THE STEPPES OF INNER AFRICA. 175 



hundred paces beyond the last house of the towns, and directly 

 behind the last houses of the villages; it includes the fields of the 

 settlers, and supports the flocks of the nomads. Where the desert 

 ends to the south, where the forest ceases, where the mountain 

 flattens, there is steppe-land; where the forest is destroyed by fire, 



Fig. 25. The Bed of an Intermittent Kiver, Central Africa. 



the steppe first gains possession of the clearing; where men abandon 

 a village the steppe encroaches, and in a few years destroys every 

 trace of habitation; where the farmer relinquishes his fields the 

 steppe impresses its character upon them in the space of a year 

 or two. 



Inhospitable and monotonous the steppe seems to one who sees 

 it for the first time. A wide, often immeasurable plain stretches 

 before his eye; only exceptionally is this interrupted by isolated 

 conical hills, yet more rarely do these unite to form mountain ranges. 

 More frequently, low, undulating hills alternate with flat valleys; 

 or sometimes they combine in a strange mazy network of ranges 



