Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/452

 beauty of its cascade, which is visible even from, the sea. At this distance it looks like a bright silver thread drawn across the current, but a nearer view reveals a broad sheet of water falling from a height of 50 feet over a rocky ledge above which rise two huge granite boulders, one crowned with a wide-branching tree and encircled by a green girdle of brushwood. Half a mile lower down the river enters the sea between two sandy banks strewn with granite rocks.

Apart from the great mountain, which forms a little world of its own, the Cameroons climate and natural history differ but slightly from those of the Slave

Coast and Lower Niger. As in the neighbouring tropical regions the summer rains, already abundant in May, continue to increase till the end of August, usually ceasing by the beginning of October. In November sudden squalls and tornadoes are frequent, and the vapours are so dense that even from the foot of the volcano the summit is visible only at dawn and sunset, except when the dry north-east harmattan prevails.

As on the Guinea coast, the spontaneous vegetation is represented by the man-grove on the half-submerged marine banks, by the pandandus and raffia palm on the lowlands, and higher up by forests of great trees matted together by a tangled