Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/246

 198 WEST AEEICA. cliain overlooking Freetown presents the vague outlines of a croucliing lion. From this faint resemblance the hill, with all the neighbouring coast, the Bulombel or Romarong of the natives, may possibly have received from the Portuguese the name of 8ierra-Ledn, whence the present strange hybrid form, Sierra- Leone —half Spanish, half Italian. Or is it due to Pedro de Cintra, who on landino- here in 1467 met a lion, or more probably a leopard, in the forest, and wished to commemorate the encounter by naming the locality from the king of beasts? Another conjecture refers it to the thunder-claps, which re-echo in the hills when the storm clouds burst on their summit, and when, as Cadamosto writes, the roar of the tempest is heard " forty or fifty miles out at sea " off the coast of " Serre-Lj'onne." As a political designation this name is now applied collectively to all the British possessions between the French territory of South Senegambia and the Negro colony of Liberia, answering very closely to the region known to the early Portuguese navigators as Mitombo. The seaboard of this political domain, taken in a straight line, has a length of 210' miles, which is nearly doubled by the thousand indentations of the coast. Tn some places English jurisdiction extends landwards a distance of 120 miles, while in others it is limited to the coastlands, or even to the shore-line. Absolutely independent communities occupy the immediate vicinity of the seaboard at Krim, near the Liberian frontier. East- wards the territory reserved for the colonial expansion of England is virtually limited by a convention yielding to France the right of future annexations iu the Upper Niger regions. But regarding as already British territory the whole of the Rokelle basin, as well as those of the other streams flowing to the sea, thence to Liberia, its total area may be estimated at about 30,000 square miles, while the actual possessions have an extent of no more than 1,200 square miles, with a population in 1881 of 60,550. Were the whole region peopled iu the same proportion, it would contain over 1,500,000 inhabitants, and in any case at least half a million are centred on the seaward slope. The Sierra-Leone seaboard comprises two distirct sections, differing greatly in their conformation. The southern presents a uniform coastline, drawn with almost geometric precision, and diversified by veiy slight eminences. The coast of Sherbro Island continues that of the mnnlanrl as far as Cape St. Ann, termi- nating in a sharp spit, and for a distance of over a hundred miles the shore-line follows an almost rigidly straight course. This regular beach has no doubt been partly detached from the continent by a marine inlet and a long creek ; still the spit indicates the original coastline, which is connected with Cape Roxo between the Cacheo and Casamanza by submerged banks and a chain of reefs and islets, of which the Biss igos archipelago is the chief surviving fragment. North-west of Sherbro the banks extend to a great distance, rendering the Sierra-Leone coast as dangerous as that of the Portuguese Guine, especially in the rainy season, when the horizon is veiled in mist. At some points of their course pilots are obliged to keep sixty miles ofE the seaboard. North of Sherbro the coast, carved by maiine erosion into gulfs and inlets,