120 



EAST AND WEST COAST. 



jungly mountains and coast-range or ghaut, in 

 many parts yet unvisited by Europeans. Beyond 

 these sierras begins the basin-shaped plateau of 

 Central Equatorial Africa. The inhabitants are 

 mostly inland tribes, ever gravitating towards 

 the coast. They occupy stockaded and barri- 

 caded clumps of pent-houses or circular tents, 

 smothered by thicket and veiled, especially after 

 the heavy annual rains, with the c smokes,' a 

 dense white vapour, moisture made visible by 

 the earth being cooler than the saturated air. 1 



I have elsewhere remarked (The Lake Re- 

 gions of Central Intertropical Africa ; Abeokuta 

 and the Camaroons Mountains, &c.) the striking 

 geological contrast between the two equatorial 

 coasts, eastern and western. The former, south 

 of the Guardafui granites, offers to one proceed- 

 ing inland from the ocean a succession of coral- 

 lines, of sandstone and of calcaires, which appear 

 to be an offset from the section of that great 

 zone forming the Somali country. The west- 

 ern coasts, after quitting the basalts and lavas 



1 Dr Livingstone (Zambezi Expedition, x. 213) confounds 

 these African 'smokes' with the blue hazy atmosphere of the 

 ' Indian summers' in America, often the result of grass-burn- 

 ing and prairie fires. During an August on the Syrian coast 

 and a December in the Brazil, I have seen the African ' smokes ' 

 as well developed as at Fernando Po. 



