THE TANGANYIKA PROBLEM. 
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rounding Lake Shirwa, on the alluvial flats and plains 
bordering Lake Nyassa to the east, to the west and to 
the north. They appear again in many places on the 
high interior plateau between Nyassa and Tanganyika; 
they cover extensive regions of old lake deposits on the 
shores of Tanganyika itself; while they reappear on the 
plains south of the Albert Edward Nyanza. They are to 
be found again in patches mixed up with the true forest 
all along the course of the Semliki valley and on the shores 
of the Albert Nyanza. They are further to be found 
on old lake deposits and alluvial flats in some parts of 
Uganda, and I am informed that they are also a charac- 
teristic feature of many portions of the west coast of Africa, 
and of the hinterlands beyond it. 
Park-lands, districts having the peculiar characteristics 
of a kept park, thus cover immense areas in the African 
interior. They cover, as a matter of fact, thousands upon 
thousands of square miles, and the more closely we 
examine them the more curious and perplexing their 
existence appears. 
We have, indeed, only to look for an instant at a 
district such as that to which I have alluded on the Upper 
Shiri river, in order that a variety of questions shall 
present themselves, which are all more easily put than 
answered. In the first place, why have these districts 
assumed the characters of an artificial park ? Why are the 
trees isolated as if they had been grown for show ? Why 
is there no thick bush covering the ground, and converting 
the whole place into a thick jungle ? Why are there so 
very many different sorts of trees ? 
If we meet with a park in England the mere fact of its 
existence implies the present or past operations of a park- 
keeper or a landscape gardener, who was not only an agent 
