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CHAPTER VI. 



AFRICAN PARK-LANDS, THEIR APPEARANCE ON ALLUVIAL 

 FLATS CONSIDERED AS EVIDENCE OF RECENT PHYSICAL 

 CHANGE. 



In the last chapters I have referred to the changes which 

 have unquestionably gone on in the African interior in 

 the past, and I also pointed out that there was direct and 

 incontestable evidence to show that in some places these 

 changes are even at the present time in full swing. It 

 may, therefore, not be out of place to refer in the present 

 chapter to another series of phenomena, which have for 

 a long time been most perplexing, but which, when 

 rightly interpreted, appear to show, in an equally conclusive 

 manner, the extraordinary impermanence of the terrestrial 

 conditions over very wide areas of the continent in 

 which they occur. 



These observations have nothing to do with geology 

 as it is ordinarily understood, being related to certain 

 features of the flora of Central Africa, which, when first 

 encountered, are utterly perplexing, and seem to indicate 

 the past or present operations of a landscape gardener 

 who is not there. 



If we were to land now on the banks of the Upper 

 Shiri river, we should find, after pushing our way through 



