CHAPTER VI. 
AFRICAN PARK-LANDS, THEIR APPEARANCE ON ALLUVIAL 
FLATS CONSIDERED AS EVIDENCE OF RECENT PHYSICAL 
CHANGE. 
In the last chapters I have referred to the changes which 
have unquestionably gone on in the African interior in 
the past, and I also pointed out that there was direct and 
incontestable evidence to show that in some places these 
changes are even at the present time in full swing. It 
may, therefore, not be out of place to refer in the present 
chapter to another series of phenomena, which have for 
a long time been most perplexing, but which, when 
rightly interpreted, appear to show, in an equally conclusive 
manner, the extraordinary impermanence of the terrestrial 
conditions over very wide- areas of the continent in 
which they occur. 
These observations have nothing to do with geology 
as it is ordinarily understood, being related to certain 
features of the flora of Central Africa, which, when first 
encountered, are utterly perplexing, and seem to indicate 
the past or present operations of a landscape gardener 
who is not there. 
If we were to land now on the banks of the Upper 
Shiri river, we should find, after pushing our way through 
