AN ARCADIAN REGION. 197 



adorn its sides; a crystal brook ripples in the centre. Under the 

 shade of an enormous baobab the graceful antelopes browse undis- 

 turbed, until alarmed by the footfall of the approaching traveller. 

 Gnus and zebras contemplate the strange intruder with an air of 

 surprise. A few continue to crop the grass indifferent; others pause 

 in the banquet, uncertain whether to stay or take to flight. The 

 huge hulk of a white rhinoceros drags labouring up the shady valley. 

 Buffaloes, and condors, and giraffes stray far into its pleasant depths 

 as peaceful and almost as trustful as those of their race which, in 

 days remote, wandered among the beauties of Eden, in 



" That delicious grove, 

 That garden, planted with the trees of God." 



Further to the north, even to the river Sanshureh, the country 

 increases in richness and beauty, the water-courses multiply, and the 

 herbage aspires to such a height that vehicles and animals are lost 

 amongst it. 



An exceeding gentleness, an almost Arcadian calm, characterizes 

 the landscape on the banks of the Leeba, a great affluent of the 

 Leambye. This river drags its slow and ever-winding waters through 

 a delightful meadow-land, which is probably flooded eveiy year, for 

 there is no wood except where the ground rises four or five feet 

 above the general level of the plain. The soil of these tree-crowned 

 plateaux, or knolls, is sandy, while that of the prairies consists of an 

 alluvial earth, gray and black, and mixed with numerous river- 

 shells. 



Ascending the Leeba, we enter on a plain more than eighteen 

 miles in breadth, where the water rises to the traveller's ankles. 

 This water, says Livingstone, does not proceed from the overflow of 

 the river; but the level of the ground is so horizontal that the rain- 

 water cannot pass away, and abides there for months. Still more 

 humid are the adjacent plains of Lobala. This vast submerged area 

 forms a watershed between the rivers of the north and those of the 

 south. Up to this point all the rivers wend their way southward; 



