ABSTRACT
Below the great northward bend the Niger makes as it flows through Timbuktu and Gao stretches the desert of Asawad, inhabited by the Moors and Tuareg, mainly nomadic peoples speaking Afro-asiatic languages. Further south, as the rainfall increases, the desert gives way to thornland, then to savannah woodland and finally to the dense rain forests of the West African Coast. This chapter considers not only the ethnographical and geographical background of the LoWiili but also discusses certain problems of nomenclature which arise in this highly diffuse political system. The physical appearance of the region is typical of the Northern Territories, a gently undulating countryside with broad valley bottoms where, in the wet season, the dried gullies suddenly become violent streams rushing into the Volta. A belt of a few miles width along the east bank of the river lies on a Lower Birrimian formation and is marked by steep slopes and sudden scarps of red laterite.
