Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/116

 down to the sea. But eastwards it towers above a vast plateau which has a mean altitude of 5,450 feet, and which is covered with volcanic cones, some isolated, some disposed in groups or chains, some with perfect circular or oval "caldrons," others rent and torn on one side and presenting the so-called "spoon" or "ladle" formation. Doelter, the geologist, regards this upland plain as an old bed of a vast crater, where the Topo da Coram represents the _ Vesuvius of a great circular Somma, of which the jagged outlines may still be traced.

Santo-Antam was first occupied in the middle of the sixteenth century, when slave labour was introduced. The first white colonists, including a number of

Canarians, made their appearance towards the close of the last and beginning of the present century, and successfully introduced the cultivation of wheat on the upland slopes. In 1780 the slaves in Santo-Antam were declared free; but the decree passed unheeded, and the honour of their emancipation was reserved for a later generation. The inhabitants, nearly all coloured, but sometimes with light hair and blue eyes, are grouped chiefly in some villages near the north-east coast, and in the little town of Ribeira Grande on the same coast. On the neighbouring hills, from 3,000 to 4,000 feet high, the cultivation of cinchona has been introduced with great success; nearly a thousand trees had already been planted in 1882.