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Si\[ITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 72 



The dry, open forest around Elizabethville gives way, before 

 Bukana is reached, to the tall grass and scattered trees which form 

 the great Savanna, which surrounds the tropical forest of the Congo. 

 The Lualaba is lined with oil palms (Elaeis guineensis) throughout 

 almost the whole of its course, and during much of the time swamps 

 of Papyrus are abundant along its course. Most interesting were the 

 great numbers of wild Sorghum grasses, some of which may prove 



Fig. 45. — Two large mango trees (Empe oribo) at Kigoma on Lake Tan- 

 ganyika. The trees bear two crops of fruit a year, a large crop in January and 

 February, and a small crop in August and September. The fruits are large, 

 fully five inches long, of excellent flavor and with practically no fiber around 

 the seed. The building in the back is the railway station. 



valuable in our dry-land agriculture. The oil palm, which belongs to 

 the native who planted it, is probably the most useful native plant in 

 all Central Africa, and its oil is used by the natives as food and for 

 making soap with which to wash their clothes. 



The dense tropical forests which cover much of the central Congo 

 were seen at Kindu on the Congo River, where they form a dense 

 canopy, but where the undergrowth is not entirely shut out. At 

 Kigoma and Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, the grassland is dotted with 



