1907.] on Across Widest Africa. 743 



depth, and for agricultural purposes is not calcareous enough — a 

 common fault of many a tropical soil. In some districts we find a 

 clay mud fairly fertile but not sufficiently porous, in fact quite water- 

 proof and difficult to work. These are the regions more often inun- 

 dated during part of the rainy season, and generally used bj the natiyes 

 for the cultiyation of rice. As far as Nyamina the riyer valley is 

 narrow : further it widens considerably, and what the French so well 

 define as '' affleurements greseiix'' altogether disappear. From this 

 point the Xiger flows across a country fairly well populated and 

 fertile. 



Between Sansanding and Diafarabe the Niger divides itself into 

 many arms, and receives on its left the tributary Bani. These arms 

 converge towards a great basin, the Debo lake, at the entrance of 

 which are found four islets of sandstone. They are the spurs of the 

 mountain mass of Bandiagara. The aspect of this region changes 

 with the seasons. During low water one finds a succession of plains, 

 on which can be seen grazing numerous flocks of sheep, goats, and 

 herds of jebu oxen. The French are now beginning the exportation 

 of wool, with some success. 



The principal arms of the Niger and the Bani traversing the 

 above mentioned plain are navigable all the year round for small 

 boats and barges. During flood time the plain is transformed into 

 a huge green lake — green because of the immense quantity of '' borgu'^ 

 (the panicmu), a wild water-plant of great utility in those regions. 

 The borgu is a forage plant containing much nourishment, being rich 

 in sugar. Then we have in this flooded region immense paddv-fields 

 between a regular network of channels. Slillet is s^rown upon dry 

 land. 



Lake Debo has two outlets, with ramifications which join later. 

 Here, too, we are in a country of yearly inundations. Further 

 north the high water reaches small mountain masses without a well- 

 defined connection, and in flood time fills a series of great natural 

 reservoirs at different elevations, from which the water is gradually 

 drained by the actual river bed. Between Bamba and Gao is the 

 very narrow cU/iJe of Tossaye. 



In the region of Timbuctu the water rarely rises more than thirty 

 centimetres during the rainy season. When dry, the natives utilise 

 for agricultural purposes the bed of the lake and the various marshes 

 alluvially enriched by the inundation. Rice, big millet and corn are 

 raised. Rice is cultivated during the ascending period of the flood, 

 whereas corn and millet are grown during the decreasing period. 



In what the French call " la boucle du Niger," the curve or elbow 

 of the Niger, north of the fifteenth degree of latitude, the agricul- 

 tural resources cannot attain any serious development until the irriga- 

 tion of the country has been managed in such a way as to obtain a 

 more methodical irrigation from the vast reservoirs. That portion 

 of the country is good, I think, for breeding purposes, the grazing 



