Chap. X. PLAINS OR rEAIIlIES. 209 



emanate from the direction of Leo, tliougli its altitude 

 was very high. 



All the inquiries I made concerning the fall of aer- 

 olites have been fruitless ; tlie negroes never saw any, 

 though I suppose that, as in every other country, 

 some may have fallen, but they are buried in these 

 impenetrable forests. 



Mayolo lies on the western edge of an undulating 

 plain about twenty miles broad, stretching between 

 the Ashira ranges of hills and the higher ridges of 

 Ashango in the interior; tliis plain averaging about 

 400 feet above the sea-level, and the hilly ranges 

 running nearly north-west and south-east. The plain 

 is covered in many places with a clayey soil, but in 

 other parts with masses of fragments of ferruginous 

 sandstone. It is watered by the Ngouyai and its 

 affluents, which river flows in a north-westerly 

 direction, and, cutting through the hilly range 

 north of Ashira-land, forms a junction some thirty 

 miles further down with the Okanda (apparently 

 a still more important stream) ; both together then 

 form the great River Ogobai, which pursues a south- 

 westerly direction through the coast-plains to the 

 Atlantic. 



The plains east of Mayolo are inhabited, as will 

 presently be seen, by the Otando and the Apono 

 tribes. These plains consist chiefly of undulating 

 grass-land, diveisified by groups of trees, or small 

 circumscribed tracts of forest, in which are many 

 magnificent timber-trees; the banks of the river are 

 almost everywhere lined with trees for a hundred 



