Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/476

 892 WEST AFRICA. nebulosity, and M. Teisserenc de Bort's chart indicating the lines of equal cloud- ness for tlie whole continent, shows that fogs and mists occur most frequently in the Gaboon and Ogoway basins. In the same region the annual temperature has an extreme range of about 45° F., falling from 100^ to 57° at Shinshosho in 6° 9' south and from 93° to 62° at Sibanghe in 0° 30' north of the equator. During the hottest days in March and April the glass oscillates between 78° and 93° F., and in the relatively cool months of July and August between 73° and 86° F. Hence on this part of the seaboard what is most to be dreaded is not so much the actual heat as the great quantity of moisture contained in the atmosphere. The land and sea breezes alternate with great regularity, the former usually prevailing from eleven or twelve o'clock at night till the first hours in the morning, the latter from about eleven o'clock in the forenoon till the evening. Tornadoes occur chiefly during the early rainy season, and nearly always at night. But they are little dreaded, and by the Europeans of Libreville are even hailed with rejoicings, owing to their cooling effect on the atmosphere. The insalubrity of the climate is greatly increased for the whites by the poisonous exhalations rising from the morasses, the Ogoway, thanks to the sandy nature of its bed, being in this respect considered less dangerous than the Gaboon. But all Europeans alike are everywhere subject to fever and ulcers in the legs, the two maladies sometimes alternating. Flora and Fauna. The flora is neither so rich nor so varied as might be expected in such an abundantly watered equatorial region. Vast treeless tracts occur in some parts of the territory, the absence of arboreal vegetation being largely due to the sandy character of the soil. In the Gaboon gigantic draconas overtop all the sur- rounding trees, amongst which are several kinds of palms flourishing spontaneously. The cocoa-nut and all other industrial plants of the torrid zone have been intro- duced by the missionaries, but mostly without any practical results. On the other hand, the forest species which contributed to the export trade during the early period of the occupation have lost their relative value, their products having to be brought from greater distances inland since the exhaustion of the supply from the woodlands on the coast. Thus traders no longer take the trouble to export the *'red" wood {Baphia nitida) formerly so highly prized, and some varieties of which were even preferred to those of Brazil by dyers. Ebony {Diospyros), both green and black, is still collected by the natives, as well as caoutchouc, although the liana yielding this commodity is disappearing from the neighbourhood of the stations. In general the indigenous flora is poor in edible plants,, although the Okotas of the Ogoway basin live almost exclusively on the large green fruit of the dika, which abounds in their forests. This equatorial region has become famous for its quadrumana of large size, including the njina (jina) of the natives, to which Europeans have given the name of " gorilla," originally applied by Hanno and his Carthaginian companions to certain hairy women seen by them on the west coast of Africa. The domain of