SUDANESE SAVANA 213 



This district gives way to the vast Niger- Benue plain 

 which resumes the character of park-savana, consider- 

 able portions of the plain being under an impenetrable 

 grassy jungle, or again under orchards of small trees 

 overgrown with a rank crop of gigantic grass. Rivers, 

 now broad and at a level with the land which they 

 frequently flood, are marked from afar by fringes of 

 tall palms or dense margin-forest. Towards Kano, the 

 savana passes rapidly to the acacia half-desert. 



Lake Chad, which occupies the centre of a vast arid 

 depression, at the point of transition from the half-desert 

 to the true savana-land, is girt with a broad belt of 

 swamps, and the delta of the Shari River is covered with 

 a dense growth of acacias. Following to the south- 

 east, the territory of the Middle Shari is also part of 

 the typical park-savana which displays here a variety 

 of trees, the acacia type predominating with the butter- 

 and-tallow tree, the tamarind and baobab. Nearer Lake 

 Chad the clayey nature of the soil gives rise to immense 

 swamps and lagoons, partly overgrown and surrounded 

 with reeds, an infertile, sweltering, and often impassable 

 land. 



The Nile portion of the savana, the Bahr-al-Ghazal 

 basin, exhibits much the same characteristics with 

 a tendency towards the thornbush type. It is marked 

 by an abundance of doum-palms and several forms of the 

 Nubian flora. Amid the uniformity of the grassy plains 

 arise sometimes rocky islands, some 600 to 900 feet high, 

 which are clad with a very luxuriant tropical forest and 

 defended by belts of dense acacia thickets. In the vast 

 swamps of this district grow the papyrus, the common 

 tall reed, and a kind of wild sugar-cane. The Sudan 

 savana supports a comparatively large population 

 engaged in agriculture and cattle-breeding. With the 



