™ 
FROM SAO PAULO DE LOANDA TO THE CONGO. 9 
scattered bushes, and euphorbias; but here the rich 
vegctation of the interior is only three miles from the 
coast, and as the reader will notice, it is gradually 
approaching the sea, until at Cabeca da Cobra the last 
traces of desert influence will vanish and a tr opical wealth 
of flora reassert its sway. 
There are certain curious points in the phytography of 
South-Western Africa which are best shown in this 
accompanying map. I have endeavoured here to exhibit 
more clearly the distribution and comparative abundance 
of vegetation which may be observed in travelling over 
Western Tropical Africa, and more especially in the 
country lying between the river Cunéné and the Upper 
Congo. From Sierra Leone to the river Ogowé along the 
coast the one prevailing landscape is that of endless 
forest. This is, in fact, part of the forest region—the 
forest belt which has a distinctive fauna and flora, and 
which extends eastward, near the equator, more than half- 
way across Africa to Lake Victoria Nyanza and the 
western shores of Tanganika. This is the country of the 
anthropoid’ apes, which are found equally near Sierra 
Leone, and on the Wellé, and near the Upper Nile. But 
when the mouth of the Ogowé is passed, the forest begins 
to retreat from the coast,* and is gradually succeeded by 
more open savannah scenery, so characteristic of the 
major part of Africa, and so happily described by older 
travellers as “park-like,” a designation which its open 
grassy spaces and formal groups of shady trees amply 
justify. Such is the country at Loango, Kabinda, and 
along the Lower Congo up to Stanley Pool. But a little 
to the south of the Congo embouchure the park-like 
- scenery in its turn begins to retire from the sea, some- 
where about Cabega da Cobra, a place I have already 
mentioned, and there follows a much uglier region of 
sparse vegetation and less abundant rainfall. Of such is 
the country around Loanda, where scarcely anything but 
hia, baobabs, and aloes are erowing, and where 
r E bei 
* Except where it follows the courses of rivers. 
