THE FLORA OF GAZALAND. 7 
fire, and the abrupt cliff of old trees which it presents on its south-eastern 
faces to the prevailing winds (and consequently fires) forms a suggestive 
contrast to the fringe of young growth to be seen on its more sheltered 
edges. 
The Umswirizwi River rises on Gungunyana at the foot of a high hill, 
Mount Marozwi, just to the north-east of Chirinda, and, flowing at first due 
west through grass-country and open woods, drops gradually into a deep 
gorge and carries us on to the heavily but openly wooded Chikore Hills. 
These, a little further east, culminate in the heights (4900 feet) that overlook 
the enormously broad Sabi Valley and command a view far across the river 
of the extremely broken * Kopje” country of the eastern Victoria district, 
famous for its Zimbabwe ruins. The Sabi is here a broad shallow sand- 
stream flowing at an elevation of about 1000 feet, and the flats that border it 
are said to be in many places magnificently wooded, in spite of a usually 
small rainfall. 
South of Chirinda and for the most part in the Portuguese district 
of Mossurize, is an extensive and somewhat unique tract named the Jihu. 
This name, properly applied to a rich red dioritie soil and a rank grass 
(Andropogon sp.) which commonly grows on it, has in this ease been trans- 
ferred to a piece of country of which these are the chief characteristics. It 
is bounded on the west roughly by the Umswirizwi, which turns south 
before reaching the Chikore Hills, on the south by Mount Singuno and the 
other hills of the same range that suddenly fall away into the Umswirizwi flats, 
and on the north-west (though the Mafusi country is in reality a northward 
continuation of it) by the Buzi. It is watered mainly by three small rivers, 
the Kurumadzi, rising at Spungabera, and the Zona and Chinyika, rising in 
Chirinda, the first two flowing into the third. Its soil, which is immensely 
rich in humus, considered together with the scattered but unmistakable traces 
of forest destruction which I have come across, would seem to show that the 
whole of the Jihu was once under first-class timber. At present it boasts, I 
think, only three small forest remnants, themselves rapidly disappearing under 
the devastating effect of the annual fires. Otherwise it is covered from end 
to end with a tall dense growth of Andropogon and other rank grasses and 
shrubs, matted into an impenetrable jungle by Mucuna, Smilax Kraussiana, 
Dioscorea, and other tough and for the most part thorny climbers, and 
interspersed, sometimes thickly, but more usually somewhat sparsely, with 
two species of Acacia and other trees of some size, but especially with 
Pterocarpus sericeus, and in parts Ormosia angolensis. The most notable 
feature, however, of the actual grass-jungle is perhaps the masses of Leonotis 
mollissima, scattered throughout it and extraordinarily attractive to all kinds 
of birds. The grass of the moister parts is shorter and much frequented by 
buffaloes, and the Jihu is seldom entirely free from lions. Here and there 
