IN THE HIGHLANDS 127 



From Cuma the line steadily ascends till it 

 reaches Elepi Town, where the height of the 

 plateau is 5300 feet, and there are a number of 

 farms. The country consists of grass-covered 

 hills, with occasional bush forest in the more 

 sheltered valleys, and is eminently suitable for 

 Europeans and stock-raising ; though the soil, 

 through the repeated burning of the grass, is not 

 as rich as it would otherwise be. 



Beyond Elepi the railway climbs the Chicanda 

 gorge to reach at its crest an elevation of over 

 6000 feet, the highest point of the plateau ; from 

 where it descends to cross the valley and reach 

 the thriving town of Huambo, the centre of a 

 prosperous farming country. 



Here and there along the railway occur granite 

 hills of extraordinary shape, with columnar and 

 dome-shaped granite peaks, hundreds of feet high 

 and bare of all vegetation, looking as if some 

 giant hands had carved and placed them there. 



From Huambo to Chinguar, the terminus of 

 the line in 1920, the railway crosses an open and 

 comparatively flat divide, the source of many 

 mighty rivers like the Cuvo and the tributaries 

 of the Coanza and Cunene, which, rising within 

 a few miles of each other, flow to the Atlantic 

 hundreds of miles apart ; while in the same region 

 are the sources of the Cubango and its tributaries, 

 which actually join the Zambezi and pour their 

 waters into the Pacific Ocean on the other coast 

 of Africa. \ 



This railway is prospering ; last year (1919) 

 over 50,000 tons of produce, mainly maize and 



