Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/449

 Two rivers fall into Corisco Bay, the Muni and the Moondah. The latter runs up behind Libreville. There is a creek, the entrance to which is on the right-hand bank near the mouth of the Moondah as you enter; this runs behind Cape Esterias, in a south-east direction, and nearly communicates with the Gaboon estuary; so nearly that it is possible to utilise it as a short cut to Corisco Bay from Libreville, it being possible to drag a boat over the intervening strip of land.

The Muni is a longer and more important river than the Moondah; its outfall is north of it, opposite little Eloby Island, on the mainland shore. On a chart it looks like the usual African river turned upside down, its upper course being split up into several streams instead of lower. Both these rivers, like many others in this region, rise in the range of the Sierra del Cristal, an enormous belt of mountainous country the eastern limitations of which are at present unexplored.

A few great rivers cut through this range from sources beyond the Sierra, such as the Ogowé and the joint streams of the Mbam and Sanaga which come into the Atlantic under the names of the O'Bengo and the Boungo. The ranges round the Ogowé are the best known parts of the Sierra del Cristal; for the Ogowé places at the traveller's disposal a path, such as I have partially described, through 500 miles of it; and the Ogowé's chief affluent, the Nguni, cuts through it again from Samba south-castwards; and the Okanda's course lies, as far as that river has been ascended, in the very heart of it, going away north-east. It is a range of old volcanic origin, running in series of ridges parallel to each other, and following the long line of the continent. Its general trend is north-west and south-east. It comes down almost to the sea beach behind Batanga, and the beautiful little Loway River falls from a small cliff some twenty or thirty feet high belonging to, it on to the sea shore itself.

It is this range which gives the coast from Cameroon to Landana the marked superiority in beauty it possesses over the rest of the West Coast; excepting, of course, the splendours of Ambas Bay, which is a thing apart and out of all keeping with the Coast. These western ridges of the Sierra make a beautiful purple blue background to the splendid