102 National Geographic Magazine. 



Standing on the citadel at Cairo, and looking south, you see a 

 sandstone ridge which gradually grows in altitude and width of 

 base as it runs far away to the south, even to the Cape of Good 

 Hope at the other end of Africa. Successive ranges of mount- 

 ains follow the coast, sometimes near, at others two or three 

 hundred miles inland ; the land, in the latter case, ascending 

 from the coast. The only breaks in this long chain are where 

 the Zambezi and Limpopo force their way to the Indian Ocean. 



In Abyssinia, on the Red Sea, there is a range of snowy 

 mountains 14,V00 feet in height. A few hundred miles to the 

 southeast, and near Lake Victoria Nyanza, almost under the 

 equator, is another snow-capped mountain, Kilima Njaro, 18,700 

 feet high, — the highest mountain in Africa, — and the mountains 

 of Massai-Land, a continuation of the Abyssinian Mountains. 

 Another range, apparently an offshoot of the long range from 

 the Red Sea, forms a wall 100 miles long, and 10,000 feet high, 

 on the east of Lake Nyassa, separating the waters of that lake 

 from the Indian Ocean. This range continues to the Zambezi. 

 South of this river the mountains rise 8,000 to 10,000 feet in 

 height. In Cape Colony are several ranges of mountains. The 

 highest peak is Compas Berg, 8,500 feet. In the eastern center 

 of Africa, in the equatorial region, is an elevated plateau in 

 which is the lake region, then there is a sudden rise, and a 

 gradual descent towards the Atlantic. There are few continu- 

 ous ranges of mountains on the western coast; but at Kamerun 

 there is a cluster of mountains reaching an elevation of 13,100 

 feet ; and south of Morocco some of the peaks of the Atlas 

 Mountains reach an elevation of 12,000 to 13,000 feet, but they 

 have little if any influence on the rainfall or temperature of the 

 country. It will be seen from this statement that eastern Africa 

 has high mountain-ranges rising into an elevated plateau ; that 

 the land in Equatorial Africa gradually descends toward the 

 west and north-west until within one or two hundred miles of 

 the Atlantic Ocean, when the descent is rapid to the low and un- 

 healthy coast-lands. Through equatorial Africa runs the Kongo, 

 the land north of the Kongo gradually rising to an elevation of 

 about 2,000 feet, and then descending to 1,200 feet at Lake 

 Chad. South of the Kongo the land rises to an elevation of 

 3 000 feet, and retains this elevation far south into the Portu- 

 guese territory. 



