328 MR. G. BLAINE ON THE ZEBRAS 



vegetables from his carefull}^ tended garden at Equimiiia, sent up 

 to my camps by relays of cari-iers, helped to smooth over many 

 minor discomforts, and enabled me to look back upon this trip 

 as one of the most interesting and delightful of my African 

 adventures. 



Without some elementary knowledge of geology, it is difficult 

 to give a description of a country whose outstanding featui-es are 

 bare i"ock and sand. Having very little, I must, therefore, be 

 excused for a tenative and sketchy account of its outlines, which 

 ai'e so strange, wild, and rugged as to merit a description. 



After passing the mouth of the Copoi'oUa River below Dombe 

 Gi-ande, the littoral plain disappears, and gives place to high lime- 

 stone cliffs alternating, as at Elephant Bay, with red sandstone. 

 The coast-line here is indented with snmll bays bordering bush- 

 covered sandy flats, which run inland for a space of 2 or 3 

 miles and are bounded by cliffs. Numerous dambas, or dry 

 water-courses, debouch into these bays through steep defiles worn 

 in the encircling walls of rock. Access to the country behind is 

 only practicable up one of these dambas, as any attempt to climb 

 to the top of the cliffs and thence proceed across country involves 

 the surmounting of an appalling series of obstructions ; but by 

 plodding patiently along a damba through all its intricate 

 windings, one is eventually rewarded by reaching a country 

 where it is possible to follow the direction that one fancies. 



The lower reaches of these dambas are contained by perpen- 

 dicular walls of " pudding-stone " conglomerate. As they continue 

 upwards, the cliffs give way to precipitous slopes of cretaceous 

 rocks. Finally becoming shallower, they pass between undulating 

 ridges covered with loose stone and shale, merging on to sandy 

 flats, whence they break out into a network of dry water- 

 courses. 



At this point the terrain expands into many little plains which 

 are more or less confluent, having a central nucleus traversed by 

 an uninterrupted level stretch from 12 to 15 miles long. These 

 plains spread laterally into irregular bays and gulfs, and send out 

 long corridors through rocky defiles to end in dambas which lose 

 themselves among the hills. Encompassing them on every side 

 are steep stony ridges and conical kopjes built up of gneisses and 

 mica-schists, with huge outcrops of white quartz occasionally 

 crowning their summits. 



A moraine of loose fragments of glistening white quartz litters 

 the lower slopes between the hills. Elsewhere large surfaces of 

 undulating ground are thickly spread with the same debris, 

 which reflects a blinding glare fi'om the pale metallic blue of 

 the sky. 



There are no trees to cover the nakedness of the land, but pale 

 green thorn-bushes of the wait-a-bit variety, nearly all having 

 hard hooked thorns, with some cactus and euphorbia, are dotted 

 more or less evenly about this country, the pecvdiar features of 



