^ Climate and Rainfall 



Kakatown, we arrive at a total of i^j inches as the rainfall 

 registered in the southern part of the county of Mesurado, 

 behind Monrovia, for the twelve months from September, 1904, 

 to the end of August, 1905. From other observations which 

 have been taken, I have reason to think that this record of 

 153 inches is not an extreme one, but represents something 

 like the average annual rainfall in the coast regions of Western 

 Liberia, between Cape Mount and Grand Basa. 



Judging by the rain records at Sikombe and Putu in 

 the county of Sino, the year's rainfall from September, 1904, 

 to the end of August, 1905, stands approximately at 100 inches ; 

 but this is not a complete or reliable record. I have been in- 

 formed by an American missionary that the annual rainfall at 

 Cape Palmas was computed to be about 100 inches. Mr. 

 Alexander Whyte states that the southern half of Liberia has 

 a distinctly less rainfall than what may be attributed to the 

 northern half, and this opinion is shared by a good many 

 Liberians. I believe that the approximate average annual rain- 

 fall on the British Gold Coast is something like 90 inches per 

 annum. ^ It may be, therefore, that along the West African 

 coast-lands the rainfall, which is only about 35 inches at St. 

 Louis at the mouth of the Senegal, increases gradually in volume 

 eastwards and southwards till it reaches its culmination in the 

 colony of Sierra Leone and the western parts of Liberia, gradually 

 to diminish in volume as far as the Gold Coast, and then to 

 increase again to the heavy rainfall of the Niger Delta,^ Old 

 Calabar, and the northern Cameroons, where it is approximately 

 120 inches per annum. The southern part of Sierra Leone 

 is in all probability the wettest part of tropical Africa, with 

 the exception possibly of one or two isolated mountains. 



' Western Gold Coast, 925 inches in 1901. 



2 Lagos rainfall, 1901, 112-5 inches. — W. Shelford, M.I.C.E. 



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