162 NATURE'S TEACHINGS. 



Fortunately for them, there is a tree called the Ita Palm, 

 belonging to the -genus Mauritia, which loves moisture, and 

 grows abundantly in this delta. The Waraus, therefore, make 

 their habitations in these trees, connecting several of them 

 together with cross-beams, and laying planks upon them so as 

 to form the flooring of their simple huts. Here they maintain 

 themselves chiefly by fishing, but are sometimes obliged to 

 visit the mainland, in spite of the mosquitoes. When, how- 

 ever, they return, they halt at some distance from the shore, 

 and with green boughs carefully beat out every mosquito from 

 the canoe before they dare to approach their dwellings. 



The once-celebrated Lake Dwellers of Switzerland evidently 

 lived after a similar fashion. 



IN this case insects drive human beings into trees, but there 

 are instances where nobler animals have produced the same 

 effect. 



Some years ago there lived in Southern Africa a powerful 

 chief called Moselekatze, who spent his whole life in warfare, 

 converting all the male inhabitants into soldiers, dividing them 

 into regiments, ruling them with the extreme of discipline, and 

 by their aid devastating the neighbouring countries. He 

 swept off all the cattle, which constitutes the wealth of the Kafir 

 tribes, and either killed the male inhabitants or pressed them 

 into his service. 



The land was in consequence deprived of its natural de- 

 fenders, and the wild beasts, especially the lions, increased 

 rapidly, so that the position of the survivors was a really 

 terrible one. They had no cattle to furnish the milk which 

 is the chief food of the Kafir tribes ; their weapons had been 

 taken by Moselekatze ; and they were forced to live almost 

 entirely on locusts and wild plants. By degrees the lions became 

 so numerous and daring, that the slight Kafir huts were an 

 insufficient protection during the night, and the disarmed and 

 half-starved inhabitants were perforce obliged to make their 

 habitations in trees. 



Dr. Moffat, the well-known missionary, saw one tree in 

 which there were no less than twenty huts. They were 

 conical, and made of sticks and grass, the base resting upon a 

 platform or scaffold laid upon the fork of a horizontal brunch. 



