Liberia ^ 



Liberia is not taken to include any portion of the Niger water- 

 shed, the northern frontier being so drawn by France as to 

 exclude any portion of the basin of the Upper Niger from 

 Liberian Hmits. This country, therefore, is the most southern 

 portion of the land which slopes to the Atlantic from the 

 knot of highlands, plateaux, and mountains that gives rise to 

 the Niger, Senegal, and Gambia. 



On the north-east frontier of Liberia are situated the 

 highest mountains as yet discovered in West Africa.^ Altitudes 

 of nearly ten thousand feet are reported by the French in 

 connection with the Druple Range, which, together with the 

 Nimba Mountains close by, may be the kernel of truth in 

 the old stories of the " Kong Mountains." North-westwards, 

 nearly parallel with the Atlantic coast-line, at a distance of two 

 to three hundred miles, this range of highlands, mountains, and 

 plateaux is prolonged to the vicinity of the Upper Senegal. 

 It condenses the tremendous rainfall which creates the Niger 

 River, and sends it like a western Nile on a long, long journey 

 through the desert before it once more reaches in its lower 

 course the rainy lands of the Gulf of Guinea. 



Liberia has a coast-line of three hundred and fifty miles,^ 

 but little indented, and possessing no natural harbour or sheltered 

 anchorage, while the mouth of each one of its rivers is defended 

 by a bar that no vessel of any considerable draught could cross 

 with safety ; though, unlike the pitiless Guinea coast from 

 Cape Palmas eastward to the Niger Delta, the Liberian littoral 

 offers several fairly safe landing-places where even at the height 

 of the rainy season, when the surf is at its worst, a disem- 



' That is to say, westwards of the Canieroons. 



* About three hundred geographical miles. Measured in a straight line from 

 the Cavalla Kiver to the Mano River, without regard to indentations, about three 

 hundred and thirty English miles represent Liberia's section of the West African 

 littoral. 



