156 THROUGH ANGOLA 



It was only when I climbed to Lubango, 

 reached this highest southern plateau here pushed 

 out bastion-like towards the coast, and looked from 

 a height of 5000 feet down past a rampart of 

 sheer granite cliff over a seaward desert plain, 

 that I knew that these hills had once overlooked 

 the ocean. 



I felt that through some mighty freak of 

 nature, by sudden rise of earth's crust and by 

 receding seas, these sheer cliffs had known the 

 roar of wave and rush of salt sea winds ; that the 

 sandy plain before me was then deep below the 

 ocean, and the summits of the hills scattered in 

 it just rose as coastwise rocks above the waters. 



If in the north and centre of Angola the coast- 

 ward wall of the highlands lies broken, and the 

 rise to higher plateaux is by terraced hills cut by 

 many a valley, here in the south, mile on mile, 

 was a rampart so steep, so rugged, so crowned 

 with granite dome and crag and pillar, as to give 

 the picture of some gigantic fortressed city. 

 South of the great bastion of Lubango and Huilla, 

 the mountain wall ran straight and sheer for 

 nigh 100 miles, till another bastion stood out 

 towards the sea in the very south to form the 

 northern escarpment of the Cunene River. 



From its highest levels, some 5000 feet, near 

 Lubango and Huilla, the southern section of the 

 Angolan plateau slopes gradually eastwards to- 

 wards the upper reaches of the Cunene River, 

 150 miles away, and beyond it even greater 

 distances to the Cubango and then the Coando, 

 mighty rivers both, which flow, the one into a. 



