14 AFRICA AND HER FUTURE. 



ruptions to navigation too serious for them to overcome. 

 But in later years the increased knowledge and greatly- 

 enlarged resources with which the explorers are furnish- 

 ed, have enabled them to overcome such difficulties, and 

 the country has been entered from nearly all quarters 

 and the general characteristics of the continent are now 

 well defined. 



These general features are a low, hot coast line, having 

 rank vegetation, from which, on its three sides, the con- 

 tinent rises to two plateaux, the inner and higher 

 one having an elevation of four or five thousand feet. 

 While its waterways are of little use as means of access 

 from the sea, there is, through the most fertile park of 

 the interior, a vast network of rivers and lakes of un- 

 surpassed magnitude. PMve great rivers flow into the 

 Atlantic — the Nile, Niger, Ogowai, Congo and Orange; 

 and three, the Juba, Zambezi and Limpopo, into the In- 

 dian Ocean. All are interrupted by cataracts, but all 

 except the Orange have long stretches of navigable wa- 

 ters. The size and importance of these waterways is 

 just coming to be recognized and their extent is not yet 

 fully known, for into most of these rivers flow great 

 tributaries, which have been only partially explored. 

 The facts already learned about the Congo will show 

 something of the magnitude of these waterways. 



The main river is five thousand miles long, and, though 

 interrupted by cataracts, it has navigable courses be- 

 tween them several hundred miles long and one course of 

 over a thousand miles. Its tributaries are many and 

 large, and though their navigation is also interrupted, 

 yet some of their unbroken courses exceed eight hundred 

 miles. One can sail five thousand miles on the Congo 

 and its tributaries without interruption, and, by passing 

 cataracts, thirteen thousand miles more in different 

 courses. The magnitude is equally astonishing. One of 

 these tributaries, the Mobanzi, pours more water into 



