248 LIBERIA. 



acter owing to their less copious rainfall. Now that two English 

 companies, in conjunction with the Government of Liberia, are en- 

 deavoring to develop the resources of the interior and to accumulate 

 knowledge regarding the climate and products, attempts are being 

 made to record the rainfall, as to the extent of which at present only 

 a guess can l)e made. It is probal)le that south of latitude 8° 30' the 

 average annual rainfall of Liberia is not less than 100 inches. Ad- 

 joining regions in Sierra Leone have a recorded rainfall of something 

 like 130 inches, so that this is probably an mider rather than an over 

 estimate. North of latitude 8° 30' the rainfall diminishes probably 

 to ()0 or 80 inches per annum, and in consequence the dense forest 

 gives way to a pastoral country of savannas, grassy hills, or park 

 lands of grass, with dense forest along the stream valleys. Mr. 

 Alexander "VVliyte, well known by his many years' work as an official 

 in charge of botanical departments in the British East African Pro- 

 tectorates, spent a good deal of 1904 in Liberia, and in the report 

 which he drew up for my information he considers that this country, 

 which has a seaboard of approximately 350 miles long (from north- 

 west to southeast) and a total superficies of about 45,000 square 

 miles, has two somewhat different climates, depending, no doubt, a 

 good deal on the latitude. In the southern regions, below latitude 

 C)'^, the rainiest time of the year appears to be the months of March to 

 June and August to December. North of this — round Monrovia, 

 for example— the specially rainy months are April to the end of July, 

 September, and October. 



From my own experience of Liberia, I should say that the heavy 

 rainy season begins in April and lasts till the end of July. Then 

 there is a pause of a month or six weeks with less rain, the heavy rains 

 beginning again in September and lasting till the middle of Novem- 

 ber. From mid-November till the end of March is the dry season, at 

 any rate in the northern half of Liberia, but in the southern part 

 this dry season is not much more marked tb.an it is in the Niger Delta. 

 Rain, in fact, may fall in any month of the year. Between November 

 and April is the worst season for storms, some of which are very 

 violent. 



When I first visited the coast of Liberia, in 1882 and 1885, the 

 primeval forest grew down to the sea along a great proportion of 

 the coast ; but when I revisited this country in the summer of 1904, 

 and touched at a good many places at the coast where I had noted 

 forest growing as late as 1888, nnich of this big-tree woodland had 

 been swept away to make room for plantations or even for towns. 

 In fact, with a few exceptions, the big-tree and rul)ber-producing 

 forest does not usually begin in its most marked characteristics until 

 a journey of at least 15 miles has been made inland from the coast. 

 I have estimated, from the reports of the agents of the British com- 



