BUTTERFLIES AND BUFFALOES 119 



and opened, and we spent a most cheerful evening 

 with our host, who even surrendered to us his easy- 

 chair and his bed — about the greatest sacrifices a 

 man can make in those cHmates. ' Reveille,' 

 admirably sounded by a black bugler, roused us 

 at dawn, and we were soon on our twenty-five mile 

 walk back to Muhokya, taking with us a most 

 kindly recollection of Congo hospitality. 



A curious feature of the Ruisamba country is 

 a number of deep ravines leading from the valleys 

 in the hills above, down into the plain below. To 

 judge from their steep sides and tortuous course, 

 they can only have been formed by water ; but 

 though we arrived there before the dry season had 

 set in, there was never a sign of running water in 

 any one of them. It would be interesting to know 

 if they were formerly the beds of streams which 

 have disappeared through a change of climate, or, if 

 not, what is the cause of their present dried-up 

 condition. They are now filled with a very dense 

 vegetation, including several flowering trees and 

 creepers, which we found afterwards on the edge of 

 the Congo forest, and they were one of my most 

 profitable hunting-grounds for butterflies. In the 

 pursuit of butterflies in these ravines, there was 

 always a chance of stumbling unawares upon a 

 sleeping leopard or a buffalo, but I was lucky in 

 never meeting either of them ; an angry bark and a 

 scuffling in the undergrowth would sometimes make 

 me look out for the nearest climbable tree, but 



