Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/532

 clearings round the villages. But the eastern uplands, like those of the west, show no continuous woodlands except in the bottom lands where are collected the streams descending from the hillsides, and in the districts of the equatorial zone exposed to a copious rainfall. Farther south nothing is seen except grassy tracts

studded with clusters of trees like the English parks, long avenues of timber overshadowing the running waters, or else absolutely treeless steppe-lands.

Notwithstanding its vast extent, the Congo basin, presenting everywhere nearly the same climatic conditions, is characterised by a remarkable uniformity in its vegetable and animal species, Here the water-partings in many places coincide with the limits of the botanical zones, and Schweinfurth and Junker found that north of the divide between the White Nile and the Congo the oil-palm, raphia, pandanus, kola-nut disappear, which are so characteristic of the central