226 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
The fauna and flora of the Congo region between the 
Stanley Falls, which he almost in the centre of the con- 
tinent, and the coast, are by no ineans uniform, and may 
be said to offer three distinct aspects, caused by the 
character of the regions through which the Congo flows. 
What may be known as the first region extends from 
the sea-coast some eighty miles at most inland, and 
belongs to the marshy forest belt that stretches all along 
the western littoral of Africa from Cabega de Cobra, fifty 
miles south of the Congo mouth, to the river Gambia in 
Upper Guinea. This swampy area, where mammals and 
birds are remarkable for their peculiar forms rather than 
for richness in species, prevails along the lower river un- 
interruptedly from the coast as far as Ponta da Lenha, 
about fifty miles from the sea, and further extends, some- 
what modified in character, to Boma and beyond, where it — 
insensibly mingles with the next, or “ cataract” region, 
which is characteristic of the parallel mountain chains 
extending from the Upper Ogowé right down the continent 
into Southern Angola, and separating the central plateau 
or basin of tropical Africa from the strip of low-lying 
coast-land bordering the sea. In this mountain district, 
which commences some little distance beyond Boma, and 
may be said to include all the cataracts or rapids of the 
Congo as far as Stanley Pool, the fauna and flora are of a 
more generalised type than those of the first and third 
regions, and partake more of the fauna and flora pre- 
vailing in Angola and Lower Guinea. Finally, the 
influence of this somewhat poor region of stony hills and 
rocky boulders fades away before the splendid richness 
of the central plateau, and at Stanley Pool new forms 
characteristic of Central Equatorial Africa make their 
appearance ; and so abrupt is the change, that the upper 
end of Stanley Pool more resembles the regions of the 
Wellé and the western . littoral of Tanganyika in its 
natural history, especially in its flora, than. the tract of 
country twenty miles off, which begins with the first — 
cataract at the lower end of the Pool. Though I have 
not myself penetrated farther than about 2° 30° south of 
