Senegambia

Senegambia, the name given to the tract of country in West Africa which is drained by the Senegal and the Gambia rivers. Its limits are still undetermined, but the Atlantic bounds it W., and Sierra Leone is on the S. frontier. To the N. and W. the Sahara and the Joliba or Upper Niger offer but vague limits. The whole area may roughly be estimated at 400,000 square miles. The seaboard, especially in the S., is fiat, swampy, and covered with rank vegetation, but the country rises inland to a mountainous ridge having an elevation of three or four thousand feet, is watered by many rivers, and is fairly fertile and healthy. Millet, rice, maize, sugar, indigo, tobacco, cotton, oranges. figs. etc., are grown, but only for home use. The French colony of Senegal (q.v.) occupies the northern portion, the British settlement of Gambia (q.v.} lying S. of Cape Verde, whilst below this the Portuguese have settlements and more recently the French have established themselves. The population chiefly consists of negroes, with an infusion of Berbers of Arab blood, Europeans being very few.