Great would be my wonder if the West African as well as the East
African Ghats did not prove auriferous; both fulfil all the
required conditions, and both await actual discovery. The
Mountains of the Moon, so frequently mentioned by M. du Chaillu
and the Gaboon Mission, are doubtless the versants between the
valleys of the Niger and the Congo. Lately Dr. Schweinfurth found
an equatorial range which, stretching northwards towards the Bahr
el Ghazal, was seen to trend westward. According to Mr. Consul
Hutchinson ("Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians," p.
250), the Rev. Messrs. Mackey and Clemens, of the Corisco Mission
"explored more than a hundred miles of country across the Sierra
del Crystal Range of Mountains" --I am inclined to believe that a
hundred miles from the coast was their furthest point. We shall
presently travel towards this mysterious range, and there is no
difficulty in passing it, except the utter want of a commercial
road, and the wildness of tribes that have never sighted a
traveller nor a civilized man.
The rivers of our region are of three kinds; little surface
drains principally in the north; broad estuaries like the Mersey
and many streams of Eastern Scotland in the central parts, and a
single bed, the Ogobe, breaking through the subtending Ghats, and
forming a huge lagoon-delta.
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