fty miles
from the coast of the Indian Ocean, and all the country between it and
the sea forms a low coastal belt, which seldom rises more than a few
hundred feet above sea-level, with a distinct coastal climate and
vegetation. Between these coastal hills and the next range lies the
second belt, called in South Africa the low veldt, again with a climate
and rainfall and vegetation of its own. Next and last, at a distance of
from a hundred to one hundred and fifty miles from the Indian Ocean,
runs a mountain system, often rising to great altitudes, on which rests
the great elevated inland plateau from four thousand to six thousand
feet above the level of the sea. This plateau continues for hundreds of
miles westward, and then begins to slope toward the Atlantic Ocean in
the far distance. Sometimes, as in Central Africa, the slope to the west
is very sudden, and another range of mountains forms the western
buttress of the great central plateau. All the great rivers of Africa,
with the exception of the Niger, rise on this plateau or on its
mountain-flanks, which have a very high rainfall. The bush, or great
forest, which is almost impenetrable in the coastal belt, becomes
somewhat more open in patches in the middle belt, while on the plateau
open, park-like country alternates with treeless, grassy plains, and
the forest is confined to the deep valleys or the mountain-slopes. The
rainfall, which is fair on the coast, becomes very light in the middle
belt, which in consequence tends to have an arid character; on the
plateau it is high or very high. Because of these marked differences the
economic character of the three regions varies considerably.
Semi-tropical products, such as maize, coffee, cotton, and millet, can
be raised on an almost unlimited scale on the plateau; while rice,
rubber, sisal, and copra are raised in the two lower belts.

[Sidenote: The chain of large lakes.]

[Sidenote: Extinct and active volcanoes.]

All along the mountains which mark the western edge of the high plateau
one will notice a chain of lakes, from Nyasa in the south through
Tanganyika and Kivu to Lake Albert in the north. In prehistoric time
some convulsion of nature broke the African continent all along its
spine, and formed this system of lakes. Another break occurs on the high
plateau, from Portuguese East Africa in the south to British East Africa
in the north, along the Great Rift Valley, with its magnificent
escarpments and weird s