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FROM SAO PAULO DE LOANDA TO THE CoNGo. 11 
endowed with vegetation. Further, it is an interesting 
fact, and one which can only be briefly noticed here, that 
in looking over a physical map of the world, one cannot 
fail to remark how, both north and south of the equator, . 
the tropical is separated from the temperate zone by a more 
or less well-defined region of desert or barren steppe. The 
Sahara, the deserts of Syria, Arabia, Persia and Sinde; the 
ereat desert of Gobi, and the barren wastes in China and 
Thibet separate the fertile regions of temperate Europe, 
Africa, and Asia from the zone of tropical rain, just as 
in North America, almost in the same latitudes, are 
salt plains, deserts, and the hideous lifeless tracts in 
Northern Mexico. South of the equator, we have in 
South America the desert of Atacama and the grassy 
steppes of the Gran Chaco, and of the northern states of 
the Argentine Republic; the sterility of Central Australia, 
and finally, in South Africa, the Kalahari Desert which 
extends northwards to Mossamedes, and makes its influence 
felt on the western coast line nearly to the vicinity of the 
Congo. 
I rejoined the Dutch steamer at Muséra and proceeded 
to Ambrizéte, where there are many factories belonging 
to English, French, and Dutch companies. The inland 
scenery at about a mile from the coast is beautiful and 
park-like, though near the shore it is still a sandy tract 
with scanty vegetation. This soon yields to beautiful 
prairies, dotted with clumps of fine trees and radiant with 
many wild flowers, principally yellow ground orchids, 
white Commelyne, and bright saffron-coloured convolvuh. 
The baobabs (Adansonia) in the distance seem to be 
fine stout beech-trees in an English park, and their 
leaves are tender and green, just budding out under the 
October rains. From their branches, hanging straight 
down by a thread-like stalk, are the fair white blossoms 
with wax-like petals and a mass of feathery, filamentous 
stamens. ‘These flowers soon drop, and their snowy white- 
ness is tarnished with yellow stains and bruises as they 
he in heaps at the foot of the swollen, gouty trunk. The 
“calabash,” the large fruit that slightly resembles the 
