GOLD COAST REPORT ON FORESTS. 85 



Generally speaking, these rich patches of moist soil, covered 

 us they are with evergreen forest, form the actual sources of the 

 streams draining the plain. Very few of the former, if any, are 

 perennial, but their courses can always be recognised, even at a 

 distance, by the evergreen fringes of vegetation growing along 

 their banks, the soil in such places being moist enough at the driest 

 season of the year to support that type of vegetation. 



From the foot of the Abetifi hills, as far north at least as the 

 Sumin and Bunda Rivers, the country is undulating in character 

 with higher ridges separating the basins of the more important 

 streams. Superimposed on these general features are numerous 

 outcrops of laterite and schistose rocks, the latter of which often 

 occur in the form of huge flat sheets (sometimes 200 to 300 yards 

 in length, and 50 to 100 yards broad, and 10 to 20 feet high), 

 arranged in successive terraces one above the other, like a gigantic 

 staircase. 



The sheets of rock often contain fairly large circular or oval 

 depressions that are filled with rainwater during the tornado 

 season, and form pools that last well into the dry season. Water- 

 lilies and other aquatic plants occupy them, and the corrosive 

 action of their roots helps to further enlarge the depressions till 

 they sometimes reach the dimensions of quite a respectable sized 

 pond. A few of them are said to contain water all the year round. 



The majority of the streams in ^this part of the country have 

 their sources in these rocky pools, the overflow from which feeds 

 the streams. For days after a shower of rain tiny rivulets con- 

 tinue to trickle off the sheets of rock down into the rich deposits 

 of soil found at their bases, where moss and other evergreen vege- 

 tation covers the ground and helps to hold the water in suspension 

 like a sponge, and gives it out gradually to the streams below. 

 These patches of evergreen vegetation act as regulators of the 

 water-supply, and explain why, in a tract of country having a poor 

 rainfall, scanty evergreen vegetation and 110 marked hill features, 

 such a large number of important streams are to be met with, 

 some of which, at all events, contain pools of water even at the 

 driest season of the year. 



In the vicinity of the small hunting village of Jwafuabutau two 

 remarkable, isolated rocky hills are to be seen. They are flat- 

 topped, and have almost perpendicular sides of rock, imbedded in 

 which are horizontal layers of pebbles and conglomerate. They 

 remind one of the rocky escarpment sometimes found on the 

 " higher valley gravels " of large streams. It may be that these 

 two hills are the remnants of escarpments that once formed the old 

 banks of the Volta River, when it was carving out these plains. 



The rocks forming the hills are very much riven and split 

 asunder ; in the chasms thus formed rich soil has accumulated and 

 now supports luxuriant evergreen vegetation. I found beautiful 

 little ponds and streams on the rocky terraces near the summit of 

 one of the hills, and also obtained from there a magnificent pano- 

 ramic view of the hill system of Kwahon and Eastern Akyam. 



Reverting now to the forest vegetation of these plains it con- 

 sists for the greater part of deciduous-leaved trees, scattered about 



