56 HARMONIES. 



Again ; if we wish to see the vastest of terrestrial 

 animals, it is not within the bars of a travelling menagerie 

 that we should look for him, nor in the barbaric pomp or 

 domestic bondage of India, but in the noble forest-glens 

 of Africa. 



Mr Pringle has drawn a graphic sketch of such a valley, 

 two or three miles in length, surrounded by a wild and 

 bewildering region, broken into innumerable ravines, in- 

 cumbered with rocks, precipices, and impenetrable woods 

 and jungles, among lofty and sterile mountains. The valley 

 itself is a beautiful scene ; it suddenly bursts on the view 

 of the traveller as he emerges from a wooded defile. The 

 slopes and sides are clothed with the succulent spek-boom ;* 

 the bottom is an expanded grassy savanna or meadow, 

 beautifully studded with mimosas, thorns, and tall ever- 

 greens, sometimes growing singly, sometimes in clumps 

 and groves of varying magnitude. 



Foot-tracks deeply impressed in the soft earth are 

 everywhere visible ; paths, wide and well trodden, like 

 military roads, have been opened up through the dense 

 thorny forest, apparently impenetrable. Through one of 

 these a numerous herd of elephants suddenly appears on 

 the scene ; the great bull-elephant, the patriarch of the 

 herd, marches in the van, bursting through the jungle, 

 as a bullock would through a field of hops, treading down 

 the thorny brushwood, and breaking off with his proboscis 

 the larger branches that obstruct the passage ; the females 

 and younger males follow in his wake in single file. 



* Postidacai-ia afro,. 



