Evidences of Warping — Swamp Divide

Abstract

Map 1 clearly shows that the central part of Uganda is a drowned basin. The fantastic outline of Lake Victoria contrasts sharply with the regular shores of the Rift Valley lakes. In many places around the Victoria Nyanza the outlines of a drowned valley system are to be recognised, as for example the Sese islands in the lake just east of the estuary of the Katonga. Lake Kyoga clearly betrays the fact that really it is the drowned valley system of the Kafu. The trend of the creeks and of the tributaries gives the impression that both the Kafu and the Katonga flow westward, whereas in fact at the present time these rivers flow sluggishly eastward through broad, swampy valleys, rising somewhere in a broad valley. The same is the case with other rivers, e.g. the Rufua. They rise in a swamp or lake (e.g. Lake Karenge, maps 3 and 4), from which a young river flows rapidly westward through a deep valley towards the Rift Valley, while another river flows sluggishly eastward in a valley filled with reeds and papyrus. The walls of the valleys, however, continue undisturbed along the water divide, and this is called the swamp divide.

The erratum of this chapter is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7553-9_33