Subject: Cameroon/Central African Rep. border - expert advice needed!
Date: Jul 09, 2001 @ 19:39
Author: Grant Hutchison ("Grant Hutchison" <granthutchison@...>)
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Border folk, I need any help you can offer.
I'm looking for detail on the border between Cameroon and the Central
African Republic. Biger describes this as leaving the course of the
river Ngou, running along the Atlantic/Chad watershed for some
distance and then joining the Kadei river at its source. (This is
something of an oversimplification, because maps show the border
leaving the Ngou and following the Mide for a bit before striking off
cross country. They also show the border linking up with the Mbali
river before jinking across to the source of the Kadei.)
It's the cross-country bit in the middle that concerns me: Biger says
it follows the watershed, but the IGN and the local TPC show a series
of long straight-line segments. Does anyone know which of these is
correct?
The reason I ask pivots on a hill called Mont Ngaoui - if the border
follows the watershed, then Ngaoui is on the border, and therefore
the highest point in the CAR. If the border follows the straight line
segments, it cuts off Ngaoui and leaves it in Cameroon, so some other
hill in the (nicely named) Massif des Bongos becomes the highest
point in the CAR.
Just to add to the confusion, the GEOnet database puts Ngaoui in CAR,
and DeLorme's EarthA DVD puts it in Cameroon!
(In case you're wondering, and have made it to the end of this
posting, Ngaoui is important to me right now because my friend Ginge
Fullen is traipsing around Africa climbing the highest point in every
country there, and so needs definitive data.)

Grant