Note 449 — Chapter VIII · —Coast Peoples

The rivers draining these low uplifted lands are deflected from their straight path to the sea by coastwise deposits, and idly trail along for miles just inside the outer beach; or they are split up into numerous offshoots among the silt beds of a delta, to find their way by shallow, tortuous channels to the ocean, so that they abate their value as highways between sea and land. The silted mouths of the Nile excluded the larger vessels even of Augustus Cæsar's time and admitted only their lighters,449 just as to-day the lower Rufigi River loses much of its value to German East Africa because of its scant hospitality to vessels coming from the sea.