490 SCAKCITY OF ANIMALS.— FORESTS. 



"bamboo, and persevere, though no one hears the music but them- 

 selves. Others try to appear warlike by never going out of their 

 huts except with a load of bows and arrows, or a gun ornamented 

 with a strip of hide for every animal they have shot ; and others 

 never go any where without a canary in a cage. Ladies may be 

 seen carefully tending little lap-dogs, which are intended to be 

 eaten. Their villages are generally in forests, and composed of 

 groups of irregularly -planted brown huts, with banana and cotton 

 trees, and tobacco growing around. There is also at every hut a 

 high stage erected for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated 

 cages to hold domestic fowls. Round baskets are laid on the 

 thatch of the huts for the hens to lay in, and on the arrival of 

 strangers, men, women, and children ply their calling as hucksters 

 with a great deal of noisy haggling ; all their transactions are con- 

 ducted with civil banter and good temper. 



My men, having the meat of the oxen which we slaughtered 

 from time to time for sale, were entreated to exchange it for meal ; 

 no matter how small the pieces offered were, it gave them pleasure 

 to deal. 



The landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, the grass 

 long, the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in 

 the middle. The tall overhanging grass, when brushed against 

 by the feet and legs, disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasion- 

 ally a serpent, causing a rustling among the herbage. There are 

 not many birds ; every animal is entrapped and eaten. Gins are 

 seen on both sides of the path every ten or fifteen yards, for miles 

 together. The time and labor required to dig up moles and mice 

 from their burrows would, if applied to cultivation, afford food 

 for any amount of fowls or swine, but the latter are seldom met 

 with. 



We passed on through forests abounding in climbing-plants, 

 many of which are so extremely tough that a man is required to 

 go in front with a hatchet ; and when the burdens of the carriers 

 are caught, they are obliged to cut the climbers with their teeth, 

 for no amount of tugging will make them break. The paths in 

 all these forests are so zigzag that a person may imagine he has 

 traveled a distance of thirty miles, which, when reckoned as the 

 crow flies, may not be fifteen. 



We reached the River Moamba (lat. 9° 38' S., long. 20° 13' 34" 



