240 GRAPHIC .DESCRIPTION OF AFRICA. 



between the coast and Unyanyembe. Great cones shoot upward 

 above the everlasting forests, tipped by the Hght fleecy clouds, 

 through which the warm glowing sun darts its rays, bathing the 

 whole in a quickening radiance which brings out those globes of 

 foliage that rise in tier after tier along the hill-sides in rich and 

 varied hues which would mock the most ambitious painter's skill, 

 From the winding paths along the crest of ridges the traveler may 

 look down over forest-clad slopes into the deep valleys, and across 

 to other slopes as gayly clad, and other ridges where deep concentric 

 folds tempt him to curious wanderings by their beauty and mystery 

 and grandeur. But those lovely glades and queenly hills told sad- 

 dest stories of cruel deeds and wrongs irreparable. It is the old 

 story: envious evil eagerly invades with its polluting presence those 

 sacred spots where all is loveliest; infernal malice mars with strange 

 delight what is beautiful and pure. 



CITIES BUILT BY INSECTS. 



Further on the caravan passed through the thin forests adorned 

 with myriads of marvellous ant-hills, those wonderful specimens 

 of engineering talent and architectural capacity, those cunningly 

 contrived, model cities, with which the tiny denizens of African 

 wilds astonish the traveler continually ; and on across plains dotted 

 with artificial-looking cones and flat-topped, isolated mountains, and 

 through marshy ravines, where every unlucky step insured a bath 

 in Stygian ooze — the various scenes of southern Ukonongo — 



"Where the thorny brake and thicket 



Densely fill the interspace 

 Of the trees, through whose thick branches 



Never sunshine lights the place" — 



the abode of lions and leopards and elephants and wild boars, one 

 of those splendid parks of the wilderness where majestic forest and 

 jungles, and lawn-like glades, and reedy brakes and perilous chasms 

 all unite to form that climax of wildness and beauty, "the hunter's 

 paradise." It was just the place to arouse all the Nimrod spirit a 

 man possesses. 



The surface stratum of the country is clay, overlying the sand- 



