The plateau of South Africa rises at Lattakoo, in the country of the
Bechuanas, north of the Orange River, to the height of 6000 feet. To
the east, near the Snow Mountains, where the river has its source, it
ascends to an altitude of over 10,000 feet. To the north, discovery had
made great progress since 1849. There, on a broad plateau, Oswell and
Livingstone brought to the knowledge of the world the existence of Lake
Ngami, whose surface is 2825 feet above the level of the sea. The plateau
which includes this lake at its place of deepest depression cannot be
less than 3000 feet high, and at some localities yet higher. Still more
to the north, at latitude 14° south, on the water-shed between the Zaire
or Congo on the west and the Zambeze in the east, the plateau reaches
an elevation of 5000 feet, according to Livingstone. Yet farther to the
west, it rises still higher and takes undisputed rank among plateaus of
the first class. There, at 18° south latitude, Galtne, on his journey of
discovery in 1850, ascended the table-land of Ovompâ, a region of great
natural productivity. On the way thither, going from south to north, at
21° south latitude, and therefore in the parallel of Lake Ngami, but
about 500 miles westward, he ascended north of the Swakop River, the
table-land of Demara, which he found to be 6000 feet high. From that
plateau mountains, Koniati and Ometako, for instance, rise to a height
of 8800 feet. From the Swakop River to Lake Ngami there is a continuous
plateau.
The high table-land of southern central Africa does not then extend, as
was once supposed, as far north as 9° north latitude, nor even to the
later limit of 4½° north latitude; but at about 4° 10′ the distinction
between lowland and highland seems to be sharply drawn, as the cataracts
which terminate the navigation of the White Nile indicate. Here Father
Knoblecher turned back in 1849, but he ascended the first of the
mountains which there began to rise; his eye reached onward to mountains
very near or on the equator. He says that those high mountains stand
upon an elevated table-land. Thus, here at the source of the White Nile
we have a plateau seemingly of the first rank. From such a plateau it is
probable that the snow-capped mountains, seen by Rebmann and Krapf in the
neighborhood of the equator, rose, which they thought, approaching from
the eastern coast, held the source of the Nile.
At the northwest of Africa, too, at 10° north latitude, the territory
which feeds the springs of the Senegal and the Niger is supposed to be a
plateau of great elevation and of great extent. But at present our lack
of knowledge prevents our attaining certainty regarding it. No thorough
system of measurement has been yet applied there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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