THE OGOWE DISTRICT 
5 
which are to take them away without danger of being 
broken up and scattered on a bar or by a heavy swell. 
The timber trade, therefore, is likely to be for an in- 
definite period the chief industry of the Ogowe 
district. 
Cereals and potatoes it is, unfortunately, impossible 
to cultivate, since the warm, damp atmosphere makes 
them grow too fast. Cereals never produce the usual 
ear, and potato haulms shoot up without any tubers 
below. Rice, too, is for various reasons not cultivable. 
Cows cannot be kept along the lower Ogowe because 
they cannot eat the grass that grows there, though 
further inland, on the central plateau, they flourish 
splendidly. It is necessary, therefore, to import from 
Europe flour, rice, potatoes, and milk, a fact which 
makes living a complicated business and very expen- 
sive. 
Lambarene lies a little south of the Equator, so that 
its seasons are those of the Southern hemisphere : 
winter when it is summer in Europe, and vice versa. 
Its winter is characterised by its including the dry 
season, which lasts from the end of May to the beginning 
of October, and summer is the rainy season, the rain 
falling from early in October to the middle of Decem- 
ber, and from the middle of January to the end of May. 
About Christmas one gets three to four weeks of con- 
tinuous summer weather, and it is then that the ther- 
mometer record is highest. 
The average shade temperature in the rainy season 
is 82° — 86° F.,* in the dry season about 77° — 82° F., 
the nights being always nearly as hot as the days. 
This circumstance, and the excessive moisture of the 
* I.e., 28° to 30° and 25° to 28° C. 
