Up the Congo to Banza Nokki. 129 
the bed exclude direct vision, and the succession 
of points and bays suggest, like parts of the 
Rhine, a series of mountain-tarns. The banks 
show the high-water level in a low shelf, a ribbon 
of green, backed by high rolling hills, rounded and 
stony, with grass dry at this season ; .the formation 
is primitive, and the material of the lower bed has 
been held to “ prove the probability that the moun¬ 
tains of Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, and other 
adjacent parts of South America, were primevally 
connected with the opposite chains, that traverse 
the plains of Congo and Loango.” In parts the 
rocks fall bluff into the river, and here the current 
rushes past like a mill-race without a shadow of 
backwater. The heights are intersected by gul¬ 
lies and ravines, of which I counted sixty-nine on 
the right and fifty-four on the left bank; many of 
them are well wooded, and others are fronted by 
plains ^f the reeds and flags, which manufacture 
floating islands, cast loose, like those of the Niger, 
about the end of July by the “ Malka ” rains. 
About a dozen contained running water : Captain 
Tuckey did not see one that would turn a mill in 
August and September; but in November and 
December all these fiumaras will discharge tor¬ 
rents. 
The breadth of the entroughed bed varies from 
700 yards to two miles where it most dispreads 
itself. The current increases from the normal 
II. K 
