The Remainder of the African Continent.
—Our knowledge of African meteorology is necessarily in its infancy, and it is only possible to furnish a few tables of widely distant parts of this immense area, which may give some idea of its climatic characters. The whole of the northern part of the continent is extremely dry, much of it being quite rainless, especially towards its eastern side. Following on this is the equatorial belt, a great portion of which is barely, if at all, explored, but which seems to usually present the general characters of such latitudes and to be usually blessed with an ample rainfall across the entire width of the continent. Southward of the equatorial zone we again meet with immense dry and desert areas, such as the Karoo, but here it is the western side that is the more arid, none of the south-eastern coast being in any sense rainless.
Malaria is extremely rife in almost all parts of the huge peninsula, and in addition to this we have in “Blackwater fever” and sleeping sickness, diseases which seem to be at present its own peculiar privilege, though, fortunately, yellow fever is not as yet included in its list of dangers. The low-lying country along the coast and of the great rivers is notoriously unhealthy, such as the Bight of Benin, where, according to the sailor’s proverb,
“There’s two comes out
Where three goes in.”
But inland there are considerable tracts of elevated country which present climates by no means to be despised, and which will no doubt in time, with the advance of civilisation, become eligible and healthy sites for European occupation, and more than one example of climatic conditions that appear decidedly inviting will be found amongst the tables furnished below.
An example of the climate of the Sahara has already been furnished in the notice of Algeria, and in the northern part of the continent the only other at all well-known climate (apart from Egypt) is the Soudan.
Practically rainless in parts, the climate is intensely hot and dry, the relative humidity showing one of the lowest records in our collection; but as the equatorial zone is approached a moderate rainfall develops, and throughout the region the large daily range of temperature results in the nights being comparatively cool, and therefore less trying than many parts of India. The northern portion is too dry to be very unhealthy, apart from the danger of abdominal chills, but as we ascend the Nile it expands into the immense marshes described by Baker and others, which are necessarily intensely malarious, while round the great lakes the sleeping sickness, previously rare or unknown there, is spreading rapidly.
Commencing with the dry Soudanese region, climatic tables of three stations will be found below, the first and most northern of which, it will be seen, is practically rainless. The figures of the first table are averages of ten years’ observations.
| Wadi Halfa. Lat. 21° 55′ N.;Long. 31° 19′ E. E.F., 590; E.M., 128. | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Mean Temperature | Mean Maximum Temperature | Mean Minimum Temperature | Relative Humidity | Rainfall | ||||
| F. | C. | F. | C. | F. | C. | At 9 h. | At 21 h. | ||
| January | 59·4 | 15·2 | 73.7 | 23·2 | 47·5 | 8·6 | 42 | 44 | Prac- tically nil. Drops re- corded 15 times in 10 years |
| February | 62·6 | 17·0 | 77·2 | 25·1 | 48·4 | 9·1 | 39 | 36 | |
| March | 71·5 | 21·9 | 87·5 | 30·8 | 56·5 | 13·6 | 30 | 30 | |
| April | 80·5 | 26·9 | 95·8 | 35·5 | 63·7 | 17·6 | 23 | 24 | |
| May | 87·8 | 31·0 | 104·3 | 40·2 | 70·5 | 21·4 | 17 | 19 | |
| June | 90·7 | 32·6 | 106·7 | 41·6 | 74·4 | 23·5 | 20 | 22 | |
| July | 90·5 | 32·5 | 105·7 | 40·9 | 74·5 | 23·6 | 23 | 30 | |
| August | 90·0 | 32·2 | 103·5 | 39·7 | 75·0 | 23·9 | 31 | 34 | |
| September | 88·7 | 31·4 | 99·6 | 37·6 | 73·5 | 23·1 | 35 | 38 | |
| October | 82·5 | 28·1 | 97·2 | 36·2 | 69·0 | 20·6 | 37 | 10 | |
| November | 70·7 | 21·8 | 85·0 | 29·4 | 58·7 | 14·8 | 41 | 43 | |
| December | 63·0 | 17·2 | 76·6 | 24·7 | 51·0 | 10·6 | 45 | 45 | |
| Year | 78·0 | 25·6 | 92·9 | 33·8 | 63·5 | 17·8 | — | — | |
The two remaining tables are for the year 1901, and are not even complete in places. Kassala is, of course, much nearer the sea than Omdurman, and hence its better rainfall.