Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/419

LAKE TSAD. 351 In the intermediate zone between the Sahara and Sudan, the characteristic vegetation are graminaceous plants and trees not requiring much moisture, such as the acacias, the prevailing species of which traverse the whole continent from the Red Sea to the shores of the Atlantic. Plere animal life is surprisingly rich, including vast herds of antelopes and gazelles, of giraffes and elephants, ostriches still as numerous as they ever were on the Algerian plateau, and the hippopotamus in the lake and all its affluents. Eapacious beasts, such as the lion and hysena, are also met in this region, while in the forests the weaver-bird hangs its nest on every pliant bough, and the shallow waters are animated by flocks of ducks, geese, pelicans, storks, and herons. Snakes are numerous, and after every shower the ground swarms with centipedes and other insects. South of the border zone, vegetation increases in vigour and variety in the direction of the equator. The dum palm, rare and stunted in the steppe, acquires its full development in the interior of Bornu, and on the plains of Baghirmi and the Mandara territory, here and there accompanied by the deleb palm, and every- where associated with the leafy tamarind- tree, and in the south with the gigantic baobab. In South Baghirmi the forest vegetation prevails everywhere, the trees increasing in size and presenting several new species peculiar to the tropics, such as the Eriodendroii atifraduosum, yielding a down soft as that of the eider ; the still more useful butter-tree (bassia Farldi), so valuable in a country where the domestic animals supply but little milk, and the Parkia biglohosay whose berry afPords an extremely nutritious flour. In these forest regions the characteristic animals are the cynocephalous apes, lions, and other felida}, elephants, the hippopotamus, and in South Wadai the abu-horn, or two-horned rhinoceros. Baghirmi is described by Barth and Nachtigal as a land teeming beyond most others in insect life, scorpions, ants, and termites swarming everywhere, while certain districts are infested by the tsetse fly, or some analogous pest. Pyramidal termite-hills are frequently seen, resembling the native huts, but more solidly built, and for centuries resisting the action of the tropical sun and rains. Some were seen by Barth which stood 40 feet high with a circumference of about 70 yards. During the rainy season, when they assume wings, the termites hover heavily about their nests, and are then captured and devoured in vast quantities by the natives. They are found in endless variety : some almost microscopic, some nearly an inch long ; some black, grey, or green, others brown, red, or white ; some forming warlike aristocracies, others communistic republics, but all equally industrious and hardworking, whence the term kida-Jdda ( '• work- work " ) applied to them by the natives. Lake Tsad appears to abound in fish, which form the staple food of the islanders, and which are largely exported to the interior of Bornu. The lacustrine fauna includes some much- dreaded carnivorous species, and the malacopterunis, a dangerous electric fish, besides the manatns Vogelii, a cetacean so named from the traveller who first described it. In the Tsad basin the chief cereals are dokhn and durra, the former cultivated in the sandy districts of the north, the latter in the stronger soil of the south.