CHAPTER XII 



MY JOURNEY IN THE PLATEAU AND PESERT LAND 

 OF SOUTH ANGOLA AND ALONG THE SOUTHERN 

 RAILWAY 



I HAVE told how an arid coast belt, growing 

 wider and more desert to the south, lies 

 between the sea and the mountains which 

 form the western walls of the highlands and 

 plateaux of Angola. 



It has been said that mark of wave on granite 

 cliffs, and sign of shells beneath them, show that 

 the sea once rode to some of these hills ; and what 

 is now arid coast land was then beneath the sea. 

 In my journey from Loanda across the coast belt, 

 here narrow, and over the hills to Melanje and 

 the northern highlands, there was too much grass 

 in the coast land, where sand should be, too little 

 of cliff-like form in the hills, to remind me of the 

 sea. When I returned from the central highlands, 

 200 miles farther south to the coast, only the last 

 abrupt descent from arid hills to a sandy shore 

 recalled the story ; but this impression was lost 

 again in my march south from Catcngue through 

 the foot-hills of the plateau, for the sea was too 

 far westwards and the rise to the plateaux in the 



east too gradual. 



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