1866.] AN AFRICAN COAST JUNGLE. 19 



fathom of calico, and the headman always gave a fowl or 

 two, and a basket of rice or maize. The Makonde dialect 

 is quite different from Swaheli, but from their intercourse 

 with the coast Arabs many of the people here have ac- 

 quired a knowledge of Swaheli. 



12th April. — On starting we found the jungle so dense 

 that the people thought " there was no cutting it : " it 

 continued upwards of three miles. The trees are not large, 

 but so closely planted together that a great deal of labour 

 was required to widen and heighten the path : where bam- 

 boos prevail they have starved out the woody trees. The 

 reason why the trees are not large is because all the spaces 

 we passed over were formerly garden ground before the 

 Makonde had been thinned by the slave-trade. As soon as 

 a garden is deserted, a thick crop of trees of the same sorts 

 as those formerly cut down springs up, and here the process 

 of woody trees starving out their fellows, and occupying 

 the land without dense scrub below, has not had time to 

 work itself out. Many are mere poles, and so intertwined 

 with climbers as to present the appearance of a ship's ropes 

 and cables shaken in among them, and many have woody 

 stems as thick as an eleven-inch hawser. One species may 

 be likened to the scabbard of 

 a dragoon's sword, but along 

 the middle of the flat side 

 runs a ridge, from which 

 springs up every few inches 

 a bimch of inch-long straight 

 sharp thorns. It hangs straight 

 for a couple of yards, but as 

 if it could not give its thorns 

 a fair chance of mischief, it a Tkom-dimber. 



suddenly bends on itself, and all its cruel points are now at 

 right angles to what they were before. Darwin's observation 

 shows a great deal of what looks like instinct in these 



c 2 



