Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/275

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LIBERIA.
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have a school and a mosque, and from this place runs a well-kept highway across the forests northwards to Baporo. At Bojeh, about 60 miles from the coast, this road crosses another running south-west through Sublum, capital of the Gola territory, to Fisherman's Lake. These trade routes have a normal breadth of from 6 to 7 feet.

The upper valleys of the St. Paul, hitherto visited by only one explorer, seem destined to become one of the most flourishing regions in Africa. Here the population

Fig. 96. — Grand Bassa and Mouth of the St John.

is very dense, towns and cultivated districts following continuously along the slopes of the plateaux. The towns visited by Benjamin Anderson in 1860, Zolu, Fessabué, Bokkasah, Zigah Porah Zué, in the Bussi territory, and Zu-Zu on the St. Paul, are all places of several thousand inhabitants, and their fairs are attended by multitudes from the rural districts.

The eastern slope of the Vukkah Hills belongs to the Mandingans, whose chief town is Musardu, or Masadu, which, although much reduced from its former splen-