XXXIV.] SNAKES. 449 



dividuals are rare, owing to the quantities destroyed every 

 year in the annual burnings of the grass, when every man and 

 boy sallies forth intent on destruction. 



To these people all flesh is meat, and vast quantities of beasts 

 and birds are therefore destroyed by their human foes, while 

 others perish in the flames. 



Every pool and swamp swarms with frogs ; and the insect 

 world so teems with new and wonderful forms of life, that 

 here the entomologist — as in tropical Africa generally — may 

 find extensive fields for study and discovery. 



Snakes are not numerous, and the greater portion are not 

 venomous, though the cobra de capello exists and is much 

 dreaded. There is also a snake which is said to be able to 

 project its saliva to a distance of two or three feet ; and when 

 that saliva falls on man or beast, a lingering and painful 

 wound results. Arachuidse are common, and of several vari- 

 eties, scorpions being by no means rare in the native huts; 

 while the webs of gigantic spiders festoon the poles forming 

 the roof, and are sometimes seen covering whole trees in the 

 jungles. 



The next portion of the route was the passage of the Use- 

 ghara Mountains by the road leading from Rehenneko. The 

 mountains are principally composed of granite and quartz, 

 sheets of polished, wet, and slippery stone in the torrent-beds 

 often making footing insecure. In some places red sandstone 

 overlies the skeleton of granite, and acacias grow wherever 

 soil is lodged, rising above each other " like umbrellas in a 

 crowd;" and in the low-lying, moist hollows the mparamusi 

 towers high above all its companions. 



After crossing the first part of these mountains, we followed 

 for some distance the valley of the Mukondokwa, of which 

 Burton has aptly remarked that " the mountains seem rather 

 formed for the drain than the drain for the mountains." I can 

 not do better than refer the reader who requires a more de- 

 tailed description of the valley of the Mukondokwa than the 

 nature of this book allows me to give, to the "• Lake Regions of 

 Central Africa," by Captain Burton, a work which, for minute- 

 ness of detail, must ever stand foremost among books of de- 

 scriptive geography. The route he followed soon after pass- 



