Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/314

 for a considerable coast stream and for lagoons fed by several affluents, alone remains open throughout the year. The river Ogun, the largest of these affluents, rises probably some 180 miles inland, and receives numerous tributaries before leaving the uplands. The Great Popo Channel is also generally open, while at other points the natives frequently cut passages for their boats between the lagoons and the sea,

Most maps represent the Togo district as almost entirely occupied by Lake

Avon, an inland sea 1,200 square miles in extent, and so called from the English vessel which surveyed this coast in 1846. But the size of the Haho, as the natives call it, from its chief influent, has been strangely exaggerated, for it is scarcely more than 6 miles long in any direction. The Nokhwé, or Lake Denham, west of Porto-Novo, is also much smaller than it appears on the maps, while the largest of all these coast lagoons is Ikoradu, which with its numerous ramifications has given the Portuguese name of Lagos, or the "Lakes," to the town at its seaward