ISANGILA TO MANYANGA. &9 
dant, and its blossom sent forth a delicious fragrance. 
The banks were generally richly forested, and masses of 
creepers overspread the riverside trees. Sometimes they’ 
appeared like a green cloth thrown lghtly over the 
foliage, showing its masses and forms distinctly marked 
underneath. Sometimes they formed a delicate green 
cobwebbery, or seemed great walls of vegetation, looking 
as if carefully trimmed into uniformity of surface, but 
often scarcely a foot in thickness. I can hardly give a 
just idea of these beautiful examples of vegetable archi- 
tecture. Often these creepers would stretch out as it were 
a fresh series of constructions, their long, straight lanas 
acting as scaffold poles. Then would come the horizontal, 
interlacing arms, which soon formed a giant lattice-work, 
and on this foundation the beautiful and uniform foliage 
breaks out, until soon great walls and enclosures are 
made, generally round some monster tree. How lovely 
these arbours seemed to rest in! What an idyllic life one 
might fancy it possible to lead amid these fairy mazes like 
tenderly veiled transformation scenes, where the brilliant, 
slaring sky and its rudely positive white clouds are so 
crossed and recrossed by the boughs and lana ropes that 
the glory of daylight seems to shine afar off beyond the 
meshes of our fairy realm, into which the sun’s rays filter — 
through the leaf-masses in varying intensity of greenish 
golden light. Beautiful indeed it is, where the monotony 
of verdure is enlivened by the mauve convolvuli with 
crimson centres, by the pale yellow flowers of the creeping 
cucurbits, whose orange-red gourds shine like little lamps 
amid the diapered foliage. The giant-speckled kingfisher 
and his little active black and white brother haunt the 
secluded creeks that these walls of upright vegetation 
enclose; and on the gaunt, bare branches, forcing their 
way through the tender interlacing creepers like wild 
protesting arms trying to rid themselves of a clinging and 
deceitful embrace, on these gnarled and whitened boughs 
the fishing-eagles perch, greeting our approach with cheer- 
ful boisterous screams. A “giant” heron, too, sat on a 
branch amid sombre shade, where he would have remained 
