Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/25

 ANGOLAN RIVERS. 9 toll reeds (arinvfo phragoti/es), while the brushwood on the higher grounds is covered to a height of 3 or 4 feet with the tufts of herbaceous vegetation borne along by the flood waters. In this extensive pltiin, alternately a lake and a morass, the Cunene is joined by the Caculovar (Kukulo-Male, or " Old liale "), a considerable stream which collects all the waters descending from the Snowy Range (Chella) and from the Huilla cirques. According to the unanimous testimony of travellers and residents, this region of the middle Cunene, notwithstanding its marshy character, is by no means insalubrious, a circumstance perhaps due to the antiseptic action of the mosses covering the 8u»*face of the waters, and probably also to the elevation of the land. The height of the plain about the confluence of the Cunene with the Caculovjir was estimated by Capello and Ivens iit about 3,500 feet, while Dufour, another explorer, found that the village at the confluence itself stood at an altitude of 3,800 feet. This elevated lacustrine district hus other emissaries besides the Cunene. At least three watercourses, designated by the generic name of umaramha, branch off from the left bank of the riyer through broad openings. in the en- circling cliffs. They take a southerly or south-easterly course, meandering through ihe territory of the Ova-Mpos as far as the great saline marsh of Etosha, which is distant 150 miles and situated at a level 330 feet lower than the main stream. The Cunene thus presents the extremely rare example of an incom- pleted delta, for in virtue of these lateral channels it belongs to the system of watercourses which, like the Ku-Bango, are lost in the depressions of the desert. Down to the middle of the present century the true course of the Cunene was still unknown, and on Lopez de Lima's map, which embodies the state of geographical knowledge at that period, it is represented as flowing eastwards in the direction of the Indian Oceun. But it is now known to reach the Atlantic after forcing its way through the intercepting western highlands. Report even speaks of a great cataract, followed lower down by a large number of smaller cascades. It seems in fact impossible that great falls or rapids do not exist in this section of the fluvial bed, for there is an incline of considerably more than 3,000 fret in the space of 180 miles between the estuary and the point where the mountains are traversed by the river. Systematic exploration has hitherto been made only in the lower part of the valley. So early as the yeir 1824 the English vessel, the Espieglc, had landed near the mouth of the Cunene, which was tlicn named the Nourse River ; yet the very next year Owen failed to discover the opening, doubtless because the bar had meantime been closed, and the river exhausted for a long way above its mouth. The entrance wns not rediscovered till the year 1854, when the river was ascended for some 25 miles from the coast. Even now the Cunene reaches the sea only during the rainy i^eason, from Decem- ber to April. At other times the abundant waters rolled down with the inun- dations of the upper basin are nearly completely evaporated in the vast lacustrine reservoirs of the middle course, nothing remaining for the lower reaches except a puny stream which soon runs out in the sands.