A SINGULAR MEDICINE. 425 



which appears to be the one general feeling that 

 animates these happy denizens of air. Their shrill 

 piping songs, their joyous freedom, and quick 

 sportive movements, as chasing each other, or chal- 

 lenging to the flight, they dart from tree to tree, 

 excite corresponding feelings of buoyancy and hap- 

 piness in the delighted traveller, glad to have 

 escaped from the stony deserts, or the burning plains 

 of the arid country he has previously passed through. 



In two hours we arrived at a more open 

 country, its surface gently undulating, with 

 a gradual slope towards the west. Here, it 

 was not so densely wooded ; the trees appeared 

 younger, and the idea occurred to me, that a flood 

 might have rushed over and devastated this 

 district, some few years before, and this natural 

 plantation had sprung up subsequent to that event. 

 I could not obtain any information corroborative of 

 this as a fact, but the uniform height of the trees, 

 their young appearance, and the contiguity to 

 an overflowing river, the Hawash, afforded me 

 some reasons for supposing this part of the country 

 to have been so acted upon. 



A curious kind of medicine, I observed carefully 

 picked up by my Dankalli companions. This 

 was the hard clay-like freces of the manus, or 

 pangolin, said to have cathartic effects. This 

 mailed ant-eater excavates, with its strong fore 

 claws, a passage through ' the thick mud walls of 

 the ant-hills, and the numerous army of soldier and 

 of labouring ants, that are hereupon summoned to 



