Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/346

 288 WEST AFRICA. bouring bight, and whicb is the Formosa of the Portuguese. Altbougb over 16 feet deep at low water, the bar at the mouth of this channel is rendered so dangerous by the fury of the breakers that vessels drawing more than 6 or 7 feet scarcely venture to risk the passage. Between the Benin and the Nun follow nine other branches, of which the Rio Forcados alone is of easy access to craft of average size. The mouth of the Nun, although often dangerous, may still be easily ascended by vessels drawing 13 or 14 feet. Farther east follow other arras at average intervals of 10 miles, all with dangerous bars, and all connected in the interior by a labyrinth of navigable channels. For ten months in the year the prevailing winds blow inland, often with sufficient force to enable sailing vessels to stem the fluvial current. Towards the end of November begins the season of the so-called " smokes," dry fogs rendering the seaboard invisible at a short distance off the coast, but usually dissipated by the afternoon breeze, and occasionally dispersed by tornadoes. The two ramifying estuaries of New Calabar and Bonny are usually regarded as forming part of the Niger hydrographic system, with which they are connected by a branch of the delta and several brackish channels along the coast. But these estuaries are chiefly fed by an independent stream v^'hich rises in the hilly region skirting the south side of the Benue Yalley. The Old Calabar estuary, which has also been included in the Niger system, and which higher up has been wrongly named the Cross River, as if it communicated westwards with the delta, is on the contrary an entirely independent basin, which in its middle course takes the name of Oyono. It is a very large river, which in 1842 was ascended by Becroft and King for 190 miles to the rapids, and which in many places was found to be over 1,000 yards wide and here and there from 40 to 65 feet deop. The surveyed section describes a complete semicircle round a mass of syenitic hiils over 3,000 feet high, and its valley is probably continued eastwards, so as to isolate the Kameroon highlands from the rest of the continent. The lower course of the Oyono, although not directly connected with the Niger, nevertheless forms, like the Rio del Rey farther east, an easterly continuation of its alluvial zone, the whole region presenting everywhere the same general aspect, and yielding to commerce the same natural products. Politically also these secondary basins, like the Niger itself, are under the suzerainty of Great Britain. The Upper Niger States. The lands watered by the Upper Niger as far as the Benue confluence com- prise a large number of tribes and nations with little ethnical coherence, but at present constituting three main political groups. Like most of the empire^^ developed since the Mohammedan invasion, the southern state is of religious origin. It dates only from about the year 1875, when mention first occurs of the new prophet Samburu, or Samory, who was then reported to be agitating the Wassulu and other Upper Niger lands, destroying the towns of the unbelievers, and enroll-