Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/263

 LIBEEIA. 216 quadrilateral, stretching 380 miles along tlie coast, with an average breadth of 150 miles. The seaboard is intersected by numerous streams mostly with narrow ba?ins, and flowing in parallel beds from north-east ^o south-west, according to the normal slope of the land. At high water and during the periodical floods nearly all the low country between the first line of hills in the interior and the coast dunes is submerged. The Saint Paul, largest of the Liberian rivers, rises nearly 200 miles from the sea, north of the Foma hills and south of the Loma range, which separates its basin from that of the ^iger. It is navigable for about 20 miles by vessels drawing 10 feet, and even above the rapids the upper reaches are in many places deep enough for river craft. But a dangerous bar at its mouth obliges all seagoing vessels to ride at anchor in Monrovia Bay. The Saint Paul is joined in a common delta by the Mensurado, and farther east two other rivers, the Queah and the Junk, converge on the coast. Other considerable streams are the Cestos, Sangwin (Sanguin), Sinu, and Cavally (Cavalla), the last so named by the Portuguese because it is within a ride ( '* cavalcade " ) of Cape Palmas. Beyond this point follows the San- Pedro, forming the eastern frontier within the limits of the Ivory Coast on the Gulf of Guinea. Several of these streams, notably the Cavally, are accessible to boats for 70 miles from the coast, which is here endangered by numerous sandbanks. One steamship company alone lost six vessels in ten years between Sierra-Leone and Cape Palmas. Most of the Liberian rivers are separated from each other by intervening ridges or spurs projecting from the ^landingan plateau. But most of the sea- board is low, either fringed with lagoons or carved by the waves into small red and white cliffs, with here and there a few conspicuous headlands. Such is Cape Mount, a wooded almost insular bluff, whose highest crest rises 1,005 feet above sea-level. Cape Mensurado (Montserrado), although less elevated (280 feet), is a more important object for mariners, as it projects farther seaward and marks the entrance to the port of Monrovia, capital of the republic. In the interior is visible a chain of hills culminating in the Table Mountain, 1,100 feet high. North of Cape Palmas, at the angle of the continent between the Atlantic and Gulf of Guinea, another hilly mass, consisting of red sandstone, ries to a height of 1,094 feet. In several places, and especially to the east of Monrovia, eruptive rocks have cropped out, but the prevailing formation appears to be a reddish clay over- lain by a ferruginous sandstone like that of Sierra-Leone and Senegambia. The Mandingan plateau when cleared of its natural growth of tall grasses is extremely fertile, and according to Anderson, potatoes here grow to a size of eight or ten pounds. On the escarpments of this plateau are strewn some granite boulders, several of which are scored with stria), another indication that these equatorial regions had also their glacial period. Climate. The seasons are less regular in Liberia than on the more northern coastlands, which must doubtless be attributed to the change in the direction of the shore-line,