale 

 Frangaise a Dakar, 1SJ28. 



distinctive appearance. ^ Whether or not the landscape appears green 

 enough to justify the name "Cape Verde" depends on the time of 

 year. Throughout the long dry season, lasting from October until 

 June, the gray, silo-shaped trunks of the leafless baobabs, the dusty, 

 parched grasses, and the stubble of millet make a drab scene. Doubt- 

 less even this, however, would look refreshing to sailors from Europe, 

 dazzled by the hundreds of miles of sand-dune coast that borders 

 the Sahara. When the rains come, the Cape does turn incontestably 

 verdant. The baobabs leaf out, the marshes fill and put forth new 

 growth, and the plains push up a stand of millet that grows 6 feet 

 tall in its brief life. 



All this verdure is the product of downpours between mid-June 

 and late October (table 1). The peninsula lies in the belt of semiarid 



^Claude Faure, Histoire de la Presqu'ile du Cap Vert et des origines de Dakar, p. 17, 

 Paris, 1914, quotes some of tbe descriptions. 



